A Murder in Time(28)

Mrs. Danbury opened her mouth, but before she could issue a denial, the other man said mildly, “I’m certain Mrs. Danbury knows this, Alec. While there may be quite a crush for Caro’s house party, I have full confidence in Mrs. Danbury and Mr. Harding’s control of the staff.”

Put like that, Mrs. Danbury could only bow her head. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Miss Donovan is feeling ill,” he continued. “As the ladies have retired for the evening, Miss Donovan’s services are no longer required. Perhaps you could escort her to her room?”

“Of course, Your Grace.” The woman’s skirts barely made a sound as she moved to the door. She glanced back at Kendra. “Miss Donovan?”

Kendra hesitated. She knew what was expected of her, knew she was being asked—no, ordered—to go with Mrs. Danbury. Anxious knots twisted her stomach as she weighed her options. She had none. She had no choice but to leave the room.

“I wish you good evening, Miss Donovan.” The twinkle in the older man’s s blue eyes was impossible to decipher.

“Good evening, Duke,” she finally managed, and was already walking out the door so she didn’t see the expressions that ranged from surprise to outrage flash in the eyes of the room’s occupants. When she stepped out into the hall, she felt only a numb acceptance of the wall candles there.

“Miss Donovan, you will never address His Grace as Duke again,” Mrs. Danbury said as soon as they were out of earshot of the study. “He is Your Grace, or the Duke of Aldridge, or sir. And you will curtsy when you leave a room with one of your betters. Is that understood?”

Betters? Kendra swallowed hard, but nodded. She ignored the look, bright with suspicion, that Mrs. Danbury slid in her direction. She needed to keep her mouth shut. Duke—the Duke—had given her a reprieve. No one was going to toss her out. Not yet, anyway.

She still had time to figure this crazy situation out.

Time . . .

Kendra shivered. That was the one question she’d deliberately not asked during the bizarre episode: time. The date, the month, the year. Because she was very afraid of the answer.



“She’s a forward bit of baggage,” Alec commented as he settled into a chair, sipping the claret with a frown.

The Duke—Albert Rutherford, the seventh Duke of Aldridge, and Alec’s uncle—picked up the clay pipe he’d been packing with tobacco before the girl had begun banging on the hidden door. With a thoughtful expression, he lit a taper from the fire, carrying it to the pipe bowl. As he puffed, his eyes lifted to the oil painting above the fireplace, depicting a woman and child.

It had been twenty years, but the grief was still there. Sometimes it was as raw and fresh as the day it had first been inflicted. Other times, like now, it was a weary sort of pain, the sharpness dulled into a nostalgic ache.

Alec followed his uncle’s line of vision to the painting of Aldridge’s long-dead wife and child. Arabella had been a vision, both in life and captured in oil. Even though he’d been but a lad of twelve at the time of her death, Alec remembered her beauty, the black hair and brown eyes, her gregarious warmth.

The times he’d visited, his aunt and uncle’s relationship had always struck him as idyllic. But that could’ve been because his own life had been so far from idyllic. Since he preferred not to dwell on that, he shifted his eyes to the child, a pretty little thing who resembled her mother in coloring and, if the artist’s rendition was accurate, would one day rival her in beauty.

Only five when the painting had been commissioned, she’d be dead less than a year later, her body swept out to sea in the same sailing accident that had brought the mother’s broken body in with the tide.

He glanced at the Duke, saw him looking at the child, too, and something inside him tightened. “She’s not Charlotte, sir.”

“She would be around Miss Donovan’s age. And they have the same coloring.”

“Charlotte’s dead,” Alec said more harshly than he intended. “She died twenty years ago.”

The blue eyes came around, the sadness unmistakable. “I could remind you that her body was never found . . .” He lifted a hand when Alec opened his mouth to protest. “I’m not a lackwit, Alec. I know Miss Donovan is not my Charlotte, but she interests me nevertheless.”

Alec’s mouth tightened. “She’s a liar and most likely a thief.”

Aldridge frowned. He’d seen a multitude of emotions play out across the woman’s face. Disbelief, anger, fear. But more than anything, it was the lost look in those big dark eyes that tugged at something inside him.

“She lied, yes. But I don’t think she’s a liar or a thief,” he responded slowly, and glanced at the Ming. “She’s right, you know. That particular vase was produced during the Jiajing Empire.”

“I didn’t say she was not clever, even if her mathematical skills are poor,” Alec countered, his expression grim.

“Hmm.”

“You should have let her leave. She wanted to leave.”

“No.” He recalled the flash of helpless terror he’d seen in her eyes before she’d controlled it. “She did not want to leave, Alec. She has nowhere to go.”

Alec sighed, and set down his empty wineglass. He rose to his feet. His uncle had made his decision, God help them. “I see. Well, ‘tis late, and I must go to bed.”