After Sir Horace hastily explained the lack of an appropriate place to hold Miss Stainton, or any female prisoner, for that matter, Glanville had to agree with the magistrate’s proposal. There was little else they could do with her except take her to her sister.

When he met Miss Martha Stainton, however, he was relieved. Here was an intelligent woman who caught on quickly and calmly. Perhaps it was her round glasses, or the fact that she’d listened quite coolly to Sir Horace’s explanation, that made her seem so sensible. In any event, he liked her. Miss Martha Stainton could be trusted to keep her flighty but lovely younger sister well in hand until the matter could be settled.

“I cannot imagine what you had hoped to accomplish, Grace,” Miss Martha said as she waved them all into the widow’s small sitting room, directly off the narrow hallway.

Miss Grace shrugged and let out an exasperated sigh. She looked pale and thoroughly dispirited. “I wanted to see you, and perhaps talk to Mr. Blyth.”

“Well, you should have written, first,” Miss Martha said, glancing around the tiny room.

Miss Grace’s reaction to her sister’s comment was to grow a shade grayer and look a little ill. Pressing her fingers against her mouth, she shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and stared down at the floor. No doubt she regreted her impulsive trip to Kendle.

Blyth was no doubt regretting it, as well. Then there was Glanville’s sister.

Despite Glanville’s attempts to bring her to her senses, Lady Lenora had insisted on believing that Blyth was truly in love with her and she with him. She’d declared that her fortune didn’t matter to the humble curate, failing to notice Blyth’s winces when she made such grand statements.

In fact, Glanville had gone to the church himself that evening to drag Lady Lenora home. Thank goodness she’d apparently thought better of it and had gone elsewhere. He’d certainly seen no sign of her in the churchyard. And there would have been the devil to pay if she’d stumbled upon Miss Grace, speaking with Blyth.

The devil to pay… He frowned. Just where was his sister?

He shifted and almost knocked Sir Horace down in the overly cozy space. With the two men, the two Stainton ladies, and Mrs. Willow, they were practically stepping on each other’s toes. Glanville gestured for the Stainton sisters to sit on the tiny settee while Mrs. Willow moved to a rocking chair near the fire. Despite her widowhood, Mrs. Willow had yet to knock on the door of middle age. Her handsome face was unlined, her blue eyes lively, and her red hair remained untouched by gray.

She started to sit in the rocking chair, but sprang up again to her feet with a glance up at Glanville. “Oh, do sit here, my lord! The chair is old, but very comfortable, I assure you.” Her gaze traveled to Sir Horace. “And you must take the other chair, of course, Sir Horace.” She folded her hands at her waist with a polite smile, obviously preparing to stand in front of the fireplace for however long their visit took.

“No, no, my dear lady,” Sir Horace sputtered, taking up a position near the settee. He spread his plump legs wide and stood sturdily as he gestured to the ladder-backed chair. “Pray be seated.”

She flicked a coquettish sideways glance at Glanville as she moved over to the other wooden chair. With an air of polite flirtation, she eyed him through her lashes as she waited for him to be seated. When he took his seat, she delicately sat on the edge of the wooden chair.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” Glanville said.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Willow interrupted with a smile. “We are honored to have such distinguished guests.”

Clearly, she had missed, or perhaps not heard, the reason for their late visit.

“Of course, while my sister was impulsive enough to come here without writing first, I’m sure you must agree that she is clearly innocent of any wrongdoing,” Miss Martha stated firmly, folding her hands in her lap and staring at Glanville. Her glasses glinted in the lamplight, making her expression unreadable, though her mouth was fixed in a serious, tight line.

Glanville frowned. “I am afraid we must disagree. In fact, the evidence suggests your sister did have a hand—a very active hand—in the tragedy.” He gestured toward Miss Grace. “In fact, she is wearing some of that evidence now, which, I fear, we must insist on collecting before we can depart.”

“Sir Horace?” Miss Martha glanced at the magistrate. Her brows rose above the edges of her glasses as she examined him with an exasperated air.

Clearing his throat, Sir Horace mumbled incoherently for a few seconds before he said, “Unfortunately, well, yes.”

“Wears some evidence?” Mrs. Willow echoed. She looked at Miss Grace, her gaze drifting over the young woman until it came to rest on the dark stains covering the lower half of her dress. Eyes widening, she surged to her feet and pointed a shaking finger at her. “Evidence? Is that blood?” Letting out a moan, her eyes rolled up. She slid to the floor in a surprisingly graceful faint.

