Page 5 of Death at Fournier Downs
Hugh Marsden appeared taller than when she’d last seen him in late April. His rich brown eyes and chiseled jaw and nose even more striking. It seemed her mind had done well in subduing her own memories of him. His clothing appeared finer than what he’d worn in London too.
She’d expected him to challenge her immediately, insist that she was overthinking Lady Bainbury’s tragic death, and subtly scoff at her summoning him all the way to Hertfordshire. Instead, without a trace of arrogance or sarcasm, he waited for her to tell him what she knew. So, she did.
Audrey started from the beginning: seeing Charlotte running through the woods, trying to hail her from across the field without success. She recounted following her on her horse, hearing a scream and the cacophony of ravens, and then finding her friend at the bottom of the quarry.
“A scream?” he repeated, his brow furrowing.
She nodded. “It’s why I know she didn’t jump. Why would she scream, as if in terror, if she was choosing to leap to her death?”
He considered the question in silence as he stepped toward the open terrace. The humidity in the sitting room had turned thick and close, and though the breeze outside was weak, at least it would be some relief. They stepped onto the terrace, which was bordered by a balustrade and potted topiary.
“She could have changed her mind too late, when she was already falling,” he said, his eyes narrowing on a topiary, clipped into a rabbit-like shape. “Or she could have slipped over the edge by accident. You did say she was running.”
Audrey had considered those possibilities too. “The quarry drop-off is visible from a distance; it would be impossible to not see it coming. Andwhywas she running? I’ve never seen Charlotte so much as walk briskly. She appeared panicked. Like someone was chasing her.”
He turned from the rabbit topiary and speared her with a serious look. “Did you see anyone?”
She assumed his forbidding expression was because she was basing her argument on conjecture, not proof. However, when she replied that no, she had not seen anyone, but that she’d had the distinct impression someone was there at the quarry, his forbidding expression turned thunderous. He shifted his footing, bringing him a step closer.
“You believe she was pushed.”
Audrey nodded.
“And you think the person who pushed her was still there? That they saw you?”
Her skin prickled as it had that afternoon in the shady wood when it had felt as if a pair of eyes were boring between her shoulder blades. A dozen times, she’d wished she’d scaled the quarry ledge down to the base, to feel for a pulse in Charlotte’s neck and be certain she was gone; that she’d touched some item she wore—a ring, her necklace, anything—so that she could make sense of what had just happened. But with the stick snapping behind her in the woods, the chittering of squirrels, the cawing of a raven…and that peculiar sensation of being watched… she’d run away in fear. In cowardice.
Audrey lowered her eyes. “Possibly.”
“Who have you spoken of this to?”
She knew why he was asking. And that he would not be happy with her answer. “Lady Prescott, of course, and the duke. And Lord Bainbury, naturally. But he dismissed my account, and the local magistrate did as well.”
Mr. Marsden loomed closer, throwing off palpable tension. “If you are right, and whoever it was hears that you have brought me here to investigate, if they have any reason to believe you saw them, Audrey—” She snapped her eyes to his, and he sealed his lips with an expression of chagrin. “Your Grace,” he corrected. “They might wish you harm.”
“I didn’t see anyone.” Small tremors shook out along her arms and legs. “But I don’t believe she jumped, and Lady Prescott agrees. Charlotte had no reason to take her own life.”
“None that you are aware of,” he reminded her, moving aside, toward the balustrade.
She’d just seen Charlotte a fortnight before, for tea; she hadn’t been so very out of sorts. They had discussed her stepson’s upcoming nuptials, and Charlotte had seemed eager for the wedding, if only to get Lord Renfry off of his father’s estate. She’d seemed a bit harried; hot and distracted, too. But the summer weather had been unnaturally humid. It was bothering everyone. Still, she supposed Charlotte could have been keeping something to herself. Audrey knew too well the masks those of polite society so often had to wear. She’d worn many herself, especially these last few months.
Audrey joined Mr. Marsden at the balustrade, looking over the viscountess’s garden. It was a point of pride, with several varieties of roses and hydrangea that she was happy to say no other garden in England possessed. The poor woman was devastated by Charlotte’s death. She had a son, the new viscount, but he was young and still at Cambridge. He’d written that he would arrive in time for the funeral, but Audrey found his lack of urgency disappointing. So had the viscountess.
“Lady Prescott will pay any fee you require for investigating Charlotte’s death,” Audrey said. At the tightening of his mouth and the shift of his footing, she wished she hadn’t brought up the subject of payment.
“Money is not my concern,” he said. She knew it wasn’t. His father, Fitzgerald Neatham, the late Viscount Neatham, left him a generous living despite the fact that he was illegitimate. Hechoseto work as a Bow Street officer; he wasn’t dependent on his wages.
“I will investigate,” he continued. “On one condition.”
Audrey frowned. She suspected she knew what that one condition would be.
“You will not insert yourself into this case,” he said.
She hitched her chin. “I was of assistance last time.”
He ripped off his deerskin gloves and turned toward her, his irritation simmering. She remembered his temper well. Oddly enough, she didn’t dislike seeing it again. If anything, it assured her of some normalcy.
“You were reckless and were nearly killed.”
