Page 28 of A Lady’s Guide to Murder

CHAPTER 27

Black Eyes

A brilliant moon and clear skies allowed them to travel at a steady trot. Henrietta estimated the time at one thirty or two in the morning when they arrived at the court of the Pickled Dog. As Theo helped her dismount, a group of men poured out of the tavern, reeking of ale and sweat.

She was attempting to pass unnoticed to the stable to board her horse, but one man took an aggressive interest in two strangers in the inn court. The scar on his face identified him as Sam Walker, who’d tried to pick a fight with Theo the day before. As he lumbered closer, his disfigured lips curled into a wicked grin. Henrietta’s stomach sank. He recognised them and crowed.

‘Look, men! It’s the London boy and his gentry mort, now trying to dress like a man. As if her bubbies don’t give her away.’

Theo stepped forward with a clenched fist, which led Sam to attempt to spit in his face, but the spittle was thick with mucus and dripped to Sam’s chin instead. He cursed and smeared a purple handkerchief over his mouth. ‘I disliked you yesterday, London boy,’ he said with a snarl. ‘But I hate you tonight.’

Henrietta had set her mind to bravery and this was her first test. She stepped boldly between the men, still holding her horse’s reins. ‘My companion and I caused you no trouble yesterday, so please let us go about our business tonight.’

‘We only tolerated you yesterday because of the rain,’ Sam replied. ‘We don’t hold with gentry here and you didn’t fool us by pretending to be a maid. Seek your own kind at Enberry Abbey.’

‘Nay, don’t send her up there,’ another man said. His sorrowful voice was kinder than Sam’s, and only then did Henrietta recognise him as Jim King, who had seemed to be the leader the night before. Tonight, however, he stood slump-shouldered, his hands in his pockets, as if the weight of the world rested upon him. ‘She won’t come to any good there, no matter who gets to her first.’

‘You have a softness for this lady nob, Jim,’ Sam said. ‘Take care or we might question where your loyalties lie.’

‘I’ve proven where my loyalties lie.’ Jim stared at the moon and spoke quietly, as if to himself. ‘Else, I wouldn’t have done what I did tonight. God have mercy on my soul.’ He jolted, turning frantically to Henrietta. ‘Flee. Flee now, while you still can.’

The mad look in his eyes startled her, but she refused to be frightened. ‘I cannot. I have business here, which I must begin before Lord Marlow arrives in a few hours’ time. If I succeed, I may rid you of his oppression, therefore if everyone would step aside and allow us to board our horses—’

Sam snorted. ‘We’ll be rid of his oppression soon, but it won’t be you what does it for us. Venture up to the big house and you venture to your death, as ill-prepared as you are. He’s there already and you didn’t even know.’

‘ Already? ’ Henrietta’s plan had been to sneak into the house and attempt to gather any evidence she could find – letters, diaries, anything that might incriminate him. She hadn’t planned for the confrontation yet. Sam was correct – she was ill-prepared.

‘Aye, came in tonight, he did, in his thundering carriage.’ Still holding his purple handkerchief – the same as hers and Miss du Pont’s – Sam pointed in the general direction of the road that ran by the mill and then waved the handkerchief in front of her nose, as if it held some significance. ‘Death,’ he said dramatically. ‘ Death has gone to greet him.’

Henrietta took a step back, not wanting the wad of spittle to hit her if it flew off the handkerchief. ‘Why do you thrust that in my face?’

All the men – save Jim King – laughed uproariously. ‘Nightshade,’ said Sam, as if it were all a delightful joke. He spoke over his shoulder to his companions. ‘She don’t know it when it stares her in the face. How does she think she’ll survive?’

Henrietta recoiled against Theo. ‘Nightshade?’ she asked. ‘Millford Blue is dyed with nightshade ?’ But even as she said it, she knew it to be true. Hadn’t Edward’s nightshade monsters faded to a pale purple over the years? And the embroidered berries … not bilberries at all, but something deadly …

‘Aye, in that mill there,’ one of the men said, with a note of pride.

Henrietta grimaced, thinking of how she’d held her handkerchief to her nose and to her mouth. ‘Is the cloth poisonous?’

‘Not with the way we treat it here,’ another man said. ‘We wash it with gin, which draws the poison out but leaves the colour as pretty as can be.’

Gin … the drink Jim King had given her. ‘Is the gin poisonous?’ Henrietta asked, her voice rising in panic. Had Jim King tried to poison her yesterday afternoon, and then she’d given the drink to Theo? She put her hand to Theo’s chest, frantically hoping he was unharmed.

Jim spoke. ‘Aye, the gin is poisonous …’

Henrietta’s heart stopped.

‘But it wasn’t the gin I gave you yesterday.’

