Penny met his gaze. “Yes, exactly. And figuring out why might be the best thing you could do.”

With that tart comment, she led the way back to the drawing room.

The news, when it came, wasn’t good. Darkness had fallen when they heard the searchers returning. Penny knew what was coming when she heard the horses not riding in crisply, but walking very slowly.

She briefly closed her eyes, then, opening them, met Millie’s and Julia’s equally apprehensive gazes.

“Oh, dear,” Millie whispered, one hand rising to her throat.

Penny exhanged a glance with Julia, then rose. “I think you both should stay here-there’s no need for you to see…”

Turning, she headed for the door. Nicholas had risen when she did; he joined her. When they reached the door, he closed his hand on the knob, and looked at her. “You don’t have to see, either.”

She met his gaze levelly. “I’ve been de facto mistress here for the last umpteen years. I hired Mary. Of course I need to see.”

Neither Charles nor David were happy with her decision, but when she joined them in the cool store where they’d laid the limp body, neither attempted to gainsay her.

Someone had lit a lamp, but left it by the door; only faint light reached the table where Mary’s body lay. Even so, it wasn’t hard to see the purple marks circling her white neck, nor the protruding eyes and tongue. Penny stood just inside the door and looked, then Figgs pressed her arm and moved past, going to the table and straightening the rumpled skirts. She cleared her throat, addressed her question to the air, “Was she…do you know…?”

“No.” It was Charles who answered. “She was strangled, nothing else.”

Figgs nodded. “Thank you, my lord. Now, if you’ll leave us, Em and I will take care of her.”

“Thank you, Figgs,” Penny murmured. Figgs and Em, who helped Cook, were the oldest women in the household; to them rightly fell such tasks.

Charles moved to her side; she felt his hand close about her arm, sensed his strength close, and was grateful. He steered her out into the kitchen yard; David and Nicholas followed.

They stopped in the middle of the yard; all drew in deep breaths.

“Where did you find her?” Penny asked.

“In the woods this side of Connell’s farm.” David shook his head. “Not far at all-we’d met up and were on our way back, searching as we came.” He shivered. “The blackguard had stuffed her body under a fallen tree. If Charles hadn’t thought to poke there…”

David looked white as a sheet. Penny gripped his arm. “Come inside-you should all have something to warm you.”

They went in. She detoured via the kitchens to give orders that all the men in the search party should be served ale and cold meats, then swept into the house to supervise the same for their masters.

A dark and brooding atmosphere enveloped the house. Even though most hadn’t known Mary well, all had met her at one time or another, and this was the country-servants were people with families one knew. There was grief and confusion, shared by all; that sense of sharing, of adversity faced together, drew them closer, even Nicholas.

Hubert, having sent his men straight home, appeared alone to report no sighting. He was told the news; he insisted on going out to the cool store. He returned shortly, greatly cast down. The Essingtons took their leave. Charles, Nicholas, and Penny saw them off with thanks, then returned to the library.

Nicholas complied with Charles’s suggestion-more a direction-to write a note to Lord Culver informing him of their discovery.

Charles, meanwhile, openly wrote a brief report for London.

Ensconced in a chair, with no wish to spend time in her room by herself, Penny saw Nicholas glance at the sheet Charles was covering, but could read nothing beyond the deepening concern etched in his face.

Completed, both notes were dispatched by a rider.

Seeing no reason to abrade Nicholas’s sensibilities unnecessarily, Penny bade both him and Charles a good night in the front hall and climbed the stairs. She’d sent a message earlier excusing Ellie from waiting on her. Ellie and Mary had been friends; Ellie would be grieving.

As for herself…in her bedroom, she walked to the window, unlatched it, and pushed it wide. Looking out on the peaceful courtyard, she drew a deep breath and held it.

She thought of the man who’d come looking for her one night, thought of Mary, who that same man, it seemed, had now taken.

Why Mary? Why her?

Regardless, alongside her grief for Mary, she was immensely glad to be alive.

Charles came in. She sensed rather than heard him; he always moved so silently. He joined her before the window; his hands about her waist, he stood looking out over her shoulder, then he turned her to him.

