Page 43 of The Countess Caper

“She’s been through a fright,” Rue said. “Later.”

Tessa shook her head. “Now.” She gentled her voice. “It won’t change anything,” she assured the sisters. “You’ll still be safe here. But we all need to be safe.” She paused. “He would have gone for Parsley if Marigold hadn’t turned into an Amazon. I don’t know anything about your brother-in-law.” She ought to have done better, asked more questions.

Holly bit her lower lip. “You’re bleeding.”

“She’ll be fine,” Rue said. “We all will.”

“We will,” Tessa agreed.

Holly sank onto a bench painted with lambs by someone who clearly hated lambs. “I was married to Lord Beville’s brother,” she said in a small voice. “As you know.”

“Yes, the countess who went missing,” Tessa said, searching her memory for the gossip that had run through London. The earl had been found dead at the bottom of a staircase, with a bottle of port. His wife had disappeared—pregnant with an heir who would displace the current Lord Beville, who clearly enjoyed being an earl.

“Her husband was a brute,” Daphne added. “With a foul temper not improved by drink. He broke her wrist. Bruised her. And pushed her down that very same staircase, even knowing she was in a delicate way.”

“And his brother is worse,” Holly said, rubbing a hand over her belly. “Much worse.”

“Did you kill him?” Tessa asked. “Your husband?”

“Not me,” Holly replied, staring at her feet.

“I did,” Daphne announced.

Rue was the first to comment. “Good.”

Daphne blinked. “That is not generally the reaction when one confesses to murder.”

“I’ve heard the stories,” Rue said. “We all knew to avoid him. But that didn’t solve the problem, did it? You did that. And if he refused to observe basic decency, I don’t see how he should have been treated any better than he was.”

“I don’t think the law would agree. Nor God.”

“The law will never know,” Tessa said.

“And you did not set out to kill him,” Holly pointed out. “You only hit him back, and he stumbled.”

“But I’m not sorry he’s gone.”

Rue snorted. “You’re human, Daph. Only an angel would forgive him.”

“And we’re none of us angels,” Tessa pointed out. “Devils, every last one of us. And maybe, sometimes, you need a devil to defeat a devil.”

Chapter Thirteen

It was not three days later that more strangers arrived.

Rue was the first to send up the alarm. She marched upstairs with one of the rusty muskets just as Tessa marched down the same stairs, the second musket at her shoulder. It was a terrible weapon, inaccurate and a pain to load, but perhaps the men out front did not know that.

“All set?” she asked grimly, knocking three times on the stair rail. A knock replied from the priest’s hole. Bryony was hidden. Holly whistled from somewhere, and promptly disappeared, as they had practiced several times since Lord Beville’s visit. Only Marigold remained in her room, guarding her baby with a fireplace poker.

Tessa opened the door, before it could be opened for her.

She stepped outside, musket at the ready. Three men and a woman in her fifties stared back at her. The men were huge and might well be a problem to contain. But it was the woman, with her steady, sharp gaze, that had Tessa narrowing her own in response. “The house is not open to visitors,” she said.

“We can see that,” one of the men said, sounding amused. And very Scottish.

“We’re sorry for disturbing you—”

“You will be,” Rue announced from an upper window, musket trained down upon their heads.