“Mrs. Willow!” Sir Horace exclaimed as he hurriedly tried to edge around the settee. Unfortunately, his feet got caught by the legs, and he nearly fell over the settee’s back onto Miss Grace’s shoulders.

With a waterfall movement, Miss Grace poured off the settee to kneel on the floor by the widow. She rolled the woman over to rest her head in her lap and lightly patted the older woman’s pallid cheek. “You have my reticule, Sir Horace! There is a bottle of smelling salts inside.” Reaching up, she held out her hand to the magistrate and shook it impatiently.

Before he could dig her reticule out of his pocket, Miss Martha had pulled a small silver vial through a slit in her dress. She sighed and threw it so that it landed perfectly on her sister’s open palm. The movement was so perfect and practiced that it appeared to have been done hundreds of times in the past.

Watching Miss Grace wave the vial under the nose of the widow, Glanville noted the position of the widow relative to the stains on Miss Grace’s dress. Mrs. Willow’s lacy cap rested against the worst of the discoloration.

Blyth would have lain in just such a position if Miss Grace pulled his unconscious body into her lap.

He studied Miss Grace’s bodice with its clean, white trim. There were no spots of blood anywhere above the waist, nor on her sleeves. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. The cuff of her right sleeve did have some dried, powdery-looking streaks.

Of course, much of the evidence might simply not be visible in the candlelight.

Still, it was interesting, given Miss Grace’s account of her actions that evening. She apparently cultivated the unfortunate habit of grabbing the heads of unconscious persons and wrestling them into her lap.

No wonder her dress was stained.

“What happened?” Mrs. Willow asked in a weak voice. As she raised her hand to touch her temple, she glanced up into Miss Grace’s face. The widow shrieked and fainted again, her hand thudding onto the threadbare carpet.

Miss Grace’s mouth opened in surprise, though she managed to keep her grip on the widow’s shoulders. “Mrs. Willow?” She waved the silver bottle under the widow’s nose until Mrs. Willow pushed her hand away and struggled to escape from her clasp.

“Let me assist you.” Miss Martha rose to her feet. She gripped the widow’s limp wrist and pulled her to her feet.

“My head! Oh, I feel so faint,” Mrs. Willow moaned, pressing one hand to her temple and gripping Miss Martha’s arm with the other.

“You must lie down,” Miss Martha insisted. “Let me help you.”

“No! Not while that girl is in the house! None of us are safe! We shall all be murdered in our beds!” Mrs. Willow pulled away from Miss Martha and stumbled around the settee to Sir Horace. She threw herself into his arms with a terrified moan. “You must take her away at once! Arrest her!”

Sir Horace glanced helplessly at Glanville as he awkwardly patted the widow’s quivering shoulder.

After helping her sister stand, Miss Martha pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose and studied Mrs. Willow with an exasperated frown. “Well, I must say, I would seriously object if you were to arrest my sister, Sir Horace.”

“I will not have her in my house!” Mrs. Willow declared from the safety of Sir Horace’s fatherly embrace. “I refuse to be murdered in my bed!”

“I wouldn’t murder you in your bed if you begged me to do so,” Miss Grace declared. She glanced at her sister and sighed. “Perhaps I could stay with our cousins?”

Miss Martha snorted and shook her head. “They decided our house did not suit them, after all, and sold it over a week ago. I believe they intended to move to Richmond for some reason.” She shrugged. “But no matter. Marcus shall just have to set aside his fusty old notions of propriety and provide us with rooms. After all, I have you to chaperone me, now, and it is only two more weeks until we are wed.” As the sound of her voice faded, her mouth tightened, and she once again pushed her glasses up her nose.

Clearly, it had just occurred to her that having a murderess for a sister might not be ideal if one were expecting to marry soon. Glanville hoped that Miss Martha’s Marcus would graciously overlook the tarnished reputation of the Stainton sisters when Miss Grace was hung for killing Blyth. He hated to see Miss Martha’s life ruined, as well.

Gently pushing the widow away, Sir Horace stepped around the edge of the settee. Brows raised in hope, he glanced from the ladies to Glanville. “Perhaps the simplest solution would be for you ladies to accompany me to Hornbeam Manor. My wife would be quite pleased to have guests, I’m sure.”

A crooked smile twisted Glanville’s mouth. Unlike Sir Horace, he was quite sure that Lady Branscombe would not appreciate her husband bringing two young ladies home with him. Particularly if one of the ladies were suspected of murder.

