Page 15 of The Hazardous Measure of Love
‘Whatever for?’ Jerald seemed to have recovered from his shock a little.
‘Because your cousin was murdered there,’ Luc said.
‘Mur– Who?’
‘We do not know,’ I said, taking pity on him. He was pale and trembling now. ‘Luc, Mr Prescott has had an awful shock. Shouldn’t we find him a hackney carriage and send him home?’
‘No.’ Jerald Prescott sat down again. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment. It is just that I never imagined that she would do it. You know what she’s like…’
‘We have no idea who you are talking about,’ I said sharply. Surely he didn’t mean Arabella Jordan, the only woman in the case that I was aware of?
‘Martine. Madame Vaillant, his mistress.’
‘Shewashis mistress, but he parted from her two weeks ago,’ Adrien explained. ‘Cousin Henry disapproved of married men maintaining paramours and so he was making the break well in advance of the wedding.’ He grimaced. ‘She did not take her dismissal well.’
‘Did she come here making threats?’ Luc asked.
‘Not exactly,’ Adrien said. ‘It was here – they were having breakfast – that he told her. She attacked him with a fruit knife. Grainger, er, disarmed her before any damage was done.’
‘Then what happened?’ I was frankly agog. Honestly, the rich emotional lives some people did live…
‘She flounced off home and Cousin Henry sent me that afternoon to return the items she had left here. She threw a pot of face cream at my head and I took myself off rapidly.’ He managed a faint smile. ‘I stank of attar of roses for several days; I couldn’t get the stuff out of my hair.’
‘Did he pay her off?’ Luc asked.
‘Inadequately, according to her. There were a number of letters sent.’
‘Is she French?’ The name certainly was, but surely the country was at war with France?
‘Emigrée, so she said. But she might just have been a good actress from Bermondsey. All I know is that she is given to high drama.’ Adrien shuddered. ‘Frankly, I cannot imagine Madame Vaillant managing to arrive unnoticed and then carry out a murder without a great deal of screaming, flouncing and carrying-on.’
‘Why did you assume it was her?’ I asked Jerald.
‘I saw her last night. She was coming out of Little St James and she recognised me. I was treated to an earful of opinions on men in general and my cousin in particular.’
‘She has lodgings there,’ Adrien said. ‘Did she actually utter threats?’
‘Indeed she did! A vivid description of what she wished she had done with the fruit knife to various parts of Cousin Henry’s anatomy. Oh yes, and you are a smug little lackey, by the way, Coz. I made my escape rapidly, as you may imagine.’
The body had not been mutilated. Would a violently angry woman armed with a knife manage to stab a man so exactly and then not give in to the temptation to slash and cut? But a clever one might let her temper cool to ice and then take the opportunity to reinforce the impression that she was out of control when she met one of her victim’s relatives…
I came out of my thoughts to find Jerald bidding me farewell. ‘Wait! Before you go – why was this news to you? I thought your family is in Town for that reception.’
‘I’m not staying with them,’ he said abruptly and turned to the door.
‘We must go too,’ Luc said as the young man left. ‘We will see you at dinner, Adrien.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said vaguely. ‘Grainger will see you out. I must go and discover what my Uncle Horace’s plans are.’
‘The rejected mistress: another name for the suspects list,’ I remarked as we reached Luc’s front door. ‘She does sound almost too suspicious to be true.’
‘I believe we should discuss it in depth in my bedchamber,’ he said.
‘Not my bedchamber?’ I queried, trotting up the steps.
‘Mine has the larger bed.’ He had the key in his hand and was in and striding towards the staircase before the footman could get to the door. I slowed to a decorous stroll, trying not to look as though I was in a mad rush to get my lover into a room with a bed in it and a lock on the door and rip all his clothes off.
We were both laughing when I turned the key and I didn’t have to do any ripping because Luc was already throwing garments off as if they were on fire. ‘It is over two hundred years since I last made love to you,’ he said, kicking his breeches across the room and advancing on me in a highly satisfactory state of rampant anticipation.
