Page 58 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

"Then go." I faced him. Whatever was in my face, he received without flinching, which is one of the several unreasonable things I lo—that I tolerated about him. "Go and spend your morning, Your Grace. Get my brother his window."

He bowed—to me, in my own morning room, as formally as at a presentation before the Queen—and went.

Grandmother arrived at half past eleven in a state of magnificent wrath.

Honeycutt had scarcely pronounced the first syllable of her title before she was past him and into the morning room, stripping off her gloves.

"I have had this morning's events," she said, "from my maid, who had them from the coal merchant, who had them from that dreadful Pettigrew woman's second footman, who stood at the railings and watched my grandson—the Earl of Rosehaven—taken from his own doorstep in irons like a common thief.” She sat, spine nowhere near the back of the settee next to me, and leveled the look that has been correcting this family's posture for fifty years. "You will now tell me everything, Rosalynd. Omit nothing. I shall know if you do."

I told her what could be told. The body in Kew. Father's pistol beside it, taken from Cosmos's study by hands unknown. The quarrel at the Argosy a month ago, overheard, and sworn to now by a witness. Steele's solicitors, Steele's barrister, Steele at the Yard this very hour arranging that Cosmos be held there and not at Newgate.

Grandmother heard it through without once interrupting, which frightened me more than questions would have.

"A quarrel," she said when I had done. "My grandson—who once apologized to a wasp—struck a man at his club. Men do not strike men at their clubs over nothing, Rosalynd. What was the quarrel about?"

"That is not mine to tell."

"Not yours—" She set down her gloves. "Child, they will hang him for the want of it."

"They will not hang him, Grandmother. The matter touches a confidence I have no right to break, not even for you. Ask me anything else."

She looked at me for a long moment, and something moved behind the wrath—approval, perhaps, arriving against her will.

"Your mother," she said, "was exactly this maddening."

Honeycutt suddenly appeared at the door. "Lady Edmunds, my lady."

Claire came in white to the lips and stopped short at the sight of Grandmother. But then something in her face set, and she came forward past Honeycutt who promptly quit the room.

"Lady Rosehaven." She curtsied. "I am glad you are here. It spares the telling twice."

"Claire—" I began.

"No, Rosalynd." She said it gently, and took the settee facing my grandmother and me—committed, chin up, hands still. "You have been keeping my confidence. I could hear you keeping it from the hall. I will not remain quiet one more minute while this family protects me at Cosmos's expense." She drew a breath. "The quarrel was about me, Lady Rosehaven. Sir Basil Crane was blackmailing me. He claimed that I had a hand in my husband's death—that the draught which stopped his heart was helped to its work by me. It is a lie. But it is a lie an inquest could be made to love, and I paid him to keep it from one. I paid him for months. When Cosmos discovered it, he went to that club, and told Crane the payments were ended, and struck him. For me. All of it for me."

She sat back, her hands shaking.

The drawing room was silent. Out in the hall the tall clock counted through it.

"Well," Grandmother said at last, in a commonsensical manner. "At least it was about something."

At this point Honeycutt, with the worst timing of his distinguished career, brought in the refreshment tray—tea, seed cake, and a dish of potted-meat sandwiches whose aroma arrived in the room a full stride ahead of him.

Claire stood up so fast the settee shifted.

"Forgive me," she managed. "I—forgive me—" and was gone into the hall with a hand pressed to her mouth.

"Poor creature," I said, half rising. "It is small wonder, with all she carries—the worry alone would turn anyone's⁠—"

"Sit down, Rosalynd,” Grandmother ordered. She had not moved but was looking at the door Claire had gone through. Her expression had changed entirely. The wrath was gone. Something else had taken its place—a shrewdness so old and so absolute that it silenced me mid-sentence. “Take the food away, Honeycutt. Leave the tea.”

“Of course, my lady.” He left with the offending items.

And then we waited as the clock in the hall went on counting.

Claire returned some minutes later, gray about the mouth, steady by an act of will, murmuring something about the heat of the morning.

Grandmother let her sit. She let her settle her skirts and fold her hands and lift her chin.