“The one you had your way with,” Zeb said savagely. “Remember? In this house?”
Bram looked utterly blank. “What are you babbling about?”
“You forced yourself on one of the maids!” Zeb was spitting furious. It swamped his usual feelings towards Bram, the complicated, ugly mix of anger, sorrow, and weary resentment. “This visit or a previous one, I don’t know which, but you screwed one of the housemaids and she did not want you to! Jesus Christ, you can hardly have forgotten! Or did you simply not notice you were committing a rape, you prick?”
“I did nothing of the sort.” Bram didn’t look defensive, or guilty, or even self-justifying, an expression with which Zeb was all too familiar. He just looked confused. “You must mean Hawley.”
Zeb gaped at him. Bram returned an equally baffled look. “Ishould hardly trouble Wynn’s staff in my position as his heir, Zebedee. That would be foolish in the extreme.”
“Wait,” Zeb said. “Have you bedded—pawed, touched, had any form of congress with—any of the staff here? Ever?”
“No.”
“The housemaid with dark hair? She wears it pulled back?”
Bram gave a tiny shrug, its sheer indifference more convincing than any oath. Zeb put his face in his hands.
He didn’t believe that Rachel had lied; he knew too many people who had suffered intimate assaults, and how much shame was attached to victims, to dismiss any such claim, and in any case, it hadsoundedtrue. He was also depressingly aware that Bram had a talent for believing his own bluster.
And with all that, he couldn’t help thinking the bloody man was telling the truth. Maybe he just wanted to believe that. Maybe he was a fool.
He looked up. Bram was staring at the wall, mouth moving.
“Stop it,” Zeb said. “What are you going to do now? I suppose Elise’s body will have to be transported to London?”
“A funeral. Yes. No. It must be here.”
“She has family in London.”
“I can’t leave,” Bram said. “Don’t be a fool. Hawley will take full advantage if I do.”
“Advantage of—?”
“Jessamine. He will secure her unless I act. He has already stolen a march on me, thanks to Elise.”
Zeb needed a moment there. “Do you not think you shouldbury your wife before planning your next marriage?”
“Elise squandered my inheritance from my father,” Bram said. “How much more must I lose because of her?”
The library door swung open. “There you are,” Wynn said. He was dressed in funereal black like Jessamine, who stood behind him. Hawley was at his other shoulder, with the rather blurry expression Zeb was getting used to: he wondered how many bottles the man could possibly have brought with him.
“This looks like a delegation,” Zeb said.
Wynn gave a sombre inclination of his head. “Rather, a ceremony. Dear Elise’s passing should be marked, to pay respect to her spirit although her poor broken body cannot yet be interred. Such a lovely woman reduced to cold clay. How she will be missed, by so many of you.”
Zeb gave sincere thought to punching Wynn in the face as hard as he possibly could. He couldn’t look at Bram or Hawley.
“You will all please accompany me,” Wynn went on. “We will take her to the crypt.”
“Crypt?” Zeb said. “Wynn, the doctor is coming, and the police. They will want to see her.”
“They can see her laid out with respect in the appropriate place.”
“But I don’t think we should be moving her around, should we? More than we already have, I mean.”
“We must,” Jessamine said in a thready voice. “To know she is here—no, she is gone, gone forever, but her body is here, lying cold, in the house. To know every time I walk through the hallthat that dead thing is there, waiting, behind a door—I can’t bear it. It’s too horrible.”
“My Jessamine is sensitive,” Hawley said. “Do give her nerves some consideration.”
