Chapter 8

"Ibeg your pardon?" I replied icily.

He lifted his hands, laughter glinting in his eyes. "I meant no offense."

Of course he had.

"We like our witches, mages, and pellars here in Cornwall." He stepped back to prop one boot up on a rock, crossing his arms over his chest. "Once upon a time, ye would've been revered." Maybe so, but his stance and his half-lidded eyes made it clear that was not the case now.

However, I'd confronted more than my fair share of men like him. They wanted nothing more than to elicit a reaction, and I was not going to give him the satisfaction. My father-in-law, on the other hand, was on the verge of delivering him the blistering put-down he clearly desired. And while there was nothing more I would have liked than to hear Lord Gage defend me after so many years of enduring his scorn, it would merely play into Mery's hands.

So I gripped my father-in-law's bicep firmly with my hand and turned the conversation in a direction Mery almost certainly didn't wish it to go. "My condolences on the death of your grandfather."

Mery's features constricted, though I couldn't tell if it was sadness or anger he strove to control.

"As I understand it, he was like a father to you. I'm sure this must be a difficult time for you."

He turned to look out to sea again, his cocksure posture softening. "Why? Haven't ye heard?" he challenged. "I inherit everything."

"Yes, but that doesn't replace your grandfather," I said, able to recognize his bluster for what it was—a shield for his pain.

Lord Gage seemed to sense this as well, for he'd fallen silent, allowing me to do the talking. That was, until Mery made his next statement.

"Nay. 'Tis much better."

"Perhaps you helped matters along, then?" Lord Gage posited. "Pushed your grandfather over the cliff so you could claim your inheritance all the faster."

Mery's eyes glinted with mockery. "Ye are so far from the truth, ye might as well be in India." His contempt sharpened to a knife's point. "And I hope I'm around to witness it when ye realize it."

I didn't know what to make of this statement. "But you were there when Branok's body was found, weren't you?"

His gaze swung toward where three men could now be seen picking their way back across the craggy shore, hugging the rock face as the tide washed over their boots. I exhaled in relief at the sight of Gage's familiar silhouette in the middle, the hem of his four-caped greatcoat snapping about his legs.

"So they say."

I scrutinized Mery's hardened features. "That's not really an answer."

He shrugged.

I thought Lord Gage might press him further, but he merely eyed the younger man with disfavor. Perhaps, like his son, he preferred to gather more information before pressuring a suspect. After all, we had very little facts to go on, and if it proved Branok had committed suicide, then there was no murderer to apprehend.

Even so, Mery bore watching, for like many of the others, he knew more than he was saying, and as somewhat of an outsider to the rest of the family, his loyalty was less certain. The others might be swift to blame him because he was guilty. But they might also be swift to blame him because they feared he knew too much, and they didn't trust him to keep quiet. What better way to cast aspersions on his honor and forthrightness than to make him a suspect.

"I see you've met Mery," Bevil remarked once he'd drawn close enough for us to hear him. His sharp gaze riveted on the younger man. "Ye haven't been borin' 'em with your granfer's tall tales, have ye?"

Mery scowled fiercely, refusing to answer and making me suspect this statement held some hidden meaning.

Gage's color was high, but he appeared none the worse for the trek except for some damp near the bottom of his greatcoat as he passed Bevil to offer Mery his hand. "Sebastian Gage."

Mery seemed surprised by the gesture but accepted his hand readily enough. "Meryasek Roscarrock."

Gage nodded, turning to survey our surroundings. "This is quite the estate you've inherited. Wild, but beautiful." He turned back to the man no more than five years his junior. "Though I'm sorry for your loss."

Rather than toss back a glib remark as before, Mery simply dipped his head in acceptance.

If Gage found his behavior questionable, he didn't indicate it, instead returning to the matter at hand. "Who was the physician or surgeon who examined the body?"

"That'd be Tom Wolcott." Bevil paused before adding, "My niece's husband."

I frowned. And yet the nature of the death had caused him no concern? But then, perhaps he'd only examined the injuries after Branok had been brought to him. Perhaps he hadn't seen the cliff he'd gone over.

"Tristram can take ye to him," Bevil offered.

"Was the parish constable or magistrate called to the scene?" Lord Gage interjected.

Bevil's jaw clenched. "Aye, and the constable deemed it an accident. 'Twas only later that we questioned it."

"That you questioned it or Great-Aunt Amelia?" My query was directed at Bevil, but I was watching Tristram and Mery just as closely.

"?'Tis true. Mother voiced more doubts than the rest of us," Bevil conceded begrudgingly. His gaze fastened on Lord Gage. "If it'd been up to me, I wouldn't have contacted ye with naught but speculation. But as you can see, Mother has a mind of her own."

Gage shifted his feet, propping one booted heel on a rock much like Mery had done a short time ago, though his stance was artless whereas Mery's had been posturing. "Then you saw no reason at the time to question the inquest's verdict?"

