to make enquiries about the tattoos,” Nick said. “But the threat surely lies closer than that. The roads are better this morning than they were yesterday, but I find it unlikely that anyone in London ordered the fire.”
Marcus placed his filled plate on the table and sat down next to Nick. One of the ubiquitous footmen poured his coffee and refreshed Nick’s cup, then busied himself with tidying the sideboard. Nick didn’t recognize the footman, but he could have passed him in the house a dozen times and not noticed him. Ellie’s servants were innumerable, and they were meant to vanish into the background.
Marcus wasn’t watching the footman, though. Nick couldn’t fully trust a staff he didn’t know, but Marcus had no qualms about speaking in front of them. He shoveled a bite of eggs into his mouth, pausing to chew before continuing his report. “No one is missing anything. Not horses, not clothes, not even foodstuffs. In the dead of winter, families would notice if preserves or seed were stolen. But the pub owner hasn’t fed anyone he didn’t know since you came through before the party.”
Nick frowned. “Could someone lodge with a family nearby?”
“Possibly. Your tenants are mostly prosperous, but few would turn their noses up at extra income. But he would have to have a good reason for not staying at an inn and for keeping his identity secret — people might want his money, but they would be suspicious of perfect strangers.”
“So it’s likely someone who was already in the neighborhood?”
“Or with ties to it,” Marcus said with a shrug. “Or he is staying farther afield — it would take days to investigate all the inns he could be at, particularly if he has stayed in London and only comes here to wreak havoc.”
Nick leaned back in his chair. “Why was destroying the body so important? What could it have told us?”
Marcus cut into his ham. “The tattoos were the only evidence, unless he thought someone in the area might recognize the man himself. The assailant knew the body was there, but he must not have known that Ellie had drawn the tattoos already.”
Nick swirled his coffee in his cup, losing even more heat into the chilled air of a country house in winter. “If it’s tattoos, the connection between the dead man and the highwayman might have come at sea.”
“That eliminates me and Ellie as suspects, if you follow that reasoning.”
“And leaves Rupert.”
Marcus winced. “It can’t be Rupert. Even if he had ordered your death in India, he couldn’t have heard yet that you’ve come home.”
“Unless Sebastian Staunton is in his employ. He came from the Caribbean a few months ago.”
They both considered that idea — and both snorted at the same time. “Staunton and Rupert are equally unlikely,” Marcus said. “Can you picture Sebastian as a murderer?”
“No. He’s so intent on seducing Ellie’s sisters that he barely spares me a glance,” Nick said. “And you are right. Even if Rupert does want me dead, he would be hard pressed to arrange it from so far afield.”
Nick drained his coffee and rose to stand by the heater. Ellie had installed a standing porcelain stove of Swedish design when she had remodeled the breakfast room, and the green and gold painted enamel was a welcome change to the open fireplace in his bedchamber. He rubbed his hands together. She kept the house warm enough — on his money — that he wouldn’t get chilblains like he had in the drafty, ancient expanses of Eton. But he still felt chilled — whether from the weather or from the risk he’d brought to all of them, he didn’t know.
“I should return to London,” he said. “No sense putting anyone here at risk of another attack gone awry.”
He heard footsteps in the hall. Marcus must have heard them as well, because he held his response to Nick’s remark. Nick turned as the footsteps stopped — just as Ellie entered the breakfast chamber.
Her eyes were cool and her red curls were perfectly contained atop her head, but even in a proper blue morning dress she had a sensuous, undeniable appeal. He wanted another chance at what they had done in the study the night before — a chance to see if the tenderness he’d denied her so far might break something that his anger had only fortified.
But this wasn’t the right time to seduce her. “Good morning, Lady Folkestone,” he said.
“Lord Folkestone. Mr. Claiborne,” she said, greeting both Nick and