Free Late for the Wedding by Amanda Quick Page A

mollified. “Mrs. Lake is obviously quite overwrought. I’m sure she will feel much more herself when she is back in her own home.”
    Tobias sensed Lavinia preparing a scathing response to that observation. Fortunately, he had got her as far as the door. He managed to haul her through it and out into the corridor before she could add any more fuel to the flames.
    He could feel her vibrating with outrage on his arm. The air around her almost sizzled.
    “Correct me if I am mistaken,” she said, “but I believe that Beaumont just tossed us out of the castle.”
    “Your observation concurs with my own. So much for our jolly little outing in the country. Perhaps you and I were not made for such fashionable entertainments, madam.”

Chapter 7
    They started up the main staircase in silence.
    “I suppose you feel that it is my fault that we have been asked to leave,” Lavinia said on the first landing.
    “Yes, but you need not concern yourself overmuch with the matter. As it happens, I had already concluded that it would be best to return to London.”
    She glanced at him, astonished. “But what of our investigation here at the scene of the crime?”
    “I believe we have already learned as much as we can here. The killer has completed his work. I doubt he will hang around for long. I would not be surprised if he has already left the neighborhood.”
    “Mmm. I take your point. He planned for Fullerton’s death to take place here because he knew that you would be in the immediate vicinity, did he not? He wanted to make certain that you were aware of his handiwork.”
    “I suspect that is the case,” Tobias said.
    They emerged on Lavinia’s floor and found a small gathering in the narrow hall. Two women of indeterminate years, garbed in chintz wrappers and voluminous nightcaps, stood talking animatedly to a man who appeared to be in his early twenties. It was obvious that Fullerton’s death was the topic of conversation.
    “Some of my neighbors on this floor,” Lavinia explained in low tones as they walked toward the group. “Lady Oakes’s hairdresser, Mr. Pierce, and two ladies who are here as companions to two of Beaumont’s guests.”
    All three heads turned toward Lavinia and Tobias. Avid curiosity glittered in each pair of eyes, but there was something particularly penetrating about the gazes of the two women, Tobias noticed. They were staring at him with an oddly riveted, albeit slightly dazed expression.
    Even if he had not been warned by Lavinia, he would have had no difficulty determining the role of these two, he thought. Both possessed the resigned, self-effacing, slightly faded quality one associated with impoverished ladies who have been obliged to undertake careers as professional companions.
    Tobias suspected that the women had gone to bed early this evening. Their posts had likely excluded them from the evening’s festivities. Companions generally found themselves in the same peculiar, uncomfortable, in-between world as governesses. They were not servants, but neither were they the social equals of those they served. The combination of gentle breeding and poverty had doomed them to a profession in which they were expected to keep silent and remain discreetly in the background.
    It occurred to him that this late-night gossip about violent death was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to this pair in some time.
    He had met only two companions in his entire life who did not fit the usual mold of the species, he reflected: Lavinia and her niece, Emeline. They had not remained in the profession for long, and with good reason. Neither of them possessed a temperament that was suited to such a career.
    “Mrs. Lake!” the hairdresser exclaimed. “We were just speaking of you. We feared that perhaps you had been overcome by the ghastly sight down below in the garden. Are you all right? Do you need a vinaigrette?”
    “I am fine, thank you, Mr. Pierce.” Lavinia gave him a reassuring