Page 34 of Mistress of Sins

The memory of seeing Jennet Reed in William Gerard’s arms came back to Jeffrey, as if to shame him.

Perhaps she had chosen to stay the night with her former betrothed. A sinful decision, but he knew her attachment to William had never truly been broken. Love such as hers often led to reckless behavior. Yet Jennet had always been a devoted daughter who had attended to her fretful, excitable mother without complaint. He knew she took it upon herself to soothe Margaret each time she had one of her panicking turns. To purposely distress her mother by spending the night away from Reed Park seemed completely out of character.

She is here, and in some trouble. I know it. I can feel it.

The sound of horse hooves drew Jeffrey’s gaze to the side of the house, where three men leading horses appeared. The trio came to tether their mounts near the front entry, which made no sense to him. No gentleman rode at night, even with a full moon overhead. One of the men stepped back and staggered as if he had tripped over a stone, and the other two snickered at him.

“Brûle en l’enfer, salauds,” the one who had tripped shouted at them.

As a student at theological college Jeffrey had been required to study French. While he had never learned to speak the language with anything more than mediocre fluency, he understood enough to translate the curse.

Burn in hell, you bastards.

Being the vicar of Renwick for nearly twenty years gave him an intimate knowledge of his parish as well. None of the families or their servants spoke French as this man had. The few travelers who came through the area did speak to each other in their own language mixed with some Welsh, but it bore no resemblance to French.

These men did not belong here, not while England engaged in a war with France.

Climbing down from the driver’s perch, Jeffrey released the skidpan to keep the horses from wandering off with the carriage. He then watched from the gate as the three men entered the house. They swaggered, as if confident, and servants never came into a great house through the front entry.

Something was indeed very wrong here, and Jennet must have gotten caught up in it.

Jeffrey would never admit it to his wife, but he secretly disliked Dredthorne Hall as much as she did. A madman had shot his sister and her future husband in the front hall, leaving them to bleed to death. Some days later Jeffrey had been obliged to leave Lucetta in Deidre’s care to hold the funeral services for the assailant and his accomplices. The house had killed them, his wife had once claimed, because it could not have his sister and her beloved. Although as a vicar he could not hold with such superstition, a part of him knew Deidre was right.

Now the French had invaded Dredthorne, it seemed. But what would they want with Arthur Pickering and Jennet Reed?

Jeffrey began walking up the drive, and his dread seemed to swell with every step he took. He was a man of God, not the law. Dealing with the enemy would be better managed by soldiers. Renwick had a magistrate, but his estate bordered the river, and he would likely have retired by this hour. The nearest regiment had been recently moved to Brighton to prepare for their voyage to Spain, to relieve the exhausted English troops there fighting in the Peninsular War.

A passage from Joshua came to him, one he had often paraphrased for his parishioners during their worst moments: Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for He is with you wherever you go.

Jeffrey stopped short of the steps at the front of the house and regarded the horses the men had left there. None of them had come from the livery stable in the village; he had often visited the stable master and knew every horse available for hire there. These animals looked as if they hadn’t been groomed or properly looked after for some time.

The brightness of the moonlight allowed him to follow their tracks from the house to the staircase tower. There, where he expected to see them disappear into the stables, they instead led into the trees, as if the men had kept them in the woods behind the hall. If the three men were agents who had come to England for nefarious purposes, the forest would have provided them with concealment for as long as they needed it.

Arthur Pickering did not come to Renwick to hold a masquerade.

Jeffrey took a step toward the staircase tower, and then nearly slipped and fell. He righted himself, and saw something wet on the ground. It had run from the woodpile bin to collect in a small puddle. Too dark and thick to be water, he bent down and smelled a coppery odor coming from it.

Blood.

“Sovereign God, abide with me now.” Murmuring that entreaty gave Jeffrey renewed strength, and he approached the bin. Blood stained the ground before disappearing under it, and when he lifted the lid he saw why.

He did not recognize the murdered man, but the quality garments he wore suggested that he worked inside the house, probably as a valet or steward. He had died suddenly and violently, yet someone had put his body here, and closed his eyes. Those two acts implied cunning and sympathy, and a murderer would not feel both at once. He must not have been the first to find the corpse.

Furious indignation rose inside him, making it impossible to pray for the poor man’s soul. More than any other sin, murder offended and disgusted Jeffrey. Carefully he closed the lid, resting his hand upon it as he made a silent promise to return as soon as he could, to attend to him properly.

Now he had to find Jennet Reed, before whoever had killed this man did.

Chapter 20

Finding her way out of darkness seemed impossible, so Jennet went to another, happier place in her dreams.

In the beginning she had not been very happy about that particular evening. Time and again she had tried to talk her mother out of attending Lady Hardiwick’s spring dance, but Margaret would not hear of it. Spending a month in bed with a nasty head cold had left her mother pale and exhausted, and genuinely in need of rest. Yet Margaret strangely determined to go out into society.

“We cannot stay shut up in this house another evening,” her mother declared as she came down stairs from her chamber, her hand clinging tightly to the railing. “I accepted the invitation, so we must make an appearance, or risk offending dear Lady Hardiwick.”

“Your voice is shaking,” Jennet pointed out as she climbed up the steps to meet her. “So are your knees. I will risk her disapproval.”

Margaret glared at her. “You cannot see my knees.”