Page 122 of The Lyon Whisperer
Dodd sniffled. “Her name was Molly. The most beautiful woman who ever lived. From the moment she came into my life, everything changed. It was like God made her just for me. She knew what I needed before I did. She was my angel.”
“Was?” Amelia prodded softly. “Is she…”
“Dead,” he answered, dully. “Drowned.”
“I was told nothing of a recent drowning,” Chase said.
“I never reported it.” Dodd hefted a weary sigh, his emotions seemingly back under control. “Happened the night of the last fire. I found her shoes and this.” He reached under his shirt to withdraw an ampule hanging on a leather cord tied around his neck.
He uncorked the tiny bottle and held it to his nose.
An earthy, musky scent permeated the air. Chase had to admit, while he didn’t precisely care for the aroma, it was an improvement over Dodd’s mélange of body odors.
“She left everything, neat-like, beside the river where we said we’d meet, after…” He clamped his mouth shut and concentrated on corking the miniature bottle.
“After you started the fires?” Amelia put in gently. She’d edged closer, and Chase had to resist the instinct to drag her back.
Dodd nodded and gazed at her with pleading eyes. “Her shoes were laid out, one beside the other like she’d just stepped out of them, her perfume inside one o’ them, and her cloak…” He drew a shuddering breath. “I spotted it on a rock in the middle of the river where the water rushes past.”
“How dreadful, sir,” Amelia said.
A fat tear rolled down his cheek. “She loved me, see? Said as how his lordship deserved a bit of payback for what he did to me, letting me go like that.” He shot Chase a glare. “She hated the fancy much as I did on account of when she worked for one, the master o’ the house wasn’t content to lie with his wife, and forced himself on my angel, then cast her out with no references and not even her last week’s wages.”
Amelia shook her head in apparent commiseration.
Chase eyed the rafters. Neither Amelia nor Dodd paid him any mind.
“We were s’posed to run away after the last time, to make a fresh start, only”—he scrubbed a meaty hand over his mouth—“she must’ve gotten into the river to wash, or got driven in by the smoke. I looked and looked, God knows I did, but the river took her.”
He squeezed the ampule in his fist and kissed it.
They took their leave soon after Dodd concluded his story.
“Well, madam? You find me an ogre for having let the man go after catching him stealing, red-handed?” Chase asked as the carriage picked up speed on the main highway.
His gentle wife gave him a chiding smile. “Of course not. You did the right thing. I cannot help feeling sorry for the man, however. He fell in love and got his heart broken, and now will likely land in prison.”
“I will remind the magistrate no one got killed—save Dodd’s accomplice, although, it’s awfully convenient she disappeared without a trace.”
“Mm. Yes, there is that. Mayhap whoever she was realized the jig was up and did not want to face arrest.”
“Maybe,” Chase agreed. “In any case, the mystery of who started the fires is solved, and it would appear no more arsons are likely to occur.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The following Friday,at approximately five-thirty in the evening, Amelia made her way to the grand staircase, stomach aflutter.
She knew she looked her best. She had taken pains to do so, just as she had taken pains to assure the food, the staff, the table, in short,everythingwas ready for tonight.
Still, her palms sweated in her gloves and her mouth felt dry.
Her first dinner party as Chase’s wife.
Her first dinner party, period.
One of her mother’s journal entries detailed the first dinner party she had planned as the Countess of Fallsgate. The food, the guests, the decorations, the conversation starters. She had been nervous, too. Amelia took comfort from that, and from the knowledge that her mother had pulled it off without a hitch.
She was her mother’s daughter. She could do this.
