Page 42 of A Lady's Wicked Revenge
Diana’s response was quiet enough that it disappeared almost immediately, like a handful of ash scattering in the wind. “I’m … sure we will,” she answered, and he reeled at the heart-breaking echo of his own unconvincing words.
They breathed in a long, tenuous breath at the same time, and they watched the last of the summer’s daylilies at last curl and turn brown there in their private garden.
Chapter 19
A Most Distasteful Plot
Something was the matter; she was sure of it. Uncle James had always been difficult to take, especially with Diana trying her best to circumspectly thwart his plans for her at every opportunity … but of late he had been even more ill-tempered, his eyes red from lack of sleep, his wine glass more frequently refilled. His hair was greasy, as though he had been forgetting to bathe, and his sausage-like fingers had been drumming on the table as often as not.
Dinner that evening he had vowed that she would see herself engaged to Gerard Dunn within the next fortnight and had raged at her that he meant it this time before she could even raise her voice in protest. Colin, as had been his wont of late, had just adopted the same empty gaze as his mother Priscilla, and the two had dispassionately eaten their food even as Diana was reduced to tears before her guardian’s abuse.
So she was on her own, as she always had been since coming here. That meant returning to her place on the top landing of the stairs, a means of spying she had only inconsistently kept to in all her confusion with Colin over the previous weeks.
It was growing late in the evening, and Diana’s feet were beginning to hurt from standing sentinel for so long. From her position there at the top of the stairs, she could see the entire corridor through a crack in the stairway door and hear the inside of the study clearly. In two hours, no one had approached his study, nor had she heard a word from the man himself, nor any sound but the usual ceaseless scratching of a pen on paper.
What is it he even spends all day and night writing in there? This is useless,she thought, stretching her sore neck to one side. Her mind roved to the thought of Colin, who had told her he would visit her in her room later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed.That will be in only another hour or so.Diana smiled at the thought, remembering their previous encounter in that room, then grimaced. Did she even want him to come and see her, considering how clearly he had staked himself on the side of her wicked guardian?
Diana sniffed, her nose wrinkling at a distasteful yet strangely familiar smell that wafted into her hideaway in the stairwell.Where have I encountered this scent before?she asked herself, drawing in more of the smell and trying to ignore how it was beginning to turn her stomach.It’s like a woody sort of smoke, almost wet. And there is something sour about it as well …
A soft knocking sound drew Diana’s eye out the door into the second-storey corridor. Peering through the narrow crack in the door, she saw a short, wide man in a red shirt and shabby brown hat approach the door of Uncle James’ study. His hands were in his pockets, lips smacking absentmindedly, but there was something unmistakably menacing in the short man’s bearing even as he knocked and waited to be let in.
That’s the man I heard speaking with Uncle James that night a few weeks ago!she thought, her heart thumping in her breast with a potent mix of fear and excitement.I couldn’t hear the man’s voice, but Uncle James called him … Bertrand, didn’t he? Oh, what was it he said to him that so rang alarm bells for me?
Breathlessly, eyes still poised at the crack, she prayed that Bertrand would neglect to close the door behind him so she could hear their conversation more clearly. She could see the man look around the corridor as he waited for Uncle James’ answer, rocking back and forth on his heels and casting avaricious looks at the ornaments that hung from the walls. His dull, dark eye seemed to land right on Diana, and she felt herself stifle a cry of fear, sure she had been discovered.
Then the door was thrown open, and Bertrand disappeared through the doorway, fortunately leaving it slightly ajar behind him. Diana put her ear against the slightly open door between the corridor and the stairway, hoping she might pick up the men’s conversation. At first, she could hear nothing but the sound of her own frantic breathing, but her ears quickly picked up the aggravated speech that echoed out the study door.
“… care for me to speak to you, squire?” asked the short man in a hoarse voice with a thick dialect Diana did not recognize.
“I’d prefer you don’t address me at all, Bertrand.”
“Don’t have none of your good wine to share with a guest?”
“With you? Don’t make me laugh. What the hell do you want?”
Diana could hear Bertrand grunt as he sat heavily in one of the study’s chairs. “Y’see, squire, it’s not about my wants. I’m an amiable man, just like you. I don’t want for much in this life—”
“Quickly, please, Bertrand. I’ve better things to do than entertain crooks like you.”
“That may be so, squire; it may be. But you see, you may remember these certain mutual friends from a recent business venture. I’m afraid they’re good at what they do, but they’re terribly hard to please. Expensive tastes, you see.”
“Devil take you and your friends, man! If it’s money you’re after, I told you already that I still can’t get you any more. Not while that little brat is still unmarried, at least.”
Diana felt a prickle run along the back of her neck.He’s talking about me, isn’t he?
“Brat? Oh, the girl, the one belonging to the couple whose carriage my friends fixed for you this past spring? Catherine and William, was it? Your cousins or something? Bloody thing, that little accident, squire.”
“Yes, yes, blast it, but keep your damned voice down.”
“That’s it, squire, you’ve got it now! You see, we’re talking about the same thing. Most distasteful business, all that, but it’s precisely the matter my friends are so concerned about. And not only are they hard to please, but I’m afraid they’re terrible impatient as well.”
“Well, they shall have to find somewhere else to vent their impatience. I’ll be passing on the rest of their payment for the job they completed as soon as I can get my hands on the whole inheritance, and not a minute sooner.”
Then a loud, insistent sound droned louder and louder, drowning out any other words spoken in Uncle James’ study. Scarcely able to draw a breath, Diana turned away from the door, realising dimly that the sound was that of the blood rushing in her ears.
Did he … was what I just heard … a confession to murder?
Diana was so stricken by what she had heard that she scarcely had the awareness to hide herself when the evil imp named Bertrand made his exit from Uncle James’ study. Distantly, as though viewing herself from the bottom of a well, she somehow stumbled down the stairs, returned to her room, and lay on her bed to stare helplessly at the ceiling.
