Death at Fournier Downs by Cara Devlin

Author:Cara Devlin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2023-03-10T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter

Twelve

T he rain cleared out by the time Hugh returned to Low Heath. Barely a chair in the tavern was vacant, and the jovial ruckus was almost offensive after the last two hours he’d spent in Fournier’s icehouse with Coroner Wilkes. Hugh made his way through the crowded tavern, requesting kidney pie and a tankard of ale to be delivered to his room. The somber task of opening the countess’s abdomen to the coroner’s educated eye and determining the state of her womb had left an oil slick sensation under Hugh’s skin. Paired with intense hunger, the feeling was not especially welcome.

It was not the smell or the sight of human innards that had disturbed him, for Hugh had been witness to dozens of similar scenes before—Miss Lovejoy’s mutilated body and Mr. Bernadetto’s slashed throat were just two of the more recent ones that came to mind. No, what lodged like a stone in his chest after he’d left Wilkes to the task of closing the necessary incisions, was the confirmation that the small life that had barely taken root within the countess had shared its mother’s fate. It was confirmed. As her maid claimed, Lady Bainbury had been with child and roughly two months gone.

He climbed the stairs and made his way to his room with the dark thought that the person who had harmed the countess might have known they were also doing away with the unborn child. That the babe was, in fact, the incentive. Hugh rolled his shoulders as he entered his room, the muscles knotted with tension. He came to a stop and stared at his valet, who stood next to the open clothespress, a hammer in his hand.

“Christ, Basil, what are you doing?”

Basil brought the tool down upon what looked curiously like a new shelf, hammering a nail into place. “I was not going to tolerate more snagged threads.”

Hugh closed the door. “So, you decided to repair it?”

“Something had to be done.”

“You are entirely too at your leisure,” he muttered, removing his damp hat, and tossing it onto the bedstead.

Basil followed the flight of the hat in astonishment, and then whipped his attention back to Hugh and stared, agog. “Pierce my eyes, what are you wearing?”

Hugh had anticipated Basil’s certain discontent when he’d accepted the clothing from one of the duke’s footmen. The broad, fall-fronted trousers were cut from low-quality tweed and were billowy around the thighs; the slightly yellowed, drop-shouldered shirt was a size too large and had been darned at the elbow more than once; and the jacket… Hugh shrugged out of the threadbare sack coat.

“It’s a long story, but suffice it to say, I needed to borrow some clothes from one of the duke’s footmen. My own will be delivered tomorrow, clean and pressed and meeting your standards, I’m sure.”

Basil sniffed. “The duke should pay his servants better if they are reduced to wearing such dreary things on their day’s off.”

Hugh made no comment but thought of Audrey and how she’d imagined the duke would be willing to lend some of his own clothes.

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