And Then She Fell (The Cynster Sisters Duo 1)

“No,” Rafe said, his deep voice rough, “but it was a very near-run thing.” He tipped his glass at James. “If it hadn’t been for Glossup there, and a frankly amazing tackle, Henrietta Cynster would be dead as a doornail, crushed under a fallen stone.”

Lord Ellsmere paled and fell back in his chair. “Good Lord!”

“But that’s not the worst of it.” James drained his glass. Aware of the look Lord Ellsmere bent on him, as if unable to believe that there could possibly be anything worse, James lowered the glass, met his lordship’s gaze, and disabused him of that comfortable notion. “Someone—most likely a gentleman in riding boots—deliberately pushed the stone off the wall. And he had to have known Henrietta was beneath it—we’d been talking just before.”

Lord Ellsmere stared, then looked at Rafe, who confirmed James’s words with a grim nod. “But,” his lordship all but sputtered, “you’re not saying it was anyone here?”

James met Rafe’s eyes, then, frowning, slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t seem likely. We were all in groups.”

“Thank heaven for that.” After a long moment of silence, Lord Ellsmere said, speaking slowly and carefully as if trying out the words, “There has to be some explanation. No one would want to kill Henrietta, so . . . it must have been something else. Perhaps . . . a prank gone wrong, or . . .” His lordship looked from James to Rafe and back again, but neither came to his rescue. “Well,” his lordship asked, “what else could it be?”

Another long moment of silence ensued, then James set down his glass, met Rafe’s gaze, and rose. “I doubt there’s anything anyone can do—there was plenty of time for whoever it was to simply walk away. We just thought you should know.”

Lord Ellsmere looked up at them as if wishing they hadn’t thought anything of the sort, but on meeting James’s eyes, he nodded. “Yes, well . . . as you say, nothing to be done.”

With polite, if somewhat stiff, nods, James and Rafe parted from their host and left the library.

They paused in the front hall.

James glanced at Rafe, who looked back at him, then James sighed and reached for the banister. “We’d better get changed.”

They climbed the stairs and walked to their rooms.

While he stripped and quickly washed, then shrugged into his evening clothes, James heard Lord Ellsmere’s observation and resulting question repeating endlessly in his mind.

No one would want to kill Henrietta, so . . . what else could it be?

James was starting to have a bad feeling about that. A very bad feeling indeed.

For James, the dinner and ball passed in a bland blur of faces and polite conversations. Briefly meeting in the drawing room before the company had gone into dinner, he, Henrietta, Rafe, and Millicent had agreed that there was nothing to be gained by creating a sensation among the other guests by spreading the tale of Henrietta’s near brush with death.

In a private aside, Rafe had baldly asked, and James had confirmed that he would be sticking to Henrietta’s side throughout the night. Later, during the ball, Rafe had paused beside James to quietly report that he’d discreetly checked with the others from the house party who had been at the ruins that afternoon, and none of the gentlemen had been unaccounted for over the critical minutes.

“So it had to have been someone from outside,” James had concluded.

Rafe had nodded. “And ‘outside’ could mean anywhere. There’s a decent lane on the other side of the woods that joins the road to London.”

A waltz had started up, and Rafe had left to whirl Millicent down the floor. James had watched Henrietta waltz with Channing, then had reclaimed her, and thereafter hadn’t let her go.

But finally the ball ended, and after dallying in the front hall, on the stairs, and in the gallery until all the other guests had gone ahead, James escorted Henrietta down the corridor to her room.

Pausing outside the door, he opened it and waved her through.

Glancing at him, faintly puzzled, she went.

Swiftly glancing around and confirming that the corridor was empty, he quickly followed her and closed the door behind him.

Expecting to bid him good night, Henrietta swung to face the door; she fell back a step, brows arching in surprise. She met his eyes, a clear question in hers.

He met her gaze, then surveyed the room. An armchair stood by the fireplace. Stepping past Henrietta, he walked to the armchair and dropped into it.

She followed. Halting beside his boots, she looked down at him; the question in her eyes had grown even more pronounced.

He sighed, leaned back, and held her gaze. “I’m staying here tonight. All night.”

Head tipping slightly, she studied him. “Why?”

“Because I can’t leave you alone.” When she frowned at him, he reached out, caught her hand, and tugged her down to sit on the broad arm of the chair.