Chapter 28.

Susanna recognized the banner the riders carried before she could make out the face of their leader. The bee and thistle crest of Lord Glenelg was a bright spot of color against the gray winter sky.

Her joy at seeing Catherine again was diminished, though only slightly, when she recognized Matthew Grimshaw riding beside her.

"Lady Glenelg is wearing breeches." Jennet sounded appalled.

"Indeed she is. Most sensible for such a long journey. And necessary, since she rides astride."

But Susanna understood Jennet's disapproval. Both wearing men's apparel and riding astride were unacceptable in a n.o.blewoman. So was riding a stallion, which Vanguard most a.s.suredly was. A true lady was expected to choose a gentler mount, a sweet-tempered mare or a plodding gelding. Susanna greeted her sister-by-marriage with a warm hug while Eleanor hurried up to Matthew Grimshaw, Rosamond at her heels. From the way Catherine watched them, Susanna knew she had already heard of her cousin's romantic interest in Mistress Lowell.

"What do you think of Rosamond?" Susanna asked, adding, "She is your niece, Catherine," when she saw the flash of distaste on the younger woman's face.

They moved a little aside to leave the others more room to dismount.

Catherine sighed. "I suppose I pity her. I know how I felt when people mistook me for Robert's byblow. In a few years, when Rosamond has to face similar whispers and nudges, she will not have the advantage I did. The circ.u.mstances of my birth may have been irregular, but at least I was not born a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Now, knave. Not next week." Grimshaw's voice, loud with annoyance, barked at Bernard Bates.

Ever stoic and silent, the Londoner did not trouble to correct the lawyer's mistaken impression that he was one of Susanna's grooms.

"Who is that man?" Catherine asked. "I do not remember him from Leigh Abbey."

"My guard."

Catherine's look of astonishment made Susanna smile. "Come inside and I will explain how he came to be in my employ." She imagined Catherine had questions about her brother's death, as well.

They sought the privacy of the chamber Susanna shared with Jennet. Within a short span of time, Susanna had given Catherine a full account of Robert's last hours.

"Could he have died of natural causes?" she asked. "What if he was ill before he entered that tavern?"

"Only the woman who was with him there can tell us if he was in poor health before he ate his last meal."

"Food gone bad," Catherine murmured, speculating, "or the wrong sort of mushroom in the meat pie."

"I considered that his death could have been an accident. It is still a possibility."

"But if that is so, how could they accuse you of-"

"The circ.u.mstances were suspicious. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I thought it was poison myself. I still do." She managed a faint smile. "If ever a man lived to be murdered, it was Robert."

"You sound as if you want him to have been poisoned."

Susanna had long since faced an unpalatable truth. "If he was not, I have no hope at all of proving mine innocence."

Tears welled up in Catherine's eyes but before they could overflow, Walter's knock interrupted them. He entered the room at their invitation, closely followed by Jennet. She slammed the door in Bates's face and smirked in satisfaction when she heard a faint sound of pain from the other side, proof she'd succeeded in clipping the end of his nose.

"Well, Catherine?" Walter demanded. "Have you found proof that Annabel MacReynolds killed Robert?"

"Annabel had naught to do with his death." Catherine sounded fierce in her defense of the Scotswoman, surprising Susanna.

"You are certain?" Sir Walter's disappointment was almost palpable, revealing the direction his suspicions had taken.

"Yes."

"What is it, Walter?" Susanna asked. "Do you know something more about this woman than you've told me?"

He hesitated, his accustomed caution rea.s.serting itself. Keeping secrets was, after all, his business.

"You were quick enough to tell Gilbert."

In the face of Catherine's taunt, Walter capitulated. "Annabel MacReynolds is an agent of the French queen mother, the Italian-born Catherine de' Medici," he added for Jennet's benefit. "A well-known expert on poisons."

Catherine glowered at him. "Even if that is true, it does not make her a murderer. How is what she's done different from what you do? What Robert did?"

"So. She cozened you, just as she did your brother."

"Not at all," Catherine insisted. "And it does seem to me that Robert took most unfair advantage of her."

"Did she tell you that?"

