Free Cinderella Six Feet Under by Maia Chance

Scottish peerage. Heaven only knew how long ago
that
had been, for now he resembled nothing so much as a suit of clothes abandoned on the cushions.
    â€œRohesia, they pain me again. My veins, they pain me. Oh, why does this blackguard block the warmth?”
    â€œDrink?” Lady Cruthlach crowed to Gabriel. “And please,
do
sit.”
    Gabriel sat. Sweat beaded beneath his arms and at the small of his back. “A drink would be splendid.”
    Hume poured out tiny glasses of something at a sideboard. His bulky back concealed his operations.
    Three drinks were brought forth on a tray.
    Normally, Gabriel wouldn’t dream of accepting a drink from the Crawleys. He had heard whispers of foes found, necks snapped, at the base of Castle Margeldie’s battlements. Of a snooping Cambridge scholar sunk forever out of sight in a bog on their Highland estate. Of a nosy marchioness taken fatally ill after ingesting a slice of chocolate cake at their winter solstice dinner party in 1861.
    Gabriel sipped. Putrid, medicinal sweetness, and it scalded all the way down. The four of them seemed to silently count together ten ticks of the mantelpiece clock. Gabriel did not topple to the carpet in convulsions.
    Good, then.

7

    O phelia devoured two apples, a wedge of cheese, nearly half a loaf of bread, drank three glasses of water, and felt her spirits perk up. She left Prue in the kitchen—Prue would not be pried away from her scrubbing—and went upstairs to her chamber. She took the back staircase she’d discovered. Better not to let the entire household in on her comings and goings.
    She set to work on a note to Inspector Foucher, using paper, envelope, fountain pen, and ink she kept in her carpetbag. The paper was crumply and the ink flaked. She described with as much detail as possible what she had learned about Sybille Pinet at the opera house and the boardinghouse.
    A scream rang out. Then another, and another.
    Ophelia dropped her pen. She followed the screams down to the stepsisters’ salon. She burst through the doors.
    The screams stopped. Several pairs of eyes stared at Ophelia.
    â€œIs everything quite all right?” Ophelia asked.
    â€œMadame Brand,” Eglantine said. “Is it not the fashion to
knock
in Boston?” Eglantine stood upon a dressmaker’s stool. She was flushed, and she clutched a ripped piece of paper to her chest. Her pink moiré silk skirts half concealed two seamstresses who knelt at the hem, stitching.
    â€œI beg your pardon, but I grew alarmed at the sound of screams.”
    â€œThat was Austorga,” Eglantine said.
    Austorga sat on a sofa. Her sturdy shoulders rose and fell. Like her sister, she clutched a ripped piece of paper. In her other hand she held a large, square envelope.
    â€œWas the screaming not Austorga, Mademoiselle Smythe?” Eglantine asked.
    Miss Seraphina Smythe was the frail girl in owlish spectacles who had been playing the piano when Sybille’s body had been discovered. She sat beside Austorga on the sofa and she had just bitten into a chocolate bonbon. At Eglantine’s question, her jaws froze. She nodded.
    â€œScreaming?” Mrs. Smythe, Seraphina’s mother, said in a vague voice, from the opposite sofa. She looked up from the pages of a book. “
I
did not hear anything.” Mrs. Smythe had also been in attendance at the stepsisters’ soirée on the evening of the murder. She was a stout lady with bleary blue eyes, attired in a smart visiting gown.
    â€œYou never
do
hear anything, Mother,” Seraphina said.
    Mrs. Smythe did not seem to have heard. She resumed reading.
    Mr. Smythe, Ophelia had been told, was some sort of diplomatic attaché from England. Seraphina and her mother, who had met Eglantine and Austorga at a public concert, spent a great deal of their time in the company of the stepsisters. Mrs. Smythe served as chaperone, and the stepsisters always spoke English in the presence