Page 10 of Death at Fournier Downs
He cleared his throat and ignored the shifting ballast in his gut. “Where is this quarry? How much further?”
The duchess faced forward. “A few minutes more.”
“What does it produce?” he asked, wanting to divert the conversation from talk of love matches and marriage.
“Nothing anymore,” the duke said. “The quarry was closed during my grandfather’s tenure as duke. A lode of citrine was discovered when he was a young man and he thought to mine it. Diversify his holdings. However, the lode was not as large as projected, and neither was the demand for the gemstones.”
“There is still some citrine, though,” Cassandra said. “I’ve found whole nuggets of it in the ground around the quarry, right on the surface. The color is so beautiful, like liquid sunshine. I have several pieces lining the windows of my room.”
Hugh bit back an amused grin. The duke’s sister was spirited. Audrey, however, seemed uncharacteristically subdued.Reticent, Cassandra had called it. It was the duke’s presence, he realized. It gave Hugh pause. Was she always like this when around him? Hugh wouldn’t know; the time he had spent with Audrey had been free of the duke. The duchess Hugh knew spoke her mind. She was direct and stubborn.
“Up ahead,” Audrey called, and a moment later, Hugh understood what she had meant when claiming Charlotte could not have accidentally come upon the cliff and fallen.
An acre or two of trees had been cleared around an open quarry pit. In the decades since its closure, grass, shrubs, and some young trees had sprung up, but the edge of the quarry was visible from a distance.
Hugh dismounted and looped his reins over the branch of a young oak. The duke and duchess also dismounted, but Cassandra stayed in her saddle. In silence, Hugh approached the ledge. He noticed then that it was unnaturally quiet. There was no birdsong, and the open sky above explained why. Dark clouds had rushed in while they had been riding through the forest path.
The bottom of the quarry pit was at least sixty, maybe seventy, feet below. The duke’s grandfather had done a lot of work, cutting away whole slabs of earth. The laborers he’d employed had left great blocks of stone and loose rubble to gather moss and weeds, and years upon years of leaf fodder had accumulated.
Audrey appeared in his periphery. She approached the ledge carefully, peering over the edge with hesitation. “She was there.”
Below, Hugh saw the blood. It had spilled over a few of the larger chunks of scree. He knew what Audrey had seen, could picture it perfectly, and wished she could have been spared. If what she suspected was true, and someone else had been here, watching the duchess discover Lady Bainbury so soon after her death… He looked around the quarry and tried to figure where someone might have hidden. The trees were thinner here, which would have made the act of hiding more difficult to achieve.
“Over there,” he said, pointing to where a stone hut covered in vines and half obscured by thorny brush sat about twenty yards from the quarry ledge. “What is that structure?”
Fournier removed his hat and wiped his brow. “One of the old quarry out buildings, I’m sure.”
Hugh wanted to have a look inside, but first, he needed to descend into the open pit. There might not be a body, but he was almost positive the duke’s men would not have done a meticulous search of the area when they came to fetch the countess.
He removed his tailcoat, gloves, and hat and dropped them unceremoniously onto the ground.
Audrey peered at him. “What are you doing?”
He had spied a route, though steep, down the side of the ledge, to the base of the quarry, and headed toward it now. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait.” She stepped forward. Then, untied the ribbons on her bonnet.
“Audrey,” the duke said as both he and Hugh realized her intention. “You are not going down there. It is too dangerous.”
The duchess Hugh remembered now returned. She removed her hat and handed it to Cassandra. The duke’s sister took it, her eyes wide with amusement.
“I will be fine, Philip.” She met Hugh at the edge, calmly dismissing her husband’s order. Hugh swallowed a grin.
“I’ll go first. Watch your step,” he advised, and then began his descent.
The open pit had been cut away in blocks, leaving jutting ledges and crags. There were a few spots on the cliff wall that were sheer drops, but here, Hugh could find footing on his way down. It looked as though others had traversed it before too.
He paused to look up and check Audrey’s progress. She was moving more slowly, needing to hold her skirts aside so she could see where to place her booted feet on the sloping ledge. Her other gloved hand braced the wall of the open pit. Fournier and Cassandra had come to the edge of the summit.
“What are you hoping to prove, Audrey?” the duke asked.
One of her boots slipped, scattering rubble. Hugh tensed, prepared to reach for her, but she steadied herself.
“I don’t mean to prove anything,” she replied, continuing her descent. “I want to see if Charlotte left anything behind.”
Ah. Hugh understood now. She wanted an object to hold. Something to feed her a clue.
“That is thoughtful of you, dear sister, but do be careful,” Cassandra called, oblivious to Audrey’s gift.