Smiling with relief, Miss Grace looked at her sister. “That is very generous of Sir Horace, is it not, Martha?”

“Generous. Yes,” Miss Martha replied in a dry voice. “I am sure everyone will be delighted with such an arrangement.”

“Indeed, yes!” Sir Horace agreed enthusiastically. Grinning, he rubbed his plump hands. “You will only need to pack a few things, Miss Martha. A matter of minutes, then we can be on our way.”

“Then it is good that I have only a few things to pack,” Miss Martha said. “May I assume we will be walking to the manor?” Her gaze strayed to the front window. “In the dark?”

Sir Horace stared at Glanville, his mouth open. With a snap, he shut it and rubbed his chin. “Well, yes. There is that. We left our horses at the church when we came here…”

“An excellent place for horses, I’m sure,” Miss Martha commented.

“We hadn’t expected…” Sir Horace raised his hands helplessly and shrugged.

“They had expected to escort me here, obtain my gown, and then be off.” Miss Grace took a step toward the door. “However, there is no reason for you to abandon your room here, Martha. I am the one not wanted here. Unless Mrs. Willow fears that my presence has corrupted you, as well.”

Miss Martha’s chin rose in a defiant habit both sisters seemed to share.

Stubborn. Both of them. No wonder Miss Grace Stainton had returned to Kendle with the intention of convincing Mr. Blyth that he should reconsider his choice of brides. She’d been too stubborn to let him go without a fight.

“I will stay with my sister.” Miss Martha nodded at Sir Horace. “If you will wait five minutes, I will pack my belongings.”

As she passed her sister on her way out of the room, she grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. The women exchanged glances. Miss Martha nodded, pushed her glasses up her nose, and with a twitch of her skirt, left the room.

With a heavy sigh and a hand pressed against her breast, the widow sat down on the settee. “Thank goodness. Though, of course, I am sorry to see her go.” Mrs. Willow shook her head. “I would never have expected… Well, what can you expect? Grief over their father must have affected her mind…” She glanced at Miss Grace and shivered elaborately. Gesturing toward the tiny entryway, she said, “Please—I cannot bear the sight—I beg of you to wait in the hallway.”

Miss Grace flushed, but turned on her heel and stepped quickly to the front door. The door creaked.

“I will wait with Miss Stainton on the porch,” Glanville said.

Sir Horace nodded. He patted the widow on the shoulder and then moved to the cramped entryway as Glanville stepped through the front door.

“Miss Stainton.” Glanville closed the door behind him.

Fishing around beneath the bench on the porch, she nodded to him. With a satisfied sound, she pulled out a portmanteau and turned around to sit on the bench with the bag in her lap.

She glanced up at him, her expression hidden by the shifting darkness. “Afraid I would run away?”

“No.” His lips twitched. “Afraid our delicate widow would faint again if she got a good look at my face.”

A snort of laughter greeted his words. Miss Grace hid her mouth behind one hand and quickly suppressed the sound. “You are not that horrid, as you well know.”

“You mean my very appearance does not fill you with dread and unholy terror?”

“No. And I refuse to add to your conceit by giving you the compliments you are so obviously fishing for.” Her reply began gaily enough, but by the end of it, her head had bent and her voice shook. She gazed down at her portmanteau. Her grip on it tightened until her knuckles gleamed.

He studied her silently for a minute. “Tell me again what happened.”

“I have told you several times already!” Her head jerked up, revealing that the tension in her taut body had tightened and turned her pretty bowed lips into a thin line.

“Tell me again.”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping as her fingers played with the catch of her portmanteau. Her posture spoke eloquently of despair laced with a sense of injustice. “Mr. Cavell will tell you the same thing. I arrived only a few minutes before you did. I went around the side of the church—”

“Why?”

“Because Mr. Blyth often visited the graveyard in the evening to neaten the graves. He said it helped him to think. And he felt sorry for those whose families were gone and who had no one to remember them any longer.”

“How maudlin of him,” he commented.

“How kind, you mean!” Her head jerked up.

“Or just morbid.”

“Oh, why do I even try to speak to you? You are insufferable!”

“And have a face like a bag full of rocks. You mustn’t forget that. Must be my lack of intelligence.” He shrugged, trying not to chuckle. “Or something of the sort. It’s the only reasonable explanation.”

