After the Scandal by Elizabeth Essex Read Free Book Online

long. She’d no idea of anything at the time they came away. She’d only wanted some escape. “Do you mean to row all that way? On our own?”
    She realized the moment she said the words how ridiculous she must sound—like the petted, pampered, buffered daughter of privilege she had only just an hour ago lamented herself.
    But though His Grace of Fenmore looked at her steadily with those obsidian eyes of his he said nothing in condemnation, only, “An hour or two, no more. It will be safer. And easier than going back to Richmond on this tide.”
    As if it were just a decision about the tide and not about her life. She could hear in his voice that he meant well, but Richmond was where her family was. Richmond was where she needed to return. “But— Why?”
    “The average speed of the tidal flow in the Thames—”
    “No!” For the first time she cut His Grace off—obsidian gazes and aloof, haughty looks be damned. “Why Chelsea, of all places?” She’d never been there in her life. Never been anywhere without either her parents or brothers or abigail for accompaniment. Never been alone with a gentleman for more than a few moments when already she and His Grace had clearly been away for over an hour. The consequences—
    The consequences were too much to even contemplate. It was all too much—Lord Peter Rosing and the brick wall. His Grace and the dead body. The night had gone from horrible to horrific.
    “Lady Claire, you’ll be safe in Chelsea. There is a house there, where we can go, to examine the body properly. To see what we can determine about how she died.”
    “How she died?” The cold, creeping horror slid back under Claire’s skin. “But she drowned, didn’t she? We found her floating in the river.”
    He shook his head, calm and implacable. “The river is where we found her body. But it tells us nothing of how she died, nor how her body came to be in the water. We have as yet no evidence to support the supposition that she died by drowning. For all we know, she could have been dead before someone dumped her in the river. Indeed, from what little I can ascertain at the moment, her lungs don’t appear—”
    Evidence? Supposition? Dumped? Claire felt bombarded by shock after cold shock. She ached from the effort of holding herself together. “Do you mean ‘on purpose’?”
    His Grace did not try to soften the weight of the blow. “Yes. On purpose.”
    “My God.” This time the tight heat in her throat was both horror and outrage—anger at everything that seemed to be happening on this too-eventful evening. At everything that she could not control. The world had gone mad around her. “Who would do such a thing to a poor lady’s maid?”
    “I do not know. But I will find out.” He shook his head and rowed on, casting his gaze out over the dark gunmetal gleam of the river, as sure and implacable as death itself.
    “How?” It was impossible. There was no way to tell what might have happened to poor Carter. Not unless someone had seen something. And they could not tell that without going back, and calling the magistrate. What on earth did His Grace think he could do alone? And in Chelsea?
    His Grace was unperturbed by the prospect. Though his eyes were as dark as the night, they burned with conviction. “I have my ways.”
    She believed him. Even though she was not sure she wanted to. “How?” she asked again.
    “With science. And questions. For example, do you think she cast herself into the water? That she was a suicide?”
    Claire would have gasped again if she had any breath left to be surprised. But surprise seemed to be the order of the hour with His Grace of Fenmore. She was nearly reeling from the force of each of his increasingly blunt pronouncements. But this bluntness seemed to be his way.
    “No.” Claire tried to pull her thoughts together in some semblance of order. “She was, from what I could tell—I had her to help me only yesterday and today, from our arrival to