Page 31 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Both women shifted, but neither moved. They exchanged another glance, then Gwen made a get-on-with-it gesture at Mrs. Kennedy. The housekeeper primmed her lips, then she drew breath and looked at Lucilla. “We don’t know if this is the right thing to ask, miss—my lady—but we, all the staff, we were wondering if you might be able to convince the laird to take something. So dragged down he is, yet beneath it all, he’s a strong man.”
“I can build a body up with food,” Gwen said, “but with him it doesn’t seem to stick, not anymore. Joy was certain she could give him something that would help, but she didn’t think it her place to push, especially not with him being her laird, if you know what I mean.”
Lucilla did. She seriously doubted many people had the backbone to inveigle Manachan to do anything, much less on an issue that might well have touched his pride.
Mrs. Kennedy leaned forward. “If you could see your way to saying something, Lady, it would mean a lot to us.”
Lucilla held up a hand to stay further pleas. “I’ve already decided the laird needs my help—the sort of help such as I can give. That’s partly why I’m here.” She paused, then added, “No one in the Vale had any idea he was so poorly, or I, or my mother, would have been here earlier.”
The relief that shone in both women’s faces was clear. “So you’ll speak with him?” Mrs. Kennedy asked.
Lucilla couldn’t lie. “I’ll help him. Quite how I’ll go about it, I can’t yet say. He isn’t the easiest person to persuade to do something he’d rather not do.”
“Howsoever you manage it,” Mrs. Kennedy said, “you’ll have the gratitude of the entire clan.”
Rising, Lucilla smiled and let that comment pass, but she doubted it was accurate. Something very serious was going on at Carrick Manor and on the estate, and whoever was behind it was, almost certainly, a member of the Carrick clan.
She stepped over the bench seat. “If you could show me the still room?”
“Of course.” Mrs. Kennedy rose and waved to the door. “I’ll take you—it’s back along the corridor and off to the left down some steps.”
* * *
Lucilla didn’t spend much time in the still room. As Joy Burns had left the room prior to meeting her end, Lucilla hadn’t expected to find any clues. After a few minutes circling the room, noting and approving all Joy had done and finding everything she expected neatly labeled and stored, she stepped out, pulled the door shut behind her, and headed back into the maze of corridors. Following the directions Mrs. Kennedy had given her, she made her way into the disused wing.
The spot at the bottom of the wing’s main stairs where Faith Burns’s body had lain was easy to identify; even in the dim light that seeped past the drawn curtains and drifted down the stairwell from uncurtained windows on the first floor, Lucilla could see that the dark floorboards were covered in an inch of dust except for the area at the bottom of the stairs, which had been scrubbed.
She’d seen Faith Burns’s body when she’d directed the staff in properly laying out the sisters in the ice-house; Faith had been taller and bigger boned than Joy. Faith had fallen with such momentum she’d fetched up against the wall on the other side of the corridor, her neck broken.
Given what she suspected about Joy Burns’s death, and what she could now imagine of Faith’s, and how both might tie together, Lucilla stood in the corridor, staring unseeing at the lower treads of the stairs while she wondered whether she should press for the magistrate to be summoned.
But she couldn’t prove anything. Most importantly, she had no idea what it was that either Joy or Faith had suspected and spoken to the other about while they’d been in the servants’ hall and kitchen; she felt sure such a conversation had occurred, and that it had led to the deaths of both sisters. That was her theory, but that was all it was—a theory, a conjecture, a set of connecting suspicions.
Conversely, although it stretched credulity in some ways, it could easily be argued that Joy had died by eating something poisonous by accident on the same night that her sister had died by accidentally falling down the stairs.
“Preposterous,” Lucilla muttered. But how to prove it?
A footstep, soft, muted by a rug, had her glancing up—all the way up to the top of the rather steep stairs.
Thomas looked down at Lucilla standing at the base of the stairs, her upturned face lit by the soft daylight washing through the windows beside him.
He saw her fine brown brows slowly rise. The look she directed at him was plainly interrogatory.
He mentally sighed. “I was trying to work out why Faith might have come this way. It’s not a faster way back to the kitchens.”
Lucilla reached for the banister and started up the stairs. “According to Gwen, the cook, and Mrs. Kennedy, Faith wouldn’t have been returning to the kitchens. She had no reason to.”
He frowned, conscious of his attention bifurcating—his mind following their discussion, his senses locking on her. “What about the tray she took to Manachan’s room?”
“She left it with Edgar, as she usually did.”
He forced himself to move back, further from her as she reached the top of the stairs.
She stepped into the upper corridor, halted, and met his gaze. “If Faith had followed her usual habit, she would have taken the staff stairs up to the attics and her room.”
She leaned sideways to look past him, along the first-floor corridor. “What’s along there, and does it connect to the area where Faith should have been?”
He stifled another sigh; she’d already learned more than he had. Maintaining a decent distance between them, he turned and waved down the corridor. “There’s a door a little way along that opens into the gallery. In the gallery, it’s just past the entrance to the staff stairs for the main wing—the ones Faith would have used to come up from the kitchens, and presumably, later, to continue up to the attics.” He met Lucilla’s gaze as she looked at him. “So why did Faith come this way?”