She lifted her arms, draped them over his shoulders, and went into his arms. Felt them close around her, tight, felt the primal shudder that rippled through him as he pulled her against him. He bent his head, and their lips met, and nothing else mattered but that they were there, now, together and alive.

Together they’d been before, but never had it been quite like this. Never before had they both, he and she, simply dropped every shield, released every inhibition, and celebrated the simple primitive fact.

That they could be together like this. At this level, on this plane.

Their clothes littered the floor between the window and the bed; their hands roved, not so much urgently as openly, flagrantly, blatantly possessively-neither doubted the other would be theirs tonight.

The moon had yet to rise when he lifted her, when she wrapped her long legs about his hips and, head back, gasped as he impaled her.

Gasped again as he moved within her.

Then she raised her head, wrapped her arms about his neck, found his lips with hers, and they settled to the dance.

No desperation this time but a soul-deep communion, a wanting, a need they both shared.

Charles held her, thrust into her, following no script but that of deepest instinct. Tonight he didn’t need consciously to pander to her needs; tonight her needs and his were the same.

No rush, no hurry; inevitable tension, yes, but no mindless urgency.

So he felt every slick slide of his body into hers, savored the heat, the giving pressure, the incredible pleasure as she willingly took him in. Willingly enclasped him, held him, released him, only to welcome him in once more.

Pleasure and more engulfed them, wrapped them about, lifted them from the world. They traveled on beyond the earth, to the moon, the stars and the sun, and never once lost their connection.

They were together when they toppled from the last fiery peak, together when at last they collapsed on her bed. Together when they brushed hair from each other’s eyes so their gazes could meet and they could look, and know.

And wonder.

Neither said a word; they were both too afraid, and they knew that, too.

They took refuge in the physical, in that reflection of their togetherness, in the warmth between them. Lids falling, they exchanged sleepy kisses, drew up the covers, sank into the bed, and slept.

CHAPTER 16

BY MORNING THE NEWS OF MARY MAGGS’S MURDER HAD spread throughout the county. Gimby had been known to few; his murder had attracted little notice. Mary was another matter. The searchers had taken the ill tidings home with them; from there the news had spread far and wide.

The Wallingham Hall household was, if not precisely in mourning, then somber and subdued. After breakfasting on tea and toast, Penny went to speak with and comfort Figgs. Together they planned the household chores, keeping all to a minimum, doing only what was needed to keep the house running. Penny decreed that the meals should be simple for the next several days.

“Aye, well,” Figgs said on a sigh. “Mrs. Slattery at the Abbey sent two game pies and a lemon curd pudding this morning. She said as she suspected I had an extra mouth about, and as it was rightly one that was hers to fill, she hoped I’d accept the help.” Figgs sniffed. “Nice of her, I thought.”

“Indeed.” Aware there were proprieties to be observed between households that were every bit as rigid as within the ton itself, Penny could only applaud Mrs. Slattery’s tact.

Leaving Figgs, she returned to the front hall just as Lord Culver arrived. Charles had left her bed early; he’d ridden out to look around the site where they’d found Mary’s body, deliberately leaving Nicholas to deal with Culver. Charles was doing all he could to force the consequences of his silence on Nicholas, without compunction using any lever that came to hand to pressure Nicholas into telling him what he knew, or at least enough to capture the murderer.

Nicholas had been expecting Culver; he came out of the library to greet him. She went forward as they shook hands, but merely exchanged greetings with Lord Culver, who murmured, “Distressing business, my dear.” She glided on into the drawing room. Being reclusive, Lord Culver was very definitely one of the “old school”; discussing anything so horrendous as murder within a lady’s hearing would render him acutely uncomfortable.

Besides, she, too, was determined to convince Nicholas to confide his secrets; he could deal with Culver alone.

From just inside the drawing room, she listened to him doing so. When the pair walked away down the hall, she turned and followed; it wouldn’t matter if they saw her, just as long as she remained apart from their discussion. Hanging back in the shadows of the kitchen courtyard, she watched as they entered the cool store. Their voices echoed in the stone building; Culver asked the expected questions, and Nicholas answered.