"No, but-"

"Mistress MacReynolds gained far more from their a.s.sociation than Robert did."

Walter sent an apologetic glance in Susanna's direction. She realized then that he'd hoped to keep her from learning some of the less palatable details of Robert's life.

"The first time Robert took Annabel to bed, it was because Catherine de' Medici sent her to him as a gift. Poor fool. He did not realize he was being lured into a trap. Indeed, some two years pa.s.sed before the Italian woman gave orders to spring it. When Robert encountered Annabel again, at the Scots court, he thought it all his idea to make her his mistress. He never guessed that she offered him her body in order to have access to the information he was collecting for me."

"Have you proof?" Catherine demanded.

"Information reached France which could only have come from Annabel reading Robert's correspondence, including letters Susanna wrote to him from Madderly Castle. That means Annabel knew the code they devised, the Knox cipher, the same code used to lure Susanna to Westminster on the night Robert died."

Susanna had been listening with more interest than dismay, but this announcement took her aback. "You knew we used Master Knox's book?" Until this moment, she had believed only she and Robert had shared that secret.

When they all turned to look at her, she realized she had been foolish to think Robert would have kept anything just between the two of them. She'd confided in Jennet. Why suppose he'd not told Walter? And if Walter, why not inform his mistress? Perhaps all his mistresses wrote to him in codes!

"Susanna-"

"No, Walter. It can scarce matter now that Annabel and I were both privy to more than Robert's... affection."

"It may matter a great deal if the message you received to lure you to the Black Jack came from someone other than Robert."

"It did not come from Annabel." Hands on her hips, Catherine looked ready to slap Walter's face if he persisted in accusing the Scotswoman. "You are as wrong about her as Robert was. He saw only a pretty face and vapid expression and a.s.sumed Annabel lacked a mind of her own or any skill at dissembling. You admit she was better than any man at gathering intelligence, but you use that against her and a.s.sume she must also be capable of killing."

"She is clever," Walter argued. "She has deceived you into thinking she-"

"She swore she did not kill Robert, and I believe her." Catherine turned to Susanna. "And she has sent a message to you, Susanna. She said I was to tell you that Robert was no threat to anyone in France, that he was not important enough to be a.s.sa.s.sinated for political reasons."

"A fact he would no doubt find most distressing."

"Annabel did not have anything to do with Robert's murder."

"You like her," Susanna guessed.

"Yes, I do. She has become a friend."

"Then you will understand why I do not want to believe Eleanor might have killed Robert, either."

They shared a bittersweet smile. "Pity," Catherine said. "She seemed an ideal villainess to me."

"Madam?"

"Yes, Jennet."

"You must not be so quick to rule out Eleanor Lowell."

For a moment, Susanna closed her eyes, gathering the strength she'd need to once more deflect Jennet's wild speculations. She appreciated the other woman's loyalty but she knew what Jennet had been up to since the night they'd caught her searching Eleanor's chamber. As she expected, a quick glance at Jennet's hands revealed that her fingers were clenched tight around the talisman tied to her waist.

"Eleanor did not leave Lancashire," Susanna pointed out. "Therefore she could not have poisoned Robert."

That Jennet was sticking to her witchcraft theory was plain from the expression on her face. Since she knew already what Susanna thought of such nonsense, however, she did not speak of that aloud.

"She has lied to you, madam," she said instead. "You cannot deny that."

"Enough, Jennet." Walter's features were set in grim lines.

"I think the time has come to share all you know," Susanna told him.

"The man she insists is called Secole was no doubt Robert," he admitted, "but Eleanor had neither motive nor opportunity to kill him, and he left here a full six months before his death."

"If Annabel did not kill him and Eleanor did not," Catherine asked, "then who did?"

Susanna had no answer for her.

Worse, she knew she no longer had any excuse to remain at Appleton Manor. She had welcomed the respite brought on by bad weather, but the roads were pa.s.sable again now, and there were more questions to be asked, questions whose answers lay far to the south... in London.

Catherine stayed to sup. By mutual agreement, they did not speak of Robert's murder in the presence of the others. And when Catherine left Appleton Manor for her own house, taking her cousin with her, Susanna retired for the night.

