Page 12 of Fatal By Design
My god.The kidnapper had killed this maid. What had become of Millie?
Now, Audrey was grateful for Hugh’s nearness. She turned away from the body and toward him as he gently gripped her elbow.
“Are you certain?” Michael asked. She nodded.
“Do you know her name?” the doctor asked next.
“No.” Audrey drew a deep breath. “I…recall her. But I don’t know her name.”
That answer wasn’t a complete fabrication.
“Did she drown?” Tobias asked, but Hugh must have seen the blood on the bodice of her gown at the same moment as Audrey.
“No,” Hugh said, his fingers brushing the stain. The blood had spread through the cloth, helped along by the soaking of her gown in the river.
“I have only done a preliminary examination, but it appears she was shot,” Dr. Winslow said. His white brows pulled together with an expression of sorrow.
Audrey’s stomach lurched. The violence of it, the senselessness, made her ill. This maid had people who loved her, and now they would suffer from the loss of her. At her neckline was a simple lace ribbon, onto which a small silver cross had been fixed. Audrey nibbled her lower lip. Silver was a reliable metal when it came to reading memories.
“The viscount and I are on our way to Reddingate,” she said. “I will take this necklace with me to show the servants there. They will be able to confirm it is the maid and name her.”
Hugh undoubtedly knew what she was about when he stepped forward and began to untie the ribbon from around the woman’s neck. He caught her eye, a bit of mischief in his rich mahogany irises, when he handed her the necklace. With her gloves protecting her skin, whatever the small cross had to tell her stayed firmly locked within the silver. She dropped it into her pocket, eager to be gone from the musty, humid barn.
Doctor Winslow assured them that he would place the woman’s body into the town’s mausoleum for now, until it could be identified properly and claimed. As they left the barn, Audrey dragged in a deep breath, grateful for the ability to do so. Saddened that the maid could not. And terrified at the possibility that Millie, too, had been killed. And all overa ring?
“Tobias and I will return to Greenbriar to greet the magistrate and inform him of this,” Michael said. He peered up at the sky, which was turning golden as the afternoon waned. “You will reach Reddingate well past nightfall. Perhaps you should delay until tomorrow.”
“No, we must go tonight,” Audrey said, impatient. Besides, sleep would elude her if she spent it at Greenbriar waiting for dawn.
“We will be fine,” Hugh agreed. “I’ll ride in the box with Norris.”
Michael grimaced but didn’t argue. He mounted his horse, as did Tobias, and they rode back in the direction of the main road.
Unlike Audrey, Greer had chosen to remain outside the barn, waiting with Hugh’s driver and Sir. She came to attention as Audrey approached, a question in her eyes. Audrey shook her head. “It isn’t my sister.”
“The maid?” Greer asked. In a flash of unbidden wretchedness, Audrey pictured Greer laid out on that table, under the tarp, instead of Millie’s maid. It nearly drew all the breath from Audrey’s lungs.
She gave a short nod, and Greer’s lips tensed. Norris handed them into the carriage, and this time, Sir climbed in with them. The chassis rocked as Hugh joined his driver, and then, they were rolling away from Moorsly.
Greer folded her hands in her lap and took a cautious glimpse toward Audrey. “I am certain Lady Redding will be unharmed. Surely the kidnapper will demand a ransom for her safe return?”
It was a possibility, but with the memory of the man demanding Millie hand over “the ring” she didn’t quite believe it was a situation in which a ransom would suffice. The idea that the driver and maid had been expendable, while Millie was not, lit a fire in her chest.
Audrey allowed a few minutes to pass in silence, until Greer had turned to look out the window and Sir had slouched, resting the back of his head on the squabs. There was only one way to know what the maid’s last moments had entailed, and if she had been with Millie at the time. She peeled off her glove, a relief in the humid weather, and with damp palms, reached into her skirt’s pocket. Without taking the necklace out, she closed her palm and fingers around the silver cross pendant.
She bit back a gasp as the first images barreled into her mind, erasing her view of the carriage interior almost completely. The visions weren’t always this potent; they were sometimes weak, like watercolors bleeding across the fibers of a paper. The strong ones were solid, almost as if Audrey could reach out and touch them. This one exploded before her eyes, vibrant and close. It was also loud, nothing like the muffled, underwater sound of most visions.
Almost instantly, Audrey saw a woodland, the trees tall and thin. Ferns blanketed the ground. The world shook—the maid was running. She threw quick glances over her shoulder, and behind her, coming through the trees and ferns, was a man’s figure.
Facing forward again, the maid was nearing a field. Tall grass. A sloping hill. The images were scattered and chaotic, and then there was water—the banks of a swollen river. Audrey knew what happened from there, and with no wish to see it, and no sign of Millie in the field or nearby, Audrey gathered a breath and pushed back, deeper into the stored memories. The further back she looked, the dimmer the memories would appear. They would soon turn murky and opaque and then fade to nothing at all.
Where was Millie?
There.
As Audrey allowed the memories to surface again in her mind, Millie was standing before her. Tears streaked her red cheeks, her hair, normally coiffed to perfection, loose from its pins. Her face screwed up, as if in anguish.
“You betrayed me?” she said to the maid, the sound of her voice muffled as the energy leeched from the silver pendant. “How could you betray me?”