"Nay." Bevil exchanged a look with Tristram. "That is…"

"The parish constable is no friend to the Roscarrocks," Mery explained, staring broodingly through the overgrown fringe of his hair. "An' he made sure the rulin' was death by misadventure."

Lord Gage asked, "Who's the constable?"

Bevil once again seemed hesitant to speak, but for what turned out to be a very different reason. "Cuttance."

Lord Gage stiffened. "The old preventive officer? He's still alive?"

"His son."

I turned to Gage, curious if he knew what had unsettled his father. And then I remembered. My father-in-law had been apprehended as a boy by a preventive officer. Apprehended after his friend was shot and killed by the same man. The elder Cuttance must be that official.

"Then the younger Mr. Cuttance bears a grudge?" Gage clarified.

"He would say not," Tristram began.

Mery scoffed.

"But it's obvious from the number of times he's shown up on our doorstep with one complaint or another, or insisted on makin' a search of the property, that he does."

Bevil nodded toward the path up the hill we'd taken to the cliff Branok had most likely fallen from. "Patrols our coastline more than the others as well."

"You can't blame him for that," Lord Gage charged. "You are smugglers."

All three Cornish men scowled.

"Were smugglers," Bevil retorted. "We haven't been free traders for more than twenty years."

Lord Gage's mouth curled in a sneer. "You expect us to believe that?"

"I don't care if ye do or ye don't." Bevil squared his shoulders to face him, clenching his hands at his side. "Though ye should know the truth of it. You decimated our ships in '02. And don't think we didn't know it was you who targeted our vessels so ruthlessly."

"I hoped you would."

I stepped between the men before they could come to blows. "Gentlemen, please. To the matter at hand," I scolded, before turning to appeal to our Cornish relatives. "Are you suggesting that this Mr. Cuttance might have been patrolling your coastline the evening Branok died? That Mr. Cuttance might have been the last person to see Branok alive?" The remainder went unspoken, for I wasn't quite ready to accuse a man I'd never met—an officer of the parish—of murder.

"It crossed my mind," Bevil replied, being equally circumspect.

I pressed two fingers to my temple, for this complicated matters. Cuttance was the man to whom we would have to apply for more information, and he could just as easily deny or mislead us. We could apply to the local magistrate, but not every justice of the peace was as invested in the day-to-day running of their parish. If he trusted Cuttance, then he might know very little of the details of Branok's death, and our attempt to go over the constable's head could simply make matters more contentious.

"We should speak to him as well, then," Gage declared, for there was no other option.

Bevil glanced at his son. "If ye go before midday, ye should still catch him at 'ome."

Gage peered up at the sun. "Then I suppose we shouldn't waste any time."

He offered me his arm, turning our steps back in the direction we'd come. Once again, Bevil and Tristram led the way, while Lord Gage followed and Mery trailed along at the rear.

I peered over my shoulder before whispering. "Do you know what happened in '02?"

A furrow formed between Gage's eyebrows. "The Peace of Amiens."

The temporary cessation of war between Britain and Napoleonic France. The uneasy truce had lasted for a little over a year before hostilities resumed, but during the fifteen months when peace had reigned, many of the Royal Navy's warships would have been recalled home or reassigned to other duties.

I studied Gage's troubled features out of the corner of my eye. "I gather you didn't see your father more often during that time." Gage would have been five years old—old enough to remember. And by that time, he and his mother would have already moved from Plymouth to Langstone Manor at the edge of Dartmoor to live with his maternal grandfather.

"No." He inhaled a ragged breath. "Apparently, he and his ship were reallocated to fight a different battle."

One that also happened to be personal to him. Stopping the rampant amount of smuggling that was taking place along Britain's coast. While Britain's naval power had been focused on its enemies, namely France, I imagined there hadn't been enough resources left to combat the free trading problem. But with the fighting ceased, even temporarily, and the Royal Navy's ships returned to its territorial waters, it could heighten patrols and squash the smuggling problem once and for all. Or, at least, severely cripple it.

Given his history with the area, it made sense for Lord Gage to have been assigned to patrol the waters off Cornwall's northwest coast. Or perhaps he'd requested it. I could well imagine him doing so. I couldn't even say I blamed him. But Bevil's remarks seemed to indicate that perhaps his cousin had gone above and beyond duty into the realm of personal vendetta.

I could tell that my husband wondered, as I did, whether this vendetta had so preoccupied his father that he hadn't taken the full amount of leave he was due. It was one thing to accept that war had kept his father away for fifty weeks out of the year. It was quite another to know his father had chosen to pursue revenge, even in the guise of fealty, rather than spend time with his wife and only child.

We returned to a flurry of activity at the manor. Staff bustled through the rooms and about the gardens, moving furniture, airing linens, and trimming hedges. Even Great-Aunt Amelia and Dolly were at work in the dining room arranging flowers in about a dozen vases and ewers.

