As Death Draws Near Read online

  I didn’t argue. It was clear he was only trying to bolster me, and telling a frazzled person, barely keeping their sickness at bay, that they had six to ten more hours before they might find relief seemed rather cruel. Instead I inhaled a deep breath of the brisk sea air and tried to distract myself by categorizing the shades of pigment I would need to depict the scene before me.

  Anderley appeared for a short time, passing Gage one of the cold roast beef sandwiches the staff at Brandelhow had prepared and packed for us, a wedge of sharp cheese, and a cup of cider. I felt I should excuse him to go below to eat his midday repast out of the wind, but I was not yet feeling well enough to stand there on my own. Besides, I knew the words would be wasted. Gage would refuse to leave me to shift for myself in such a situation.

  I was glad of his continued presence when Marsdale suddenly decided to join us at the rail. I had expected him to huddle below in one of the cabins, snoring blissfully as we crossed the Irish Sea. A swift glance at his face told me he wasn’t ill. At least, no more ill than normal. His complexion was always somewhat sallow and strained from the life of overindulgence he led.

  Then he opened his mouth and surprised me again. “Gage, go on below with that. I’ll keep Lady Darby company while you eat.”

  Gage seemed just as startled as I was by his courteous offer. And just as mistrusting. “Thank you, but I’m quite content to eat here.”

  Marsdale studied him, as he juggled his sandwich and wedge of cheese in one hand, and drink in the other. He shrugged. “Do as you please.”

  We stood quietly, each of us examining the willful sea as its waves tussled with one another and slapped against the boat, and the gray horizon sat veiled and smoky like a men’s parlor, but I knew the silent contemplation could not last long. Not with Marsdale present.

  “So why are you headed to Ireland?” he asked as casually as I supposed was possible when springing such a question out of nowhere. Then he added with mocking horror, “Don’t tell me that’s where you intend to honeymoon.”

  I frowned.

  “No,” Gage replied. “We’ve been asked to conduct an inquiry there.”

  I suppose he thought this would squash the marquess’s interest, as it did not touch on our personal lives, but if so, he had forgotten the man’s irreverence when it came to matters of murder and death. I flicked a glance upward to find his eyes were already glittering with curiosity.

  “I should have suspected as much. Another murder? Who got crashed?”

  Risking my stomach’s contents, I turned fully to glare up at him. Before I could speak, Gage touched my shoulder. I bit my tongue, and turned back to the horizon.

  “This isn’t a lark, Marsdale,” he chided more calmly than I could have managed. “A woman has been killed, her life brutally blotted out while her murderer roams free. It’s a travesty to justice.”

  Marsdale straightened his shoulders, seeming to sober himself. “Quite right. My apologies.”

  Gage eyed him a moment longer, as if to be certain of his earnestness, and then turned away to take another bite of his sandwich.

  “Who was she?” Marsdale queried. “I mean, I suppose she must have been someone important, or meant something to someone important; otherwise you wouldn’t be undertaking such a journey.”

  The comment stung somehow, as if we only took the time to investigate the crimes of the wealthy and influential. But in a way, he was right. Lord Gage would never have asked us to conduct an inquiry into the death of some nun at a convent in Ireland if she had not been related to the Duke of Wellington. I knew Gage’s inquiries in the past had largely been done on behalf of members of high society, because they wished for discretion, and they expected their crimes and inconveniences to be solved. The lower classes simply trudged along, knowing it was doubtful anyone would care what misfortunes befell them. The authorities were as likely to cause trouble for them as to help.

  That realization was discomforting and somewhat discouraging, and it distracted me from being mindful of whom I was speaking to. “A Miss Harriet Lennox. She’s a nun at the abbey in Rathfarnham, where we’re headed.”

  Marsdale made a sound at the back of his throat as if he was choking. I swung my head around, trying to understand the bright look in his eyes.

  “A nun?” he managed to gasp.

