Page 83 of The Last Chance
“Take your time. We’ve seven hours to spare.”
Joanna closed her eyes and willed herself to think, but all she saw was a spectacular vision of Aaron, naked and rising above her on the bed. Mr Daventry mentioned looking through closedeyes at a forty-five-degree angle. That it left one relaxed and in a meditative state.
He was not wrong.
A warm tingling chased up her arms the second she raised her gaze. Strength seeped from her muscles as each one relaxed. She let her mind drift to the night of the murder, ignoring the wind and the whooshing sound of the sea.
Thirty people had crammed into her drawing room. More lingered in the hall, the library and the refreshment room. A few ladies hugged the wall. Miss Pardue found a seat in the corner and remained there all night.
The hum of laughter and lively chatter filled her head.
Familiar faces appeared in her mind’s eye. Miss Moorland conversing with a gentleman, though her gaze sought every distraction. Miss Beckett proudly showing off her bruised knuckles as people laughed about Mr Parker’s broken nose. The smiles on her ladies’ faces were as broad and bright as moonbeams.
“Where did it all go wrong?” she whispered.
She tried to relax and focus on searching for clues—an odd look or conversation, something ordinary yet out of place.
“I saw a group of men smoking in the street,” Sigmund said, his soft voice belying his hulking physique. “Mr Chance sent me outside to look. He’d have moved them on if he thought they were trouble.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t have his nose pressed to the window,” she said, smiling while keeping her eyes shut and holding on to the memories.
That’s when she recalled looking out the drawing room window and chuckling because Miss Stowe’s hired carriage blocked Aaron’s view. Miss Stowe had alighted outside the tobacconist, yet Lucia asked the driver to park nearer the club.
“Madame Rossellini suffers with nerves. She hid in thecarriage for fear of casting up her accounts. She asked the driver to park directly outside my premises in case she felt ill again.”
Was the move a way of preventing Aaron from identifying the murderer? Was Lucia agitated, or did she have another reason to return to the carriage?
Lucia can’t be involved.
The words entered her head yet left her examining the maid’s behaviour that night. Innocent actions could easily be cunning steps in a strategic plan.
“Miss Stowe beckoned me to the hall.” It was fifteen minutes before Lucia’s recital. “Madame Rossellini wasn’t sure she could perform and had requested five minutes alone upstairs to gather her composure.”
What if Lucia was Venus?
What if she stole the dagger from Mrs Flavell and hid it in the bedchamber? Lucia wasn’t the murderer because she was singing an aria to disguise the sounds of a scuffle. She was an accomplice. But who was she working for, and why would she help someone commit a heinous crime?
Had Lord Howard hurt the maid?
No. This was about hurting Aaron Chance.
This was a different sort of revenge.
“The villain has to be Lord Berridge,” she uttered.
“Aye, but Berridge would get someone else to do his dirty work.”
Perhaps someone Lucia spoke to that night.
The list was endless. Men surrounded her after her first performance, eager to be the first to bed the young singer, none keen to hear an encore. The women were in awe of her talent, though few dared to approach her. Only Miss Stowe and Miss Moorland knew Madame Rossellini was a maid.
Joanna watched as images moved into her field of vision. Someone spoke to Lucia in the hallway. A woman touched herarm and congratulated Lucia on her performance. They smiled at each other, but then Lucia glanced at the stairs.
“Madame Rossellini spoke to a woman. It looked like a friendly exchange, though I got the impression she found the attention overwhelming. Perhaps she wasn’t overwhelmed but afraid. Perhaps she passed the woman a covert message.”
“A message about what?” Sigmund said, curiously.
“To say she had hidden the dagger upstairs.”
