Page 7 of Death at Fournier Downs
“How is the dowager faring?” He closed one of his books and massaged his eyes.
This last month, he had shown true improvement from the illness that had taken nearly all of July to recover from. A respiratory malaise, Dr. Ryder from Low Heath, had determined. But even though he’d been outdoors more, and finally attending to the business of the estate, Philip was reserved. It wasn’t just the many repairs and improvements needed to the farms and businesses on the duke’s thirty-thousand acres that weighed on him. It was the mess they had left behind in London.
“Not well, I’m afraid,” she answered. “Though, I cannot see how anyone could easily withstand such anguish.”
Philip sighed and pushed back his chair. “He has come?”
“Yes.” A strange heat stirred low in her stomach. She didn’t understand it.
“And he has taken the case?”
“He has. In fact, he will be here soon. He’s asked to see the quarry. I should meet with Greer to change—”
“Audrey,” Philip said, standing up as she turned for the door. But just then, the door swung open, and Cassandra breezed into the study.
“Oh, good! You’re back.” Her voice was sweet and vibrant, much like herself. Philip’s sister, and youngest sibling, wore a pink day dress with green floral embroidery. She was just about to turn nineteen and would enter society soon. The informal Little Season in the autumn would prepare her for the courtlier and more official Season in late winter and early spring of next year.
Her bright green eyes darted between Audrey and Philip, and then narrowed. “Are you two still arguing about that Bow Street blackguard?”
Audrey gaped at her sister-in-law. “Mr. Marsden is not a blackguard.”
She pouted playfully. “Pity. But I would like to meet him. Will I have the chance?”
Philip rapped his knuckles against the desk. “Cassie, the man is here to investigate a death, not socialize.”
She startled at his tone, but still appeared amused by it. Cassie did enjoy vexing her older brother. Audrey often wondered if she would have taken such pleasure in nettling James if he had lived.
“Does Lord Bainbury know Officer Marsden is here?” Cassie asked next, strolling into the study, and running her fingers along the spines of books upon a wall of shelves.
Audrey crossed a look with Philip. They had argued over Bainbury the night before as well. She’d suggested they call on the earl to express their sympathy, and Philip insisted a written expression and arrangement of flowers would do well enough.
When the earl and his entourage had arrived to retrieve Charlotte’s body from the duke’s icehouse, he had not been receptive to Audrey’s theories about what might have occurred at the old quarry. At first, she’d thought it only grief and shock that deafened him to her account; however, the following day, when the local magistrate, Lord Webber, had arrived at Fournier House to speak to Audrey, he insisted the death appeared accidental and that the inquest would arrive at that same conclusion.
Audrey had wanted a chance to see the earl again, to make a plea to at least consider his wife had been in trouble in the woods, but Philip put his foot down.
“If he doesn’t know Marsden is here yet, he soon will,” Philip muttered in answer to Cassie’s question.
Lord Bainbury would be furious. He wanted to mark the death down as accidental, caused by misadventure, but of course, the gossip was already spreading through the countryside, and surely into London, that Charlotte had followed in the previous countess’s footsteps and had ended her own life.
“I don’t understand why he is so eager to move on,” she murmured. “Why would he not want to know what happened out there?”
Unless he is hiding something. Audrey knew better than to say that, though. Making such an accusation, even in the privacy of Philip’s study, would be going too far. Jumping to conclusions before Mr. Marsden had even begun his investigation would be foolish.
“The man has lost his wife,” Philip said. He moved toward a sideboard and poured himself a finger of brandy. “Histhirdwife, might I add. Who knows what is going on inside his head? Leave him be, Audrey.”
She peered at him, curious. He was not one of Lord Bainbury’s friends or even acquaintances. After Philip swooped in and stole his betrothed, the earl and duke had kept their chilly distance, an ever-present friction between them. It was strange to hear him sound sorry for Bainbury now.
Philip’s moods had been changeable this summer. The arrest, the scandal, then his months-long malaise were likely the reasons why. She could not discount the messy ending of his affair with Lord St. John. Augustus, the son and heir of the Marquess of Wimbly, had been meeting with Philip regularly in a set of leased rooms in a shabby part of Seven Dials. The marquess’s discovery that they were lovers had driven him to concoct a scheme to punish his son and incriminate Philip, and unfortunately for Belladora Lovejoy, Lord Wimbly had seen her as an expendable pawn.
Countless times Audrey had thought about Lord Wimbly’s choices, how deep and severe his fury and fear must have been for him to cause so much strife. How vacant of any compassion or morals he must have been. As he had only been found guilty in the planning of the murder, he had not been hanged. Instead, he’d been stripped of his title and estates and shipped off to Australia as a prisoner. Lady Wimbly and Lord St. John, now stripped of their titles as well, had decamped to Devonshire to reside in the care of her sister and would never return to London. They were utterly, irrevocably disgraced.
“Cassie, was there something you wanted?” Philip asked as his sister ambled toward the windows.
She certainly seemed to have brightened with the idea of the Bow Street Runner’s impending arrival. It was the first thing she’d shown an interest in for some time.
“I only wondered if Audrey wanted to take a ride with me. I’m incurably bored,” she said with a little sigh.
“I’m afraid I’m going out with Officer Marsden soon, to show him the quarry. Perhaps after?”
