Page 32 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
“Because she heard something?” Lucilla glanced at the windows; three sets along the corridor had their curtains open. She nodded at the curtains. “Were those left open?”
“No. I opened them so I could see to search.” He glanced down. “But there’s only one scuff.” He pointed to a fresh mark in the layers of old beeswax at the top of the stairs, just to one side of the threadbare runner. “The sort you might expect if she’d tripped, skidded, and then fallen. Other than that…the runner in this area was flat and all looked normal.”
Lucilla glanced around at the floor just back from the stairs. “But what did she trip over?”
Her own feet?He didn’t say the words, but that was the only explanation he’d come up with. He wasn’t sure he liked or approved of Lucilla’s involvement, but as had happened in the crofter’s cottage ten years before, he felt a sense of connection with her, an affinity that had nothing to do with any physical phenomenon but was rather an instinctive ability to interact and work with her, fueled by a recognition that, together, they were more effective than either working alone.
She was the only person he’d ever felt such a connection with, which was another aspect of her he didn’t want to dwell on.
Still glancing around, she frowned. “Where did Faith’s candle go?”
He blinked. “I don’t know. But if she tripped and fell, it should have fallen with her.”
They peered down the stairs, but the runner and the dark-stained wood of the stairs showed no evidence of any spilled wax.
“Hmm. The staff would have picked it up.” Lucilla stared at the stairs. “They must have straightened the runner, too. It would have been pushed around, wouldn’t it? As Faith tumbled and fell?”
They both considered the runner, which lay smooth and taut beneath its wooden restraints.
Focusing on the clear patch in the dust coating the floor below, he grimaced. “She must have pitched forward quite dramatically to have landed all the way over there, up against the wall.”
Lucilla made ahmmsound, then turned away from the stairs. “Did Edgar and Manachan know anything?”
“No. Assuming this happened shortly after Faith had delivered Manachan’s nightcap, both he and Edgar were awake, but they heard nothing.” He caught her eye. “What else did you learn from the staff?”
She readily gave him what he suspected was an edited, but essentially accurate, accounting of all she’d learned. At the end of her recitation, she paused, then said, “I know that the deaths of both sisterscouldbe ascribed to accident, but it’s the timing I find most troubling.” She drew breath, then looked along the corridor. “I’m having difficulty accepting that Joy and Faith spoke in the kitchen—with Faith in the kitchen itself and Joy in the servants’ hall, so they would have spoken loudly—and then Joy dies of poisoning and Faith falls down the stairs.” She looked back and met his eyes. “Especially as I can now see how someone who was in the house at the time, who was close enough to the servants’ hall to hear Joy and Faith’s conversation, could have poisoned Joy, and then later pushed Faith down the stairs.”
He held her gaze for several long seconds, then demanded, “How?”
She told him. She concluded with “So I think we should find Joy’s canteen and see what the contents can tell us.”
“It was attached to her saddle. I’ll get Sean to find it.”
“Warn him not to drink from it.” She paused, then said, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to smell anything, not now. But we can test for such things, can’t we?”
Feeling grimmer by the minute, he nodded. “I’ll send samples with those from the Bradshaws’ well.” After a moment, he added, “But the results will take…probably weeks to come through.”
She shrugged lightly. “Both women are already dead… Oh, I see.” She met his gaze. “What it was they discussed and our hypothetical murderer heard and killed to conceal. There might still be a threat.”
“Indeed.” Jaw setting, he reached for her elbow. Ignoring the effect simply touching her had on him, he gripped and turned her along the corridor. “Let me show you which door leads into the main wing, so when in the gallery, you’ll know it’s the door you don’t need to go through.” The thought that someone in the house—or with access to it—was harboring some mysterious and murderous intent was unsettling enough; that she was there, under the same roof, made matters immeasurably worse.
Made an emotion he didn’t recognize rise up and grip him. Coerce and compel him.
Somewhat to his surprise, she made no demur at his taking control; instead, she walked beside him, courtesy of the narrowness of the corridor rather close, her velvet riding skirt brushing the material of his trousers. Once he was sure she was, indeed, consenting to leave the scene, he eased his grip, then released her altogether.
He would have increased the distance between them, but there was no space.
Lucilla found herself dealing with a rather odd fracturing of her awareness. On one level, she was increasingly exercised over the matter of the Burns sisters’ deaths, and very conscious of the tug of duty on that score, yet simultaneously her sensual awareness was reveling in Thomas’s nearness. In his touch, however brief.
The toe of her riding boot hit something, and she stumbled. “Oh!” She pitched forward—
Thomas caught her and hauled her upright. Hauled her to him.
She ended in his arms. Locked against him, her palms flat against his chest.
The first thing she registered was the heat of him, the warmth that seeped through the layers of fabric and sank into her.
Into her flesh, feeding her senses.
