Page 52 of An Inconvenient Duke

Playing along with their very thin charade, Dani drawled, “I have no idea what you mean.”

Mrs. Slater’s face tensed as she continued to hunt for Marcus. “I was certain you’d have come back together,” she murmured. “This isn’t at all…” Then, in a beat, she cut off her musing, and her distraction was gone, a smile in its place. She took Dani’s hands and held her arms open wide, then raked an assessing gaze over her from head to toe and back again, looking for any sign in appearance that she’d engaged in anything less than proper. “Well, I hope you found Vauxhall amusing.”

Amusing.Not at all a word she’d associate with Marcus. Intense, overwhelming, dedicated…

He needed her help to put his sister’s ghost behind him, and in that, she’d not let him down. She linked her arm with Mrs. Slater’s and led the woman toward the box door. She had answers yet to uncover this evening, and a niggling suspicion tingling at the backs of her knees told her that not all of them would come from Lady Hartsham.

“The gardens were quite diverting.”

That was the understatement of the decade, yet Mrs. Slater’s only reply was to slide her a look that Dani couldn’t quite decipher.

The two women slipped inside the box, arm in arm, exactly as they had left it, with seemingly not a care in the world except to drink one last glass of punch before the night ended.

Inside the box, no one had seemed to notice—or care—that they had been gone, although the gentlemen craned their necks each time the door opened, most likely in hopes that Marcus had returned. They all wanted one last chance to worm their way into his good graces.

But among the women, excitement rose over the impending fireworks. They were all in heated discussions about the best viewing spots and whether they would have a better view from the railing just outside the box or out among the crowd gathering in the alley, whether they should wear masks, and would the attendants know to bring them more punch if they left the box?

Dani couldn’t stand the prattling lot of them. Too much had changed tonight for her to have patience for such trivial matters. So she slipped away from Mrs. Slater and made a beeline directly for Lady Hartsham near the railing.

“May I have a word?” She attempted to snare Beatrice’s attention away from solving the problem of the band playing too loudly from the box next to theirs.

But the countess waved a hand to indicate that she needed a moment to resolve the problem and gestured for the uniformed attendant who had been serving them all evening. “If you would please go across the way, to that box right there and—”

“A word, please.” Dani put her hand on the woman’s arm.

“In a moment, Danielle.” With a distracted smile, Beatrice patted Dani’s hand. “The noise, you see. Why, it’s too loud to even hold a polite conversation!”

“I need to speak to you about Elise Braddock Donnelly.” Dani leaned in to keep from being overheard and affected a smile for the others, as if she were doing nothing more than giving suggestions for noise control. “And the night she was killed.”

Beatrice froze, except for a telling widening of her eyes for a single beat of surprise.

Dani took her arm and pulled her to the side of the box, away from eavesdropping guests. Anyone who saw them speaking privately would assume they were making plans for the rest of the evening or arguing about the fireworks and band.

“Did you see Elise immediately before she died?” Dani pressed, determined to find answers for Marcus’s sake. She owed him this for her role in Elise’s death. Oh, she owed him so much more! “Did you speak to her in the days leading up to her death or send any messages to her?”

“I—I can’t remember.”

Yet even in the dim lamplight, Dani saw the blood drain from her face.

Beatrice laughed stiltedly. “I cannot even remember what we had last night for dinner, let alone what happened all those years ago.”

Not all those years ago. “Less than two.” Anger rose inside her that Beatrice gave what happened to Elise so little thought or consideration now. “Surely you’d remember if you’d spoken to her or met with her, given what happened.”

“Elise died, and it was a terrible loss, someone that young…with a baby, no less.” She took the mask that Dani still carried in her hand and fussed with the ribbons, her fingertips plucking at the sequins edging the satin mask. “But I can’t remember if I saw her or not. We were always running into each other, here or there, around Mayfair.” She pulled off one of the sequins and frowned regretfully at what she’d done. “What does any of that matter now?”

“Because Elise was murdered.”

Beatrice’s gaze flew up to Dani’s. Her fingers stilled against the satin mask.

“I think she started her own network to help women in need.” Dani forced the words past the tightening knot of grief in her throat and glanced away just in time to see the door to the box open as Marcus returned. “I think she crossed the wrong people and put herself in danger, that someone killed her for it. But no one knows who she was with that night, where she was going, who she was attempting to help…”

When she looked back at Beatrice, an icy chill sank through her. There was no surprise on the woman’s face. Only guilt.

“But you know, don’t you?” she whispered, unable to hear her own voice over the coursing of blood in her ears and the music flooding the box. “You know what happened to her.”

“I don’t know.”

“You were part of it.” Her hand tightly gripped Beatrice’s arm so the woman couldn’t walk away. “Elise called on you, asked you to be part of her secret… She brought you into her new network when Nightingale didn’t need you anymore.”