A Sinister Revenge by Deanna Raybourn

Author:Deanna Raybourn [Raybourn, Deanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

20

I trailed the countess, soft-footed as a lynx—walking quietly is a skill one must hone early as a lepidopterist; a startled butterfly is a lost opportunity. But even if I had crashed through the shrubberies with the unsubtle energy of Diceros bicornis, I doubt she would have heard me. She seemed lost in thought, her footsteps slowing and then speeding up again. Her perambulations were not, I surmised, undertaken with any sort of purpose or design. She was simply making her way back to Cherboys in a leisurely fashion.

It was no great effort to follow her. In fact, she moved so glacially that at one point I stopped behind an accommodating oak to eat another of Julien’s delectable sandwiches. When I resumed my surveillance, she was hardly further along than when I began, pausing now and again as if puzzling something out. I might have thought her distracted by the beauties of the surroundings—the trees were beleafed in green newly tinged with gold, and the late summer flowers were still offering themselves in lush-throated abandon. Even the clouds were engaging, soft and pillowy white, the sort of clouds to coax a romantic soul into lying out on the grassy Downs, imagining shapes hidden amongst them.

But the countess showed no interest in these. She kept her gaze fixed firmly ahead as she passed quite near to my place of concealment in a handy bit of bramble. A notably pretty Silver-Washed Fritillary—Argynnis paphia—swooped by in a slow arch of orange wings, but I refused to be diverted. Beatrice was not so single-minded. Her expression was one of complete distraction. She was not diverted by the bounty of the natural world because she simply did not perceive it. She was woolgathering, building castles in Spain, and it was this activity which caused her to pause now and again as she turned over some troubling thought.

I am not, as the casual reader may wonder, gifted with clairvoyance. I could not read her mental wanderings or hear the inner workings of her mind. But I am, by virtue of my occupation, a keen observer, and I noticed that every time Beatrice stopped, she raised her hand to her mouth, nibbling the corner of one thumbnail. A tiny furrow etched itself above her nose as she did so, marring the smoothness of her brow. After each reverie, she would gather herself with a little shake and move on. She was, it was apparent, working something out within herself, and I did not much care for the obvious inference: to wit, that she was debating the merits of engaging in a dalliance with young Merryweather.

The most obvious construction to put upon what I had seen was that Beatrice, as a lady suffering from a devastating illness, had sought spiritual counsel with the nearest source. But I dismissed this possibility at once on the grounds of her rosary. I could not imagine a Roman Catholic turning to an Anglican vicar for clerical consolation.

As any scientist knows, hypotheses are made to be discarded.

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