“I absolutely refuse to give you the satisfaction—”

“You can’t just end your story there, you know,” he said, still smiling as he returned relentlessly to his original question. “You came, you saw, you…?” He left the question dangling in the air like an apple held out to a horse.

“Well, I didn’t conquer, if that is what you’re implying. I arrived, I walked around the church, and I found Mr. Blyth lying on the ground. I knelt down to see if I could awaken him, but…” She swallowed and shook her head. “It was too late.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“See anyone?” She stared at him. Although he could feel her gaze, the shadows hid her eyes. They were just dark holes in a face as pale as marble. “What do you mean?”

“Did you see anyone else there?” He gestured to her dress. “If you got that amount of blood on your hands and dress, he could not have been long dead, now could he?”

Her mouth opened and then snapped shut. Her brows furrowed in thought, and she shook her head again before rubbing her fingers against her left temple. The notion was clearly new to her. “I—I do not know.”

“You don’t know if you saw or heard anyone?”

She frowned at him. “I think I heard someone. I am not sure.”

“What did you hear?”

“Footsteps on the gravel path. I’m sure of it.” A smile of hope curved her lips. “I heard someone walk away.”

“Did you see them?”

“No.” She shook her head, the fleeting moment of hope gone. “I thought it might be Mr. Blyth going home.”

“And you didn’t run after him? Try to catch him? After coming all this way to see him?”

“I…” She slumped and rubbed her temple again. “No. I was tired, I suppose. I thought I could see him tomorrow.”

Something in her voice, a sense of relief perhaps, made him comment, “I wonder if you were having doubts about seeing him at all.”

“Of course not! I was sure if I could see him, talk to him—” A pleading tone entered her voice as she leaned forward and peered up at him.

“And yet when you thought he was leaving, you made no attempt to stop him.”

“No.” Her shoulders slumped.

“You do realize that your actions make one wonder if you truly heard anyone walking away.” Crossing his arms, he leaned against the side of the house as he watched her. Her lithe body was so expressive of every fleeting emotion, every surge of hope and plunge into despair. “You might merely hope that the presence of a mysterious third person might turn suspicion away from you.”

She leapt to her feet, gripping her portmanteau in front of her like a shield. “I have no hope of any such thing! You were the one who kept questioning me and made me remember. I had forgotten all about it!”

“How convenient.”

“It is not at all convenient—none of this has been convenient, except perhaps to whoever actually killed poor Mr. Blyth. I imagine my arrival was extremely convenient to him,” she replied bitterly. The portmanteau slipped down to dangle from her right hand. Her head bowed. Then she turned to gaze out at the gloomy lane. “Martha was right—I should not have come. I should have known it would all be useless.”

“A letter would certainly have been less awkward.”

A brief, choking laugh greeted his comment. The sound bordered on hysteria.

Concerned, he reached out a hand before he dropped it abruptly at the creak of the door.

The front door behind them opened. Miss Martha stepped outside onto the porch, followed quickly by Sir Horace. They had barely cleared the doorway before the door snapped shut behind them. The sound of a key turning in the lock broke the silence.

Sir Horace jerked. “Well! Well, yes. There we are, then. Just a brief walk, after all, ladies.”

The sisters exchanged glances. Miss Martha snorted inelegantly and glanced up at the night sky.

Dark gray clouds scudded overhead in thick rafts. As they watched, one massive cloudbank cut off the moon’s silvery glow. The few stars previously visible were hidden as he watched by the turbulence of thickening clouds. Over the ground, curls of mist obscured the hedges and lane.

A cold drop of rain splashed over Glanville’s cheek and trickled down his neck.

“Oh, yes. Just a brief walk into Kendle and then a short mile to Hornbeam Manor,” Miss Grace said, slipping her free arm around her sister’s elbow. She glanced up at the gathering storm clouds. “Lovely evening for a ramble, too.”

Rain pattered over the roof of Willow’s Shadow Cottage. A cold stream established itself, running merrily down the back of Glanville’s collar. He reached over and gently pried the portmanteau from Miss Grace’s grip.

“It could be worse.” Glanville offered an elbow to Miss Grace, blinking water out of his eyes.

A bolt of lightning streaked overhead, lighting up the dripping landscape before thunder exploded nearby. Wind ripped through the trees, whipping and snapping branches and flinging leaves into their faces.

Miss Grace jerked, her hand tightening on his arm as they stepped through the widow’s gate to the narrow lane. “Yes. No doubt it could be worse. I’m sure if I concentrated hard enough, I might even come up with exactly how that might be possible.”