"What is all this?" I asked in bewilderment. Through the windows I could see tables being created from long boards and trestles.

"There's so many family members and neighbors to introduce ye to, we decided 'twould be easier to bring them all to you," Amelia replied as she clipped the ends of a pair of camellias.

I realized then that they intended to host some sort of dinner party or soiree, and by all appearances they intended it to be a grand one. I glanced at Gage and his father helplessly. "Oh, but we wouldn't dream of putting you to all this trouble. Especially not so soon after Branok's death."

"?'Tis no trouble. We Cornish love a good party. Branok, chief among them. So there's no fear he'd disapprove."

"?'Twould probably enjoy the notion of our thumbing our noses at convention," Joan added as she entered the door at the far end of the room, which I'd learned that morning led to the kitchens in the servants' wing. The way the tiny hairs curled about her head as if she'd walked through a cloud of steam made me suspect food preparations had already begun in earnest. Knowing that, we could hardly ask them to cancel the party now.

"Did ye see what ye needed to see?" Great-Aunt Amelia's voice was thick with meaning. She was asking if we were ready to accept that her suspicions about Branok's death were justified. That it hadn't been an accident.

Rather than confirm this, Lord Gage instead elected to demur. "We have more questions."

But Amelia was shrewder than that. Her lips curled in satisfaction as she continued her cutting and arranging. "Then 'ave Tristram take ye wherever ye need to go to ask them."

As this was exactly what we intended to do, none of us responded as we filed from the room. I noted that Dolly had remained silent through this exchange, but she looked up as I passed to offer me an encouraging smile. I hoped we'd have time to talk later when I returned.

Bree was waiting for me in my bedchamber, evidently having already been informed of our intent, for my sage green riding habit with gold epaulette trim was draped across the bed. "Is it murder, then?" she asked as I set aside my pelisse and bonnet and turned to allow her to begin unfastening the buttons of my morning dress.

"It's certainly suspicious," I told her. "And difficult to imagine Branok tumbling over the cliff by accident." I hesitated to conjure the other possibility that had crossed our minds, perhaps because in some ways it was worse. "But that doesn't mean it's murder."

Bree tugged harder at the edges of my gown than usual. "Suicide, ye mean?" She mumbled a swift prayer. I knew, as a Roman Catholic, this would unsettle her more than me, for I liked to think the Lord might still be merciful to those who had committed such an extreme act. "But why?" she gasped, and I knew she was asking about his motivation rather than why we suspected it.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Certainly, the picture his family paints of him doesn't suggest a man likely to take his own life. But maybe he was keeping something from them. Something that would explain his taking such an uncharacteristic and desperate measure."

"Like what? That he was sick?"

"It's possible. If he were in a lot of pain, if he felt there was no hope, he might have decided he couldn't endure it anymore and that the only way to find relief was in death."

Bree whisked my gown over my head. "But why not seek oblivion in a bottle? Whisky or laudanum or the like. Why throw himself over a cliff? Seems a foolish way to escape further pain."

I had to concede she was right. An overdose of medication or even a gunshot to the head seemed a more foolproof method. But we didn't know Branok Roscarrock. We didn't know his loves, his hopes, his fears. Lord Gage's impression of him was fifty years old, and while we might have thought to gain a clearer picture of him from the rest of his family, he seemed in some ways to be an enigma to them as well. That, or they were withholding information. Something we'd already suspected.

"Perhaps there's something about that cliff that was meaningful to him," I suggested after fastening my riding boots, standing to slide my arms into the frilled white habit shirt Bree held out for me. "Or maybe it was a spontaneous decision. One born of some extreme pain." I exhaled in frustration as I fastened the four buttons at the front of the shirt. "I'm afraid without more information, it's all purely speculation." But something else to question Dr. Wolcott about.

"What of the goings-on here?" I asked as Bree helped me into a second petticoat and then my riding skirt. "Anything to report?"

"No' unless ye count this cèilidh they're plannin' for this evenin'. The whole house is bein' turned inside oot because o' it."

"It seems quite sudden."

"Aye, though the staff seem to be takin' it in stride. Mayhap they're used to such chaos." She brushed a piece of lint from the gigot sleeve of the jacket before holding it up for me to slip on. "I'll offer to help where I can. If I wriggle my way into their good graces, perhaps they'll share somethin' pertinent to our inquiry."

Even though she'd phrased it in such a mercenary manner, I knew Bree would have offered to help regardless. At her core, she had a kind heart.

Once my sugar-loaf hat with chinstrap was firmly in place, I took up my long whip and paused to check my appearance in the mirror. My skin glowed healthily from the morning's exertions and my eyes were bright with inquisitiveness. "Tell Mrs. Mackay I'll return to tend to Emma before her midday nap."