  I narrowed my eyes. Was he struggling not to laugh? “That girl’s death is not a trick for your amusement. How would you feel if she was your relative? Your sister, or mother, or cousin?” He started to cough and I loomed closer, lowering my voice in threat. “How do you think Wellington would react should we tell him how hilarious you found his cousin’s murder?”

  In the face of this threat, Marsdale seemed to regain control of himself, latching on to my last statement. “She was Wellington’s cousin?”

  I paused, worried I’d said too much. “Yes.”

  “Oh, well. My apologies.” His manner was stilted, almost uncertain, though perhaps it only appeared that way because he was suddenly quite serious and I had never seen him so. “My brother served with Wellington. Thought highly of the man. It’s simply not crack for one of his relatives to be murdered, even if she was a papist.”

  My stomach roiled and I turned to scowl at the sea in annoyance. I realized how little the majority of the members of British society thought of Catholics, but that did not make it any easier to hear how little they cared for their lives. However, something else he had said also caught my attention.

  “Your brother served with Wellington?”

  I didn’t understand how that could be. The Battle of Waterloo had been fought sixteen years ago, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Even accounting for the lines a life of dissipation had wrought on his face, I knew Marsdale to be younger than Gage, and Gage had been seventeen when the wars ended. If Marsdale was his father’s heir, then any brothers he had would be younger than him.

  Marsdale leaned against the rail, raising his face to the breeze so that it almost lifted his hat from his head. “Yes. My father’s first son. You didn’t know I was the spare, did you?” he remarked with a wry twist to his lips. “My brother was a decade older than me. And when his mother died of some strange illness, our father worried her son might carry the same weakness. So he wed my mother and got me on her as swiftly as possible.” The careless way in which he spoke only made his blunt, sharp words more disquieting. “It’s why Lewis joined the Army. Our sire thought it would toughen him, root out the weakness. But he died at Waterloo. Shot and crushed by his horse.”

  I was too stunned to stammer more than a weak apology. “I . . . I’m sorry, Marsdale. That must have been awful for you.”

  “No more than death is for most people,” he replied briskly, but I could see the way his hands were gripping the wooden railing, as if to tear it in two. “How did the nun die?”

  I recognized avoidance when I saw it, and knew the matter was closed, for now. But I had trouble discarding the pain I’d heard in his voice as rapidly as he seemed determined to do.

  Fortunately, Gage was not so affected. “We don’t know,” he replied in frustration. “Lord Gage didn’t see fit to tell us.”

  “He didn’t see fit to tell us much of anything,” I added, flicking a glance at my husband. “What sort of situation do you suppose we’ll be walking into?”

  He chewed and swallowed the final bite of his sandwich before answering. “I honestly can’t say. From what I gather, Ireland isn’t like England, or even Scotland. The divide between classes is wide in Britain, but it’s even wider in Ireland. And there is a great deal of unrest and unresolved animosity between Protestants and Catholics.”

  “But I thought the latest Catholic Relief Act was supposed to alleviate some of that?”

  Gage’s eyebrows arched tellingly. “In some ways it only made it worse.”

  Passed only two short years earlier after a long, contentious
fight, the Catholic Relief Act had granted near political equality to Roman Catholics, allowing them to become members of Parliament and hold a limited number of government offices. It was the final act in a series of legislative reforms which began fifty years before with the repealing of some of the harshest penal laws affecting Catholics and ended in 1829 with emancipation. However, not everyone had been happy with this outcome. I clearly recalled my first husband Sir Anthony’s outrage that the Duke of Wellington, who was prime minister at the time, and his government were supporting the bill. He, like many in Britain, believed it was an affront to the British way of life, a threat to the Crown and the English Constitution.

  I had been conflicted about the issue. But when Sir Anthony had died of an apoplexy just a few short days before the relief act was passed and then the scandal over my involvement with his human dissections had broken, any thoughts of Catholics and their emancipation were forgotten. I had more pressing matters to contend with, including being brought up on charges of unnatural tendencies and desecrating the dead, all of which were summarily dismissed.

