A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(84)

I must have looked a fright when Bree answered my summons an hour after dawn, for she offered me a sympathetic smile. “The bairn wouldna rest?”

I blinked back at her blearily and then yawned. “Not until about four o’clock. Couldn’t you hear her?” I shook my head as if to dislodge the sound of her cries.

Bree urged me to sit at the bench before the vanity, wrapping my fingers around a cup of coffee rather than my usual morning cup of chocolate. “I thought this might be more useful this mornin’.”

I simply nodded and lifted the dark brew to my lips, savoring its bitterness. While the coffee slowly took effect, Bree bustled about the room, laying out my clothes and readying the items I would need for my toilette. Once I’d washed my face in the basin she’d filled with warm water and returned to the bench, she began unbraiding my hair and pulling the brush through my long tangles.

While she worked, my thoughts filtered back through the events of the previous evening, recalling a particular altercation. “Bree, have you been able to learn anything about Miss Ferguson?”

She glanced up at me in the mirror. “No’ much, I’m afraid. Other than the fact the other maids are no’ so fond o’ her. They think she acts a might too high in the instep, bossin’ them aroond like she’s one o’ their betters.”

“Well, she is the governess.” And so entitled to give orders to the lower servants to a certain degree.

“Aye, but I take it she’s done nothin’ to foster kind feelings toward her, only resentment.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear this after witnessing the way she’d spoken to Charlotte. If she could treat a countess like that, how much more belittling and condescending would she be to a chamber maid?

“Where did she come from?”

“Somewhere o’er near Glasgow. That’s as much detail as I could glean given Mr. Mallery was the one to hire her.”

And so the housekeeper or butler would only know the details she’d provided them herself.

Perhaps I needed to have a chat with Rye then.

That being decided, I slid open the drawer in the vanity to remove my jewelry box. The house being filled with only family and close friends, I’d not taken the precaution of having it stored in the safe but simply locked it between uses. Bree handed me her copy of the key from her pocket so I wouldn’t have to retrieve my own, and I opened the box. When I didn’t find the object I was looking for on the top tray, I frowned. Lifting out the three levels of trays below it, I grew increasingly more agitated as my quarry remained elusive.

“Have you seen my amethyst pendant?” I asked Bree as I scrutinized each tray spread out across the vanity again. My more expensive pieces of jewelry were all there, including the sapphire necklace I’d worn the night before, but not my mother’s amulet.

“Nay, m’lady. Did ye put it in the box last night?”

“Yes, before I bathed.” I looked about me, searching the table and then the drawer the box had been set in. “Did you see it last night when you put my sapphire necklace away?”

“I . . . I’m no’ sure, m’lady,” she admitted. “I wasna lookin’ for it, and Miss Emma was wailin’ so. I was in a hurry to finish my tasks and get oot o’ the way.”

I scowled, leaning over to search the floor. “It must have fallen out. It has to be here somewhere.”

We both dropped to our knees, searching under the furniture before opening every drawer, but the pendant was nowhere to be found. I dropped back down on the bench, my stomach twisting in knots at the idea that my mother’s final gift to me was lost. Or stolen. Almost four months earlier, it had been ripped from my neck by an Edinburgh criminal, and I’d feared it was lost for good, but a friend had retrieved it for me. To think that it had been taken again left me feeling shaken and vulnerable.

“I’m sorry, m’lady,” Bree gasped, and I suddenly realized she was near tears.

I seized hold of her hand. “It’s not your fault,” I assured her. “I was distracted, too.”

“But I ken how much that pendant means to ye.”

“Yes, and I suspect someone else did, too,” I stated grimly.

She followed my gaze to the jewelry box, where I was trailing my fingers over the keyhole. “Ye think someone picked it?”

“I do. Look at these knicks.” I could feel the indentations from whatever tool they’d fumbled with or used to force the lock. I frowned deeper. “And now that I think about it, I’m not sure the box was even locked. The key turned too easily, and there was no click of the lock tumbling.”

“But who would do such a thing?”

“I don’t know.” My voice hardened. “But I’m going to find out.”



* * *




*

After Emma was sorted and I was dressed, I made my way to my aunt’s bedchamber. My neck felt bare without the familiar weight of the pendant my mother had given to me, and I found myself pressing my hand to my chest, as if convinced my senses were playing tricks on me. Aunt Cait was preparing for the day, but she welcomed me into her chamber, and we chatted about Emma’s catarrh and the evening before while waiting for her maid to finish her hair.

Her tasks completed, the maid slipped from the room, and my aunt reached for my hand. “Thank you for what you did last night,” she told me, her gaze earnest. “Morven told me it was your idea, and I’m glad of it.” Her mouth tightened at the corners, and she shook her head. “I never should have instructed the others to tame themselves and defer to Ledbury. But well, I wanted to make matters easier for dear Charlotte. Sadly, that’s not how it turned out.” She sank back for a moment, subdued by her own thoughts, and then straightened, flinging her hand in the air as if to physically brush them away. “But no more of that. We shall simply be ourselves, and Ledbury can go hang if he doesn’t like it.”