Page 6 of The Meriwell Legacy
But first, he had to weather the rest of Percy’s house party.
Alaric’s feet followed the route to the shrubbery’s main entrance without the need for conscious direction. Turning in to the final avenue that led to the archway cut into the hedge bordering the side lawn, he glanced ahead—and saw a bundle of crumpled silk lying on the grass just inside the shrubbery entrance.
He blinked, stared, then understanding dawned, and his stride faltered. He recognized that particular shade of pale-blue silk.
He caught his breath and ran.
A second later, he stood looking down at Glynis Johnson. She lay discarded—thrown aside like a broken doll. Her pretty blue eyes stared sightless at the sky, her pale skin was discolored, and her tongue protruded between her once-lush lips. A ring of dark bruises circled her slender throat, an obscene marring of what had once been so lovely.
Alaric felt light-headed. He hauled his gaze up—away. Focusing on the green wall of the hedge, he forced himself to breathe…
Then he looked down again. Feeling battered by a rising tide of emotions—anger and fury foremost among them—he crouched and forced himself to look more closely, more impartially. To bear witness to the atrocity.
Who had dared to do this?
This, truly, was desecration of an innocent, and Alaric’s true self—the inner man who was not nearly as far removed from his warrior ancestors as his elegant sophistication led others to believe—was already reaching for his sword.
Why he felt so strongly over a girl he’d barely known, he didn’t know, but this shouldn’t have happened.
Not here. Not now.
Not ever.
His faculties slowly emerging through the fog of shock, he reached out and gently drew down Glynis’s lids. There was no point checking for a pulse; she’d passed beyond reach long ago. The dew had dampened her gown, enough to make it cling, converting the ball gown into a chilling shroud.
He stared, committing the sight to memory; there was something—some point, some earlier observation—niggling at the back of his brain, but he couldn’t seem to catch it and haul it forward.
Registering the coldness of the skin beneath his fingertips, gently he grasped and lifted one outflung arm. The limb was slightly stiff—stiffening. Although it was summer, the night had been clear, the air cool.
He heard the brisk rustle of skirts, then Monty’s voice piped, “This is the shrubbery.”
Before Alaric could react—could find his tongue and call a warning—an Amazon swept through the archway in the hedge.
The Amazon’s gaze fell on him, still crouched by the body. The woman—the lady—froze.
Garbed in a green carriage dress and with a hat perched atop glossy brown hair, the lady was tall, curvaceous, and statuesque, and with just that one glance, Alaric knew she possessed a commanding, forthright, and forceful nature; a peaches-and-cream complexion notwithstanding, her character was there, displayed in her face for all to see. And to take warning.
With her, nothing was hidden; she made not the slightest attempt to veil the power of her personality.
Then her wide green eyes shifted and locked on the body itself…
On the periphery of his awareness, Alaric registered that Monty had followed the Amazon past the hedge and, goggling, stopped to one side and a pace behind her.
Also stumbling into view on the Amazon’s other side was Mrs. Macomber, Glynis’s chaperon. She peered at the body and went as white as a sheet. “Oh no!” came out in a thin wail.
The sound pricked the Amazon to life.
She swayed, then her gaze snapped to Alaric, and gold blazed in the green. “What have you done?”
Constance struggled to breathe. Glynis—that was Glynis lying there dead! And this man…
Her eyes took him in as he slowly rose, straightening to a height she didn’t want to be impressed by. His face was of the sort she’d heard described as that of a fallen angel—a term she’d always associated with Lucifer and evil. The black hair that fell in thick locks, one sweeping over his broad forehead, added to the image, as did his clothes—a superbly cut gray coat over buff breeches and top boots.
Light-headedness threatened, but she thrust the sensation aside.
She was a second away from accusing the man of murder when he said, “I just found her.”
His voice—deep, but strangely flat—held undertones of sadness and respect for Glynis and, buried beneath that, if Constance wasn’t mistaken, a shock to rival hers.