  “What does that mean for us?” I asked, trying to decipher the reticence I saw in his gaze whenever I snatched a glance at him.

  “It means we’ll have to tread carefully. As outsiders, everyone will be suspicious of us. The Catholics simply because we’re Anglican. The Anglicans and Protestants because I don’t intend to toe the mark when it comes to any biased behavior.” He sighed heavily. “It will be a fine balancing act getting any of them to trust us.”

  “I thought you’d never been to Ireland.”

  “I haven’t. But I began a correspondence with Lord Anglesey a number of years ago.” He turned to meet my gaze. “When I was in Greece.”

  Knowing what I did about his time spent fighting in the Greek’s War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, I understood the sudden solemnity behind his eyes. He had only recently shared with me some of the horrors he’d witnessed, both private and public, but it had been enough to give me nightmares.

  “I went to school with Anglesey’s son, so we were already acquainted, and he wanted to be kept apprised of the situation in Greece,” he explained. “In particular, there were a number of Irishmen who joined the fighting, sympathizing with the Greeks’ cause—slaving under the yolk of their Turkish oppressors.” He arched his eyebrows. “Much as Ireland is under the thumb of Britain.”

  “I see,” I replied, not seeing at all. I kept my eyes trained on the horizon, lest Gage see my doubt. “So you played informant.”

  “When it suited me. Other times I conveniently forgot what some of my fellow British subjects were involved in.”

  I smiled at his droll admission. This sounded more like the man I married.

  “And so you continued your correspondence, even after Lord Anglesey became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland?” I guessed.

  “It has proven useful. And the man is a diverting letter writer.” His mouth twisted in suppressed amusement. “Though he does have a tendency to revise his own history.”

  Marsdale pivoted to face him. “That bit about when his leg was hit with a canonball at Waterloo and he was standing close to Wellington? ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!’”

  “‘By God, sir, so you have!’” Gage replied, continuing the script. His eyebrows arched skeptically. “I imagine there was a great deal more screaming involved.”

  “He certainly sounds like a character,” I said, being unfamiliar with the man.

  Of course, I knew who he was. He was a war hero, after all, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Gage, who had served as a captain in the Royal Navy. But I did not often converse in such lofty circles, even with an earl for a brother-in-law. I had never wished to. Though I had known Gage was well connected, through his father if nothing else, he had rarely spoken of his high-placed friends. Perhaps because he didn’t consider them friends, but acquaintances. Either way, I was beginning to feel quite out of my depth.

  “He most certainly is. And enamored of the ladies.”

  “Much like myself, he’s left rather a long string of broken hearts,” Marsdale interjected.

  I scowled at his conceit.

  “Including his first wife,” Gage pointed out dampeningly.

  Marsdale grimaced. “Yes. There is that.” Apparently, even the marquess had standards, and that included not running off with your friend’s wife, forcing your own wife to sue you for divorce.

  The boat crested a large wave at an awkward angle, dropping us down harshly. I gripped the rail as the rocking propelled us back, feeling the dip in my stomach. The men seemed less affected. Needing only one arm to hold himself upright, Gage even pressed a hand to my back to steady me. I swallowed, hoping this wasn’t a sign of worse seas to come.

  “Do you think Lord Anglesey will be able to assist us?” I managed to ask.

  “Perhaps, should we need it. With any luck, the county constabulary will be able to inform us of all the particulars and provide support.”

  “Will they have investigated?”

  “One hopes. Though I gather they’re more often employed to keep the peace and execute warrants. I don’t know what sort of experience they have with this kind of inquiry, or how seriously they will have taken it. I suppose it depends on the man in charge.” He paused. “And whether they’re interested in capturing a nun’s killer.”

  “Well, someone informed the Duke of Wellington.”

