be sent to notify the local procurator fiscal. If the duke asked us to investigate, and I had a sinking feeling he would, then any further examination of the corpse would need to be undertaken sooner rather than later. If I made it to bed before sunrise on this cold, dark winter night, I would be surprised.
Stifling a whimper, I huddled closer to Gage’s side as he wrapped an arm around my waist to hasten me back down the tunnel after Lord Edmund. As if conscious of the ache in my back I was struggling to hide, he cupped my opposite elbow where it bent and lifted, alleviating some of the weight pressing downward on my spine. Though he could have reminded me I was the one who insisted on following our Lord of Misrule on his ridiculous ghost tour, and hence the reason we had stumbled across a body in these underground passages, he held his tongue. Perhaps because he knew as well as I did that one way or another, once that body had been discovered, we would have found ourselves drawn down here, either by invitation or by misgiving after hearing reports of the others’ frightful encounter.
I wanted to believe that the duchess’s family would not have tried to conceal the discovery of the body, but truthfully, I didn’t know any of them very well. Half a dozen portrait sessions with the duchess did not make us friends, even if she had been willing to reveal a vulnerability with me that she showed to few. My longest conversation with her youngest child, Lord Henry, had been an interrogation during our investigation into the death of the woman he loved. As for the others, the duke and Lord Traquair were merely social acquaintances of mine, and I’d just met Lady Eleanor, Lord Edward, and Lord John at this very house party.
I’d heard reports of them, of course. Everyone talked about them. They were the children of a duke and duchess, after all, and rather notorious ones at that. The four youngest of the six children were widely accepted to have been fathered by other men, though the duke had claimed them as his own. I’d never dared to ask the duchess if it was true, but from everything I’d observed of their family, I also did not discount it. The duke had his fair share of sideslips as well, born by his string of mistresses, and while none of them had grown up in the ducal household, they had been acknowledged and provided for. At least, that was what the rumors claimed.
Our trek back through the tunnel seemed faster the second time, and soon we were crossing the stone corridors of the doom and climbing the spiral staircase to the servants’ domain. At this level, Lord Edward stopped a passing footman and ordered him to return with Tait, the butler. I’d expected him to send for the duke, as well, but then I recalled that His Grace had been rather foxed when we departed on our ghost tour nearly an hour past. Who knew what sort of state we would find him in now?
“Perhaps I should go in search of the duchess,” I suggested, knowing that I would not be needed in the task of moving the body, and that my presence would only make the servants uncomfortable. The duchess, while tipsy, had not appeared to be altogether muzzy, and I somehow anticipated she would still be in control of her faculties. If so, she should hear what we’d discovered as soon as possible. As should Lady Eleanor. If the body was, in fact, her husband, then she might know more than the others how he could possibly have met such an end.
I only hoped she hadn’t helped him to it.
Gage’s shoulders lowered, almost as if he was relieved I had presented him with a way to remove me from our current situation. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”
My husband’s respect for my intelligence and investigative abilities would forever be at war with his protective inclinations, especially now that I was carrying our first child, and I couldn’t fault him for that. Not when I’d experienced an entire lack of consideration from my first husband. Gage’s care and concern made me feel cherished, even when they grew tiresome.
Fortunately, in this instance, I was more than happy to avoid another trek through that tunnel.
I turned toward Lord Edward, whose lips had flattened into a tight line. He was