A Murder at Rosamund's Gate - By Susanna Calkins Page 0,41

had she been? Why had she lied? Then there was the matter of the dressing case that she had tried to keep out of Lucy’s sight. So many times she had covered for Bessie, so many mysterious absences. Was it this same gent who had done away with her?

“I’m going to find out,” she said, kicking the stone hearth. “You’ll see, Bessie! I’ll find justice for you yet!”

10

The idea of finding justice for Bessie soon felt like a needle threading in and out of Lucy’s mind, pricking her unexpectedly, painfully reminding her of her desperate promise. “How can I even begin?” she muttered to herself. “I’m just a chambermaid.”

Yet, after Bessie’s funeral, the magistrate informed her that he wished for her to assume Bessie’s former position as his wife’s lady’s maid.

For a moment, Lucy was speechless. I’ve not got Bessie’s skill with a needle, she wanted to cry out. I shall ruin the mistress’s fine silks!

Hearing his next words, however, she was glad she had held her tongue. “The mistress has taken Bessie’s death to heart, Lucy. As we all have. My wife needs a companion more than she needs to have her silks pressed.” He regarded her with his steady reassuring eyes. “Will you do that, Lucy? Be her companion?”

Lucy scarcely knew what she mumbled, yet found herself a short while later sitting silently beside her mistress, their sadness wrapped about them like a winding sheet. Listlessly, she unsnarled knots in several skeins of yarn, while Mistress Hargrave plucked impatiently at the happy cherubs she’d been embroidering for the last few weeks.

“Cherubs, bah! I’m starting a new piece,” the mistress said, casting aside the wooden embroidery frame. “This one will depict the people of Nineveh being stricken down by God.” She shrugged lightly. “Divine providence.”

Divine providence indeed, Lucy thought to herself. Bessie deserves real justice, no matter what it may do to this household.

* * *

Finally, Lucy found her chance to look for what Adam had been hiding. Taking her leave of the mistress the next morning, she paused in the second-floor corridor, holding a candle to light the darkening passage. Darting a quick glance up and down the hallway, she put her ear by Adam’s door. She couldn’t hear anything. He must still be downstairs, she thought, having a drink with his father. Now that she had been promoted to the mistress’s lady’s maid, she had no good reason to enter Adam’s room, as she might have done as a chambermaid. Knowing that what she was about to do was pure folly, she opened the door and slipped inside.

Unsure what she was looking for, she headed to Adam’s desk. It was neat, like the rest of his room. Beside a stack of four or five leather books were his pen and ink, pipe, and small pouch of tobacco. She could see he had been writing something, but she did not dare move the books to read his words.

With shaking hands, Lucy carefully eased open his desk drawer. Inside, there were more papers, a bit of vellum, and some knives for sharpening his pens. Otherwise, the drawer was empty. She looked around the room. She quickly checked the wardrobe and his trunk, but neither yielded much beyond his penchant for finely tailored clothes. Under the bed was his chamber pot, which she did not linger over, and a pitcher and basin were on a small table by the window.

Lucy frowned. She was about to leave when she spied the tobacco pouch, which she had earlier discounted. Crossing the room in three steps, she picked it up. “That’s not tobacco,” she muttered, and with trembling fingers she loosened the cords that kept the pouch closed.

Reaching in, Lucy pulled out two miniature portraits that could fit easily into the palm of her hand. Each frame held the image of a single left eye, with only a hint of a woman’s eyebrow and cheekbones revealed. One eye was a beautiful light ocher, and the other was green, the color of moss after rain. Each eye stared directly at her, in a manner that was both coy and knowing. Studying the portraits, she knew she did not recognize either face. Bessie had blue eyes, and for that matter, so did Judith Embry.

She could tell there was one more small object in the pouch. As she drew it out, Lucy stared at it in horror. It was a beautiful lacquered comb—a comb she had seen before, hidden in a box, tucked under Bessie’s petticoats,