She reached for the pistol still dangling, unfired, in his right hand. He let her take it, and she turned it over in her hands before pointing it toward the open window, shutting one eye to take aim.
He had to admit, she had a damn good firing stance.
“How did you recognize a Finch pistol?”
She lowered the weapon, turning it over in her hands to examine it. “Sir Lewis Finch’s daughter is a close friend. I spent years in Spindle Cove.”
Spindle Cove.
He thought back to Ridley’s abbreviated report on the place.
Mondays are country walks, Tuesdays sea bathing. They spend Wednesdays in the garden, and Thursdays . . .
“Thursdays you shoot,” he said.
“So you’ve heard of it.” She smiled at him. “I’ve been in Sir Lewis’s own gun room, and I’ve never seen an example this fine. It’s rather light and slender, isn’t it?”
“Special issue,” he told her. “Only a few dozen exist.”
“Remarkable.” She handed the pistol back to him. “How did you happen to get one?”
“I believe I’ll ask the questions right now.” Piers replaced the pistol in his drawer, then turned to her. “Explain yourself. What on earth are you doing, climbing through my window?”
“Right. That. You see, this afternoon Mr. Fairchild . . . that’s the vicar, if you recall.”
“I recall.”
“He came to call on Lady Parkhurst. Something about the parish holiday program. The music selection or such. It seemed as though it would take them hours to negotiate, so I knew it was my chance.”
“Your chance to what?”
“To call on Miss Caroline Fairchild. She’s on my list of suspects. You do remember my plan from the other morning?”
He lifted a hand to his temple. “I recall it, yes.”
“Well, once I scanned for the C’s, I was left with five suspects. I have to start eliminating them somehow. If Caroline Fairchild was engaging in a secret love affair, and she knew her father would be absent for hours, that would be the perfect time for her to plan an assignation. Would it not?”
Piers didn’t know how to argue with that reasoning. Irritatingly enough.
“So I claimed that I’d fallen ill with a migraine and went to my room. I told the maids I was not to be disturbed. Then I locked the door and slipped out the window.”
“Your window is nearly twenty feet above the ground. For that matter, so is mine.”
“Yes, of course. But there’s a convenient little ledge that runs beneath all the windows, and from the northwest corner of the manor it’s a short leap to the plane tree.”
He set his jaw and tried to dismiss the image of her making a “short leap” from a second-floor window to the branch of a tree. “Do go on.”
“And then I cut across the meadows and walked into the village.” She sat down on a bench at the foot of his bed and began to work loose the laces of her boots, the soles of which bore clear evidence of her walk across pastures and down muddy country lanes. “I went to the vicarage and asked for Miss Fairchild. And she was there. Alone.”
“Not in the arms of a seducer.”
“No. In fact, she seemed lonely and only too glad for the visit. A sweet girl, but I don’t get the impression that she’s ever tasted adventure. She certainly hasn’t read any good novels.”
She kicked off her boots, then drew her feet up under her skirts, sitting cross-legged on the bench.
Piers decided he might as well be seated, too. He dropped into an armchair.
“I think it’s safe to cross Miss Fairchild off my list of suspects,” she said.
“What do you plan to do when someone asks how you were simultaneously in your bedchamber incapacitated with migraine, and down in the village calling on Miss Fairchild?”
She waved her hand. “Oh, no one will question it. The days all run together during a country visit. It’s impossible to recall whether one went picking apples on Monday or Tuesday, and was it Wednesday we had the morning rainstorm? It will be assumed to be a matter of innocent confusion if it’s ever brought up. Which it likely won’t be. You know how it is.”
Piers did know how it was. Not only did he know, he made use of it. The habit of paying attention to detail when no one else around you did . . . it gave one a distinct advantage.
But if Charlotte Highwood was paying attention, that was one less advantage he had over her.
That worried him.
“Anyway, I planned to climb back up the tree and slip into my room. I’d left the window propped open. But when I came back, it had slid shut.”
“So you came down the ledge to my window instead.”
“Well, what else could I do? Enter by the front door? Confess that I’d lied about being ill and escaped out the window?”
What else, indeed.
Piers braced his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with both hands.
She continued, “Later tonight, well after the house is asleep, I’ll sneak down to the housekeeper’s office, borrow her chatelaine, and let myself back into the room. Or”—she lifted a single finger—“we could stage a fire.”
“You are not starting a fire.”
“Not a real fire. Just a false alarm to get everyone out of bed and give me a chance to slip back in.” She rose from the bench and rounded his bed, sitting down on the edge of it. “We’ll decide later. I could use a nap while you go down for dinner. I don’t suppose you could stash a sandwich in your pocket and bring it up for me? I’m famished.”
She reclined onto her elbow. Atop his bed. Partially dressed. And according to her “plan,” she proposed to stay there for the better part of the night.
No. This would not do.
He rose to his feet and began rolling his uncuffed sleeves to his elbows. “I will open the door to your room.”
“I told you, it’s locked from the inside.”
“Leave that to me.”
He opened the door a crack and peered into the corridor. After waiting and listening for a few moments to ensure no one was coming, he turned to give her the signal to follow.
“You have a bit of shaving soap.” Her fingertips grazed a patch of skin tucked under his jaw. “There.”
The softness of her touch lingered.
She cocked her head to the side and gazed at him, making a thoughtful noise. “I’m just realizing I’ve never seen you without a coat. You’re built rather more solidly than one would suspect.”