watching her die.” Higginbottom glanced over at him. “What kind of man could do something like that?”
The depths of compassion revealed by the old doctor’s words took Sebastian by surprise. He stared off across the sunlit field, where sheep grazed lazily in a tableau of bucolic peace that was so cruelly misleading. “A very cold, dangerous one.”
Chapter 10
S ebastian drove back toward the village through pastures scattered with wild scarlet poppies, past a sunlit field of ripe grain where a half dozen or more men moved in a line, their sickles rising and falling in rhythmic sweeps. Behind them came their women, backs bent as they tied the stalks into sheaves, while the youngest children ran across the stubble, laughing and shrieking as they chased rabbits and rats disturbed by the reaping.
It was a timeless scene, repeated every summer on down through the ages. And the attempt to reconcile this image of cooperation and tradition with the brutal reality of Emma Chance’s last desperate moments left Sebastian feeling oddly disconcerted.
In his experience, most murders were messy things, usually spur-of-the-moment and born of rage, fear, or greed. But Emma Chance’s murder hadn’t been messy. Sebastian didn’t know yet what had motivated it, or if her death had been carefully planned. He didn’t even know where she had actually died. But he did know that whoever took her life had deliberately chosen a method that would be easy to conceal even though it required her killer to hold her down for five long, agonizing minutes while he patiently, coldly watched