Breath gushed from her lungs; she was dizzy with relief. Lord, but Theo meant so much to her. How desperately she wanted to extract them both from danger, so that they might forge a life together.

Sam progressed towards them. ‘Now, get out of here. We’ve had enough trouble of late without more from you.’

The loitering men grumbled their agreement, and one amongst their numbers began singing the ballad of ‘Bess the Black-Eyed Beauty’ from the night before. He sang it pointedly, as if it should have meaning to Henrietta.

Henrietta tilted her head. ‘The black-eyed beauty. Who is she?’

‘ A treasury is our common land, united all we make our stand ,’ Sam said, quoting Eliza King’s march, as if in answer to her question.

‘The black-eyed beauty is Eliza King, then.’ Henrietta had suspected as much the first time she’d heard the ballad, when she’d also wondered if the radical leader might be related to Jim King. She glanced at Jim now, but he was looking at the sky again, as if he hadn’t heard.

Sam’s cruel grin made another appearance. ‘She knows who you are, though she didn’t tell us, did she? Says you’re not in service, though. Said you lied to us, but you’re not our enemy so we shouldn’t put you away. She’s the mistress of disguise, but you ain’t. We knew you weren’t what you said you were.’ Sam’s eyes shone. ‘Up at the big house, she is.’

‘She’s here ? At Enberry Abbey?’

Sam nodded his answer.

‘Why has she gone to Lord Marlow’s estate?’ Henrietta asked.

Sam released a cold, braying laugh. ‘Revenge.’

Bits and pieces were trying to slip into place in Henrietta’s mind. These men were radicals; Eliza King was their leader; they had respected the Duke of Severn; Marlow had murdered Edmund. ‘Revenge for the murder of Severn?’ she asked. ‘She has gone to kill Marlow, because Marlow killed Severn?’

Sam gave her a non-answer. ‘You’d best ask her.’

Henrietta was beginning to feel both frustrated and frantic. If Eliza King killed Marlow before she got a chance to extract a confession from him or discover irrefutable proof of his guilt, she’d never be able to prove that she hadn’t murdered Edmund . Marlow’s death would be cold comfort, for she would still hang. She’d still lose everything. Her life. Her future. Her family.

And Theo .

‘Where at the big house?’ she asked, her panic mounting. She had to find Eliza King before the radical succeeded in her goal. Henrietta had to stop her, convince her to let Marlow face a jury of his peers. ‘How will I find her? How will I know her?’

Jim King answered, his voice sad but steady. ‘You’ll know her by her eyes. As black as death they are – unless they ain’t. But you don’t know what I’m talking about, nor will you learn from me, ’cause there was a time when she was different and until I can forget that, I won’t betray her.’ He paused, then inclined his head in a slight bow. ‘Your Grace.’

Henrietta inhaled sharply, but she didn’t deny her identity.

The significance of the exchange was not lost on the other men. ‘ She’s the cuckolding duchess?’ Sam’s face was more purple than his handkerchief. He lunged for Henrietta, but Jim stayed Sam with a firm arm across his chest.

‘Calm yourself, Sam. Mayhap she is what the papers said, never a loyal wife, but I’ve learnt enough in life to know an outsider should never judge a marriage.’

‘Not much left to speculation, the way she carries on with London boy,’ Sam said.

Henrietta’s first impulse was to defend herself and Theo, but she’d barely opened her lips before she realised her feelings were pure and loving and good, and she oughtn’t have to defend them. So she clenched her jaw and seriously considered planting Sam a facer instead.

As if he understood, Jim nodded. ‘The truth is a complicated thing, Sam. A complicated thing indeed. Rarely black and white. Rarely so simple as that.’

‘That is perhaps the greatest truth of all,’ Theo said, and Henrietta fell for him all over again.

Then it occurred to her that those were the first words he’d spoken during her questioning of Sam and Jim. Like with James, and with Miss du Pont, and with Perceval, Theo had let her conduct the interrogation, never once attempting to assume control, or tell her he’d manage for her. She met his gaze and hoped hers spoke volumes, because though she couldn’t utter her feelings before this hostile crowd, she loved him.

Oh, how she loved him.

Jim was watching. ‘Your Grace, let me warn you and your friend against venturing to Enberry Abbey.’

‘I have to,’ Henrietta replied, and her anxiety left her. She was strong now. Strong in love, strong in purpose, strong in body, strong in determination. ‘Now more than ever, I must. I cannot let her kill Marlow.’

Jim shook his head. ‘You’re not the fight she plans to fight, but she won’t let you stand in her way either. One more dead aristocrat is nothing to her. Nothing at all. She don’t feel remorse. Not any more. Not the black-eyed beauty. She don’t have a kind heart any more.’

An ice-cold chill ran down Henrietta’s back.

Because she suddenly knew exactly who Eliza King was.