“I’m sure we’ll be passing through Welshpool on our survey,” Oliver said carefully. “If you’d like us to carry a message to your sister, we’d be happy to oblige.”
Mrs. Griffiths’s eyes glittered. “Would you? How kind.” She reached into her cloak and withdrew a sealed letter. “I would be very grateful. My sister worries about me, you see. Working in such an isolated place.”
Oliver took the letter, noting it was sealed but not with Penharrow’s crest. A personal letter, then. Or at least, meant to appear so.
“My pleasure, Mrs. Griffiths. Though I confess, I’m surprised the Earl keeps staff at a hunting lodge so far from London. Surely, he’s in Cardiff at this time of year given the threat of snow?”
“His Lordship is in London. Then he will likely go to his castle in Cardiff. But the lodge must be maintained, of course. And there is the young lady to care for.”
She said it carefully, watching his reaction.
Oliver kept his face neutral. “Young lady?”
“His Lordship’s ward, Miss Megan.” Mrs. Griffiths’s voice dropped slightly. “Poor lamb, has been with His Lordship since she was a child. Quite devoted to her, he is. Never lets her out of his sight when he’s in residence. When he’s away, she’s left with us for safekeeping.”
The words were carefully chosen.Devoted.Safekeeping. But the tone suggested something else entirely.
“That must be lonely for her,” Oliver ventured. “Isolated in a hunting lodge with no company her own age.”
“Oh, she has her gardens. His Lordship ensures she wants for nothing.” Mrs. Griffiths paused. “Materially speaking.”
There. The crack in the facade. Mrs. Griffiths might work for Penharrow, might depend on him for her livelihood, but shedidn’t approve of what he’d done to Megan, and she was willing to speak, however obliquely, to a stranger who might listen.
Oliver decided. “Mrs. Griffiths, might I buy you a cup of tea? My assistant and I have been on the road for days, and I confess I’d welcome conversation with someone who knows the area well.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think that would be acceptable, but I can’t be long.”
Five minutes later, they sat in a corner of the tavern’s empty common room—empty because Oliver had paid the innkeeper handsomely for privacy. Webb stood by the door, ostensibly on guard but really preventing interruptions.
Mrs. Griffiths wrapped her gnarled hands around her teacup and looked at Oliver with those shrewd old eyes.
“You’re not really surveyors, are you?”
Oliver considered lying, then decided against it. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. You move like a soldier. Him too.” She nodded toward Webb. “I’ve seen enough soldiers to know the way they carry themselves.”
“I was cavalry. Peninsular War.”
“And now you’re here, in Wales, asking questions about the Earl of Penharrow.” It wasn’t a question. “Did he kill someone you cared about?”
The bluntness shocked him. “What makes you think?—”
“Because that’s the only reason a man like you would come to a place like this.” Mrs. Griffiths took a sip of her tea. “His Lordship is a very dangerous man. Especially this side of the border, Mr. Somerset. Or whatever your real name is. Men who oppose him have a habit of meeting with accidents.”
He didn’t enlighten her about his title. The smaller number of people who knew the better. “I’m aware.”
“Are you?” She leaned forward. “My cousin worked for His Lordship. Ten years ago. He saw something he shouldn’t have—a man beaten to death. My cousin tried to go to the magistrate.They found him in the river a week later. Drowned, they said. But my cousin was a strong swimmer.”
Oliver felt the cold rage that had been his companion since James’s death solidify further. “Why do you stay? Why work for him if you know what he is?”
“Because I’m sixty-five-years old with no family but my sister, and the Earl pays well. Because if I left, he’d find someone else to keep house, and that someone might not care what happens to Miss Megan.” Mrs. Griffith’s voice hardened. “Someone needs to look after that poor girl. God knows no one else will.”
“Tell me about her.”
Mrs. Griffiths was silent for a long moment, her eyes distant. “She came to the lodge when I was first employed. I was told she was His Lordship’s ward, a distant relation orphaned young. She was just a child then. Six, maybe seven years old. Pretty little thing with the strangest eyes. Green like spring leaves.”
Oliver’s hands tightened on his own cup.
