My cheeks are burning with shame and remembered mortification; never have I been subjected to such a liberty at the hands of a man. Yet worse is the feeling of sweet elixir that courses through my veins. I am dizzy with wonder and a want I cannot admit, even to myself; and so I admit it here, on the pages of my journal. That he should kiss me is beyond belief — and entirely without sense or purpose. Tom Hearst cannot be in love with me; for I have never possessed a fortune and am beginning to lose my beauty, and both are what a man of his straitened means and handsome looks would think his due. It is in every way incredible; and so I must ascribe his kiss to the power of moonlight, and the effect of wanton hair.

I touch a stray lock now, and must declare it nothing out of the ordinary way, however transformed by moonlight. But I feel a small thrill of gratification nonetheless, rare for a woman whose wits have always been celebrated before her person. We all of us have our failings; and mine is vanity. It shall be my last flag flying on the Day of Judgment.

How to face Tom Hearst, on the morrow? I shall die of consciousness.

And so the old year is done to death.

I January 1803

I WAS SPARED THE NECESSITY OF FACING THE LIEUTENANT at breakfast; he and his batman, Jack Lewis, had arisen early and returned to the Horse Guards at St. James. Not a word has been let fall regarding the affair of the duel, or its outcome; I begin to believe it a figment of Miss Delahoussaye's overheated imagination. The breakfast room being quite deserted, I was afforded the leisure of weighing the heavy charge Isobel had placed upon my shoulders, and determining my course of action.

If Isobel and Fitzroy Payne were innocent of the murders, as I certainly believed Isobel to be, then someone had gone to great pains to convince us of their guilt. Firstly, the Earl had died as a result of sweetmeats eaten in the presence of his wife and her maid. Marguerite's dreadful death suggested to Sir William that she had been silenced for having observed Isobel place the Barbadoes nuts in the Earl's dish; but I considered it equally plausible that the maid had been convinced by another to put the poisonous seeds there herself. She had then been deployed in accusing her mistress through plaintive letters, and, her purpose fulfilled, was chiefly of use in being murdered — in order to incriminate Fitzroy Payne.

That Marguerite had formed a relationship of some trust with the murderer was implied by her readiness to await her killer in the isolated hay-shed at dawn. But which of the intimates of Scargrave might that be? If my theory were correct, the maid's partner must be one who gained material advantage by the removal of both the Earl's wife and his heir. George Hearst, who won a living under his uncle's will and stood to inherit the estate if Fitzroy were to die, should gain the most; and he had argued with the Earl the evening of his death, stating aloud that UI know how it is that I must act.” Mr. Hearst's character was morose and brooding enough to suggest him capable of violence; and he had fled the house by horseback in some haste and perturbation the very morning of the maid's murder. But was money alone the cause of such anger as I had overheard?

I must needs find Rosie Ketch.

Another who gained from Isobel's misfortune was Lord Harold Trowbridge. But he had vacated Scargrave a week before the maid's death. That he might have done this expressly to distance himself from that event, seemed entirely of a piece with his cunning. Having wooed the maid — perhaps in London, when he first attempted to purchase Crosswinds, prior to Isobel's marriage — had Trowbridge convinced her to dispatch the Earl with the poison native to her country, then left once his object — Crosswinds — was secured? It was as nothing for such a man to send the maid a few words torn from a business letter written to him by Fitzroy Payne, then return by cover of darkness to Scargrave Close, walk to the field at dawn, drop Isobel's handkerchief, slit the maid's throat, and hie back to London with no one the wiser.

—Unless he were avowedly elsewhere, in the company of others, at the self-same moment. I must discover his movements on the day of Marguerite's death. And that meant a visit to his brother the Duke of Wilborough's London residence. How to effect it? For that august family was unknown to this one, a fact Madame Delahoussaye underlined to me more than once when it appeared Lord Harold would remain at Scargrave through Christmas. She found it passing strange that he had deserted his brother the Duke for Isobel Payne in such a season, but knowing little of either Trowbridge or Wilborough, had assumed their relations were not close. But Lord Harold clearly acted from expediency, in forcing the acquaintance; and in more extreme circumstances, I should not be encumbered with greater delicacy. To Wilborough House on any pretext, therefore, I must go, the better to discover his whereabouts on the day of Marguerite's murder.

And what of the others? Madame Delahoussaye I ruled out, as unlikely to benefit in any way from the murder of the Earl, the hanging of her niece, or the similar execution of the peer she had hoped would marry her daughter. But of Fanny — could such silliness as possessed the girl hide a malevolent purpose? I could not forget her early morning walk to the paddock, she who did not ride; nor her furtive entry into the shed, nor the bag of coins she had left there. Anonymous philanthropy, I felt, was not in Fanny's nature; if she parted with her pence, it was only under duress. Someone had blackmailed Miss Delahoussaye, for reasons I could not divine; and that it might as well be the maid, was urged by the choice of the shed for her deposit-box. Had Fanny grown tired of demands for money, and ended the affair with Marguerite's life?

Why, then, go to such lengths to throw guilt upon her cousin and the newly-titled Earl? Avarice and ambition might counsel it. Someone should be guilty of the murder; and that it should not be herself or someone she loved — Lieutenant Hearst — but rather the man she did not want to marry, made perfect sense. With Fitzroy out of the way, George Hearst might inherit, and with the proper persuasion, could turn his brother into a titled man of wealth. Fanny intimated as much, only a few days ago; such calculation is natural in one so ruled by self-interest.

But why drop Isobel's handkerchief at the spot? For the satisfaction of having no rival at Scargrave? I should leave that question for later.

Two people yet remained to me — Lieutenant Tom Hearst and his batman, Jack Lewis. That I thought the Lieutenant's lighter character the least likely to be bent to darker purpose, I will not deny; and that a sensibility on my part influenced my views, I may as well admit. But I forced myself to construct an unflattering portrait of the Lieutenant, with all the force of possibility and motive.

In seducing the maid to kill the Earl, and casting suspicion upon Fitzroy once Marguerite was forever silenced, Tom Hearst might hope to win the former Viscount's title and fortune, at the hand of his brother George. This seemed an elaborate sort of plot for a man more likely to act upon impulse, or in the heat of temper; but I could imagine how it was done. The Lieutenant had declared himself resident in London during the period of Isobel's brief courtship by his uncle, for it was then he had met Fanny Delahoussaye. He might have formed a liaison with Marguerite at the same time.

I considered how Tom Hearst's gliding step in the moonlit hall the previous midnight had reminded me of the spectral First Earl. Had the Lieutenant donned fancy dress and tip-toed past my door, all those nights ago at Scargrave Manor, the better to hide the Barbadoes nuts in Fitzroy Payne's gun case? Were he observed entering his cousin's room at that unlikely hour, the fact should be remembered when the nuts’ presence was discovered; but no one was likely to suggest that a ghost had incriminated the eighth Earl. And Tom Hearst had been at pains the next morning to reinforce my midnight impressions, by declaring that he had witnessed a similar visitation prior to his mother's death.