She needed to think. To plan. She had put off facing what must be done for much too long.

As she climbed the stairs to her chamber, she realized she was rubbing her leg. The cold and damp had made it ache again.

Old injuries, she thought. Old memories. The past always seemed to impinge on the present.

How far into Robert's past, she wondered as Jennet untied the laces that held her sleeves to her bodice, would she have to search to find his murderer?

She had not ruled anyone out, in spite of her liking for Eleanor and Catherine's championship of Annabel. Her list of possible murderers included both of them. And Alys and her husband. And Constance. Susanna had believed her at the time of their meeting but on thinking over their conversation, she'd realized Constance could have been lying to her. What if she had seen Robert again after that day in the garden at Durham House? For all Susanna knew, they might have been lovers until the day he died.

She stepped out of her kirtle and petticoats. She hated having to suspect everyone, but it seemed that was the only way she was going to get out of this horrible situation alive.

Who else? The Lady Mary had cause to hate Robert.

Her expression grim, Susanna sat on the bed to remove her shoes. To be fair, she must also consider Walter a suspect. He might have killed Robert out of jealousy. It was a powerful motive, and he had wanted to marry her-until he'd met Eleanor. If he'd seen Robert as the only barrier separating them . . .

Clad only in the stockings and chemise in which she would sleep for warmth, Susanna slid beneath the covers. Next she would be suspecting Catherine!

The idea was absurd, but it reminded her that Robert had once before been the target of a murderous rage. Her thoughts skipped back five years, to the time when Robert, and Susanna herself, and even Matthew Grimshaw, had borne some responsibility for three deaths, one of them a suicide. She returned to the present with a sickening jolt as a new possibility occurred to her.

"Jennet?"

"Yes, madam." She paused in the act of closing the bed hangings. She'd already rolled out the truckle bed for herself. One candle and the remains of the fire in the hearth cast eerie shadows throughout the chamber.

"What if it was not an accident that Robert was identified? What if that was meant to happen, and I was meant to be there?"

"But how could anyone know exactly where he'd die? You could be lured to the tavern, but you might have gone in another direction entirely when you left it."

"There is one explanation, something that crossed my mind when I was in Newgate. I dismissed it then as impossible. I told myself Robert would never-." She broke off as an involuntary shudder racked her body. "Poison could have taken a long time to kill him, and it would have been an agonizing death. His fall spared him that. What if he ascended the steps of the Eleanor Cross not because of any connection to Eleanor Lowell, but because he knew it was high enough to suit his purpose? What if he had been watching me? Knew where I was? What if he hired some woman to pretend to be me in the tavern? What if his life had lost all meaning for him, if he had lost all hope, but he wanted me to be blamed for his death because he blamed me for his downfall?"

"You think Sir Robert might have taken his own life in order to put the blame on you?"

Jennet's astonishment eased Susanna's fears, but she could not quite dismiss her suspicions. "Things might have been that bad for him. We have not been able to discover how he spent the last eighteen months of his life."

"Suicide is a terrible sin," Jennet whispered. In her agitation she clenched her fists on the edges of the bedcurtains.

"Aye."

"It does not seem the sort of thing Sir Robert would do, not even to avenge himself on you."

"If it is what happened, I may never be able to prove it."

Jennet was chewing on her lower lip, a sign of deep thought. "If Sir Robert devised this scheme and sent for you, then he expected you to be there with him when he took the poison. He'd have made sure you were in place to be blamed when he killed himself. There'd have been no need for another woman! Indeed, he'd never have risked being seen with anyone else if he wanted you to be blamed."

Susanna laughed aloud in relief and delight. "You have the right of it. My heartfelt thanks, old friend."

Pleased with herself, Jennet pinched out the candle and drew the bedcurtains closed.

For once, Susanna slept without troubling dreams. But in the wee hours of the morning, she woke to the touch of a tiny hand on her shoulder.

Rosamond.

The child burrowed under the covers until she was nestled snug against Susanna. It seemed natural to slide one arm across the small hip.