“It’s just a dead sheep,” Jack bit out.
But it wasn’t. She’d seen dead animals before, rabbits ready to be skinned, a deer flung across cook’s table, goose plucked for Christmas dinner.
Never had she seen a sheep with gossamer encircling its neck, two letters daubed in scarlet upon its fleece, blue silk, slashed and bloodied, laid around it.
“That’s your waistcoat, Jack,” she murmured into his chest, “and those are my stockings around its neck. We left them at the cove after the picnic.”
He cursed low, and she struggled against his covering hands. “Let me see.”
“No.”
“Blast it, Jack,” she growled. “Don’t mollycoddle me.” And she thumped his chest, snaking in his arms.
Mr Miggens was bent over the lifeless animal, must have heard her scream. A few ladies hovered at a distance but Mr Sewell and the professor kept them back from the gruesome scene.
Tamsyn closed her eyes as she glimpsed the animal’s slashed throat, the letters formed in blood upon its thin summer fleece.
F T
She bit her lip, tried to recall their new meaning and banish this corruption, this poison.
The demon was alive and she felt…
Furious. Indignant.
No fear arose and no constriction gripped her throat. Surrounded by the lushness of this late summer, the solid presence of Jack, the squawk of crows and warming sun, she seethed.
Remnants of her youthful temper awoke and she relished the sensation, anger raging, fiery and unbound.
That poor animal.
How dare that fiend attempt to scare her. She would not succumb.
Not this time.
Mr Miggens covered it with his coat. “It’s fresh. We’ll bury it and–”
“No,” Tamsyn ventured. “It’s senseless to waste mutton. We should deliver it to the Bassett’s kitchens as this is their land.”
Mr Miggens’s eyes flickered. “Of course, Miss Penrose.”
She nodded, pulling away from Jack to scan the slopes.
Was the Frenchman still here? Smirking at their discovery? Ready to snigger at her fright?
Only boulders loomed large – enough cracks and crags to hide an army.
Breathing deep, she pivoted to Jack and spoke with full voice. “I fear Mr Sewell may be correct: life can be macabre, but no daring giant did this, merely a gutless coward.”
∞∞∞
“Is it a tree?”
Tamsyn tilted her head to better view the painting propped on her dressing table chair. “No.” She sighed. “That’s Jack.”
“Oh.” Lowdy tilted her head also, as though it would make all the difference. “I can see a resemblance in fact. All solid trunk, sturdy branches, luxuriant leaves and graceful twigs.”
Laughing, Tamsyn nudged her and they both turned to perch on the bed, Lowdy with hairbrush and comb in hand, ready to begin the untangling.