  “Yes, but that might have been the mother superior.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I supposed if she were head of her religious institution, she must have some connections. After all, even clergy, even Catholics, were beholden to some politics and secular traditions.

  I frowned as my annoyance with Lord Gage grew. Could he not have taken ten more minutes to write down some of the details of the crime and the people involved rather than sending us into this inquiry blind? He hadn’t even told us how the girl died. After all, there were any number of ways she could have “got herself murdered.”

  Another wave threw us back from the rail, nearly making me lose my grip. Nausea or no, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I would be safer below. The wind, which before had been reviving, now seemed to stab icy fingers through the fabric of my carriage dress. I shivered and lowered my chin, grateful I’d left my straw crape bonnet in the cabin, for it surely would have been ripped from my head. As it was, Marsdale was having to wrestle with his own hat.

  Gage moved closer, trapping me between his arms where his hands clasped the railing. I didn’t know whether it was because he’d noticed my chill or he was worried I would be knocked off my feet, but I was glad of it. I breathed easier with his warm, solid presence at my back, even though my hair, which had been ripped loose from my coiffure by the gusts of wind, must have been whipping in his face.

  “We shall find out all soon enough,” Gage murmured into my ear. “For the moment, it is enough that we are on our way. And Lord willing, we shall make good time and reach Rathfarnham by nightfall tomorrow.”

  I stared out at the crashing waves, which seemed to surge upward even to the horizon. “Yes, Lord willing.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ultimately, the captain was proven right. The sea did calm as we passed to the south of the Isle of Man sometime in the hours just before nightfall. However, we first had to pass through a squall, which tossed the boat about like a piece of driftwood.

  Soon after our conversation had ended, I’d been forced to go belowdecks or risk being soaked to the skin and possibly flung overboard. Not surprisingly, because of this combination of unfortunate elements, I was soon quite ill. I spent the next few hours on the bottom bunk, moaning and begging for the world to stop moving. It was then that I missed my cat, Earl Grey, most.

  I had decided to leave the mischievous gray mouser in the care of my nieces and nephews at my sister’s town house in Edinburgh. It ha
d seemed unfair to drag him on such a long carriage ride to the Lake District in Cumberland and then on to London, when he could be happily ensconced in the nursery with the children, whom he adored with the indifferent fervency that only a cat can manage. Besides, I knew my niece Philipa would have been distraught to see him go, even more so than the others. She had begged to pay me and Gage a visit in our new town house every day after our wedding, but I knew it had not been me she was missing, but Earl Grey. So it seemed best to leave him behind.

  After learning we would be traveling by boat to Ireland, I had been all the more glad he’d not made the journey with us. Until now. I missed his warm, rounded weight on the bunk beside me, the rumble of his purr, the comfort of stroking his fur. Bree sent the men away and cared for me as best she could, but she simply wasn’t Earl Grey.

  It took several hours for my insides to stop churning even after the rough waves had ceased to do the same to the boat. I could not stomach dinner, but I did manage to sleep, tucked in close to Gage’s long body in our small bunk. Bree occupied the bunk above us while Anderley wrangled with the hammock in the opposite corner. Where Marsdale slept, I never knew, nor did I care.

  By morning, I felt blessedly more like myself, and even able to enjoy a meager breakfast. The skies overheard gleamed a crystalline blue with scarcely a cloud in sight as the green shores of Ireland came into view. My spirits lifted with each mile we traveled toward land, eager to escape the waves, not trusting the fair weather to last.

  We docked at the port of Howth, northeast of Dublin, around midmorning, pausing only long enough to transfer our trunks before we climbed into a hired coach and set off south along the Dublin Road. Marsdale somehow charmed his way into joining us, though Gage told him we would not be traveling into Dublin, but taking the Circular Mail-Coach Road around. He insisted his destination was along our route, and offered to pay half the cost of the carriage, so Gage relented.