Free Seduction Becomes Her by Shirlee Busbee

makes the third in the past five or six months. This sort of violence in our area is unheard of…and troublesome.”

    Charles hadn’t learned of this latest body until he’d arrived at Lanyon Hall, Trevillyan’s country estate, the previous Wednesday. He’d been impatient to view the site for clues, but today had been the first opportunity for him to inspect the scene.

    “Isn’t that a cave up there?” he asked, his gaze having stopped at an irregular, yawning hole in the cliff face.

    “Yes, it is—one of many. The whole coastline is pockmarked with them,” Trevillyan replied. “Part of the allure for smugglers and the like.”

    “Has anybody examined the interior of the cave?”

    Trevillyan shook his head. “No. All I wanted was for the body to be gone and the incident forgotten.” When Charles simply looked at him, he muttered, “Squire Renwick and Houghton agreed with me. We didn’t want the populace to become hysterical and have pandemonium on our hands. Between us, and well, Furness, we determined that she wasn’t a local woman. The Squire, Houghton, and I concluded privately that she was some poor, unfortunate stranger from God knew where and that the sooner she was put underground, the sooner we could put this unpleasant event behind us. The Squire especially felt that the less said about the subject, the better. She was buried that night in the pauper’s field.”

    “And how,” Charles asked, having trouble imagining the viscount digging a grave, “did you accomplish that? Wanting as you did to keep it secret?”

    “I paid a pair of gravediggers handsomely to do it on the sly,” he said. “And the Squire warned them to keep their mouths shut.”

    “So let me see if I understand you,” Charles said. “You, the Squire, the magistrate, this Furness fellow who found her, and the two gravediggers who buried her are all privy to this, er, secret? Is that correct?”

    Trevillyan flushed and nodded.

    In a silky voice, Charles added, “And now I am added to the list. Are you sure you have not forgotten someone else, such as your valet or butler, perhaps a traveling peddler, who shares this ‘secret’? Besides the murderer, of course.”

    “There’s no need to take that tone with me,” Trevillyan muttered. “I could do nothing about Furness, and it was my duty to tell the proper authorities! As for the gravediggers, what did you expect us to do—bury her ourselves?”

    “I would have,” Charles said coolly. “And I wouldn’t have brought in the Squire and the magistrate, especially if I wanted as few people as possible to know about it.”

    Turning his back on the viscount, Charles scrambled up a sliver of a path that was half hidden by the rocks. It wasn’t an arduous climb, and Charles accomplished it easily. The track ended at the cave entrance, and gingerly Charles stepped inside. The cave had little to recommend it. It was dark, dank, and not very big, and within ten feet, ended in a solid rock wall. In the murky light, Charles made a brief examination of the place, but there was no sign that it had ever been used for anything other than perhaps, a handy place to hide some smuggled goods. He hadn’t expected any less and quickly rejoined Trevillyan on the beach.

    “She wasn’t killed there,” he said. “I suspect she was simply thrown off the top of the cliff, her killer, no doubt, hoping that the tide would take the body out in the Channel where it might never have been found…and if found, any damage could be blamed on the water.”

    Trevillyan looked at the ceaseless waves and shuddered. “A horrible fate.”

    “But from what you’ve told me about the condition of the body, none worse than what she suffered before she died.”

    Trevillyan couldn’t argue with that, and the two men began to walk swiftly toward the main path that they had taken down from the top of the cliff. The day was waning, and there were only a few hours of light left, and they had