Page 2 of Death at Fournier Downs
Besides, Philip was a duke. Even Audrey’s mother could not complain…at least, not publicly.
Audrey pushed Fortuna onward, into the woodland and around trees, trying to spot her friend again. Soon, she pulled on the reins, discouraged.
“I think we’ve lost her,” she told Fortuna. Her stomach twisted with worry. Charlotte had to have been running fast to have disappeared so quickly. Ladies never run.
Not unless they are in trouble.
A curl of unease worked its way through her, and she tried to ignore her instinct.
“Let’s keep on,” she said to Fortuna, leading her mount forward again. There was a trail ahead that would eventually take them back to the stables at Fournier House. Perhaps that had been Charlotte’s destination?
A sudden scream cracked through the air, followed immediately by the shrill ruckus of cawing ravens. Audrey whipped around in her saddle. The ravens were still at it, their cries coming from deeper in the woods. Heart pounding, mind racing, Audrey tugged Fortuna’s traces and started for the direction of the ravens.
“Charlotte!” she shouted as Fortuna wove between trees. Something had happened. Her friend was in some kind of danger. Had she crossed paths with a wild boar protecting its piglets? Or a lynx, or some other wildcat?
The ravens beat their wings, darting overhead through the thick green foliage. Audrey aimed Fortuna in their direction. Soon, the alders, pines, and whitebeams began to thin. Fortuna deftly leaped over a downed pine, and Audrey drew her to a hard stop. Ten yards ahead, the land dropped off into a craggy open pit. This was the old citrine quarry, one of Philip’s ancestor’s enterprises that had not withstood the test of time.
Audrey breathed heavily, the utter stillness of the wood unsettling. A single, sharp caw from a branch above jolted down her spine. A lone raven spread its wings and leaped into flight, soaring over the quarry’s edge. With shaking legs and arms, Audrey dismounted. She held the leather traces a few moments longer than necessary.
“Charlotte?” Her choppy breaths made her voice wheezy.
She didn’t want to go to the edge. Didn’t want to look down into the open pit where, if memory served, blocks of rock lay scattered as scree at the base of the abandoned quarry. Intuition loomed like the black belly of a rain cloud.
Audrey could mount her horse and ride back for Fournier House. She could gather a group of footmen and stable boys and lead them back here, and they could then search for Charlotte together. But she knew in her heart that it would be cowardly. Last April, she hadn’t backed down once on her quest to prove Philip’s innocence. It had nearly gotten her killed, but that hadn’t mattered at the time. Whathadmattered was doing the right thing. Even if it frightened her half to death.
“Stay,” she told Fortuna, and then with as much false nerve as she could gather, went to the edge of the quarry. The drop was at least a hundred feet, and when the bottom came into view, her blood ran cold.
Audrey swallowed a scream and covered her mouth. Far below, Charlotte lay broken. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t moving. Her red hair fanned around her like a halo of radiant light in a sacred painting. Blood splashed the rocks near her head.
Behind Audrey, a stick snapped. She whipped around, the small hairs on her arms standing on end. But it was only a pair of red squirrels skittered up a tree, chirping at one another. Fortuna loped toward her mistress, perhaps sensing need. Audrey, her legs weak, gratefully took her by the traces and mounted swiftly.
“Come, hurry,” she whispered, the sensation that she was not alone in the wood crackling along her skin with rushed impatience. “We have to get help.”
She dug in her heels and rode toward the path to Fournier House, her eyes stinging with tears. It would be too little, too late. There could be no help for Charlotte now.
ChapterTwo
“Cor, is there anything out here that’s not grass, sheep, and trees?”
Seated on the bench across from Hugh Marsden, the young street urchin stared out the carriage window with a sneer of disgust.
“Are you really complaining about the countryside, Sir?” Hugh asked, suppressing a grin. It wouldn’t do to let the boy know that he found him more amusing than he did vexatious. Hugh had asked Sir to come along with him into Hertfordshire for practical reasons, but he couldn’t deny that getting him out of London for a week or so would be good timing.
Not only were the rookeries in London little more than rank stink pits at this time of the summer, but over the last few months the street gangs had been ramping up in violence. Sir had come around with a few black eyes, and though the lad wouldn’t breathe a word about what happened, Hugh could easily guess. Sir had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the gangs; unfortunately, gangs didn’t generally like being refused.
Sir sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. “Strange, is all. There’s too much sky if ye ask me.”
“And not enough pockets to pick, I imagine,” Basil, Hugh’s valet, muttered.
“Aw, come off it, Baz, ye know I don’t do that trick no more.”
Basil gave a roll of his eyes and adjusted his spectacles. He’d insisted on joining Hugh, even though he’d been told it wasn’t necessary. Multiple times.
“I will not have you presenting yourself to a viscountess without a properly tied cravat,” the aggravated valet had said.
After that, Hugh didn’t put up much more of an argument. Basil was serious when it came to cravats. The man ran Hugh’s household and small staff, which included a cook, Mrs. Peets and a maid, Greta, who came in a few times a week to tidy and do the wash. Basil also hadn’t had a holiday in ages, and Hugh suspected he wanted a bit of fresh country air now that London’s had turned humid and stale.
Not that this would be any sort of a holiday. A woman was dead, and her mother believed there had been some foul play.
