A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) Deanna Raybourn (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📖

it. If she had made an effort to destroy it, she might have been discovered. Far better to put it back where it had been all along.” Malcolm took a deep breath, steeling himself it seemed, and went on. “She said she only meant to keep me there until everyone had gone and she had decided what to do with me. She wanted forgiveness, she told me. And she came too close,” he said, something feral lighting in his eyes. “I grabbed her by the skirts to drag her close to me and when she fell, I caught her by the throat. We fell together, and in our struggles, the panel closed again, locking us inside together.”

I looked to Stoker, who stepped forwards. “Rest your conscience,” he said gently. “Mrs. Trengrouse is not dead. She is unconscious and in her room, under guard.”

Malcolm gave a start, pushing himself up against his pillows. “What is to be done with her?” he demanded.

Tiberius spoke. “That is for the magistrates in Pencarron to decide. She will be taken there if and when she becomes fit to travel.”

“The scandal,” Malcolm said, his voice breaking. “It will come upon us anyway. In spite of all we have done to keep it at bay.”

Mertensia tried to soothe him, but Malcolm clutched at her, his knuckles white as he gripped her arms.

“It is ironic, is it not?” Malcolm demanded, the gleam in his eyes brightening feverishly. “She thought to murder me and I turned the tables on her. And then we were locked in there, together, for many hours. So many hours,” he added, beginning to laugh. “And now they will hang her. They’re going to hang her,” he repeated, still laughing. His voice rose higher and higher as he was seized by hysteria, and it was a very long time before I forgot the sound of that laughter.

•   •   •

Stoker ruthlessly injected Malcolm with a decoction he mixed from Mertensia’s supplies. He ordered one of the kitchen maids to sit with her master, and we trooped disconsolately down the stairs to the drawing room. There was so much to say but we took refuge in silence instead. Stoker poured out stiff drinks for everyone, insisting on our taking them as medicinal remedies for the shocks we had all suffered. I went with Mertensia to look in on Mrs. Trengrouse. Daisy scuttled out when we arrived. “She has just come to again,” she told us, darting avid looks over her shoulder to the woman in the bed. Huddled there, stripped of her jangling chatelaine and her air of authority, she looked like exactly what she was, an aging woman without hope.

She opened her eyes when we went to the bed. It was a narrow iron affair with a serviceable coverlet of green wool. A rag rug covered only part of the floor and a single small window was the only source of air or light beyond the shaded lamp on the night table. I wondered if it had ever struck the Romillys that this woman—who had given the better part of her life in their service—lived so modestly, so chastely. It was not a comfortable bower, I reflected. It was a nun’s cell, ascetic and plain and devoid of vanity or indulgence. And I was suddenly immensely, terribly sad for the woman who had spent her life within its indifferent walls.

Suddenly, Mrs. Trengrouse spoke, her voice broken and soft. “I should like to speak with Miss Speedwell alone, if I might, miss,” she said to Mertensia.

Mertensia gave her a long, level look. “Very well. Mind you take your medicine before too long,” she said with a nod towards a bottle on the night table.

Mrs. Trengrouse nodded. “I gave my word,” she assured her young mistress. With a long backwards glance, Mertensia took her leave and the room fell to silence.

“I saw it in your face,” Mrs. Trengrouse told me. “Pity. Don’t pity me, miss. I haven’t had as bad a life as some.”

“But you might have had a life of your own,” I protested.

She made a rusty sound that might have been a laugh. “A life of my own! That is an impossible dream for a woman in service. Your life belongs to them. And I never minded, you know. Not once. I came from the cottages over Pencarron way. Eight of us in the house and never enough food. I was skinny as a rake when I came to be a nurserymaid to the Romillys. Mr. Malcolm was still a babe, it were that long ago. I cared for him as if he were my own. And when he was eight, they sent him away to school. So many years passed before he came home proper, and when he came home, he weren’t a boy anymore.”

Her diction lapsed a little into the more rustic tones of her childhood. “I loved him, loved them all, but Mr. Malcolm was always my favorite. The burden of caring for Mr. Lucian and Miss Mertensia would have taxed another man, but not Mr. Malcolm. He sent them to school because he feared he wouldn’t be able to raise them proper, but as soon as Miss Mertensia ran away to come home, he said he would keep her here always, just as she wished, the kindliest brother you ever did see. I worked my fingers clean to the bone for him. Whatever he needed, I did it. I valeted for him. I cooked for him. I cut his hair and shined his boots. Until at last, I was above it all, housekeeper of this castle.”

Her eyes shone with pride as they lighted on her chatelaine, lying cold and pointless upon the night table. “The day I pinned that to my skirt was the greatest day of my life,” she said. “And I thought we would always be together, the master and I. Miss Mertensia would marry one day, I expected, and leave us. And then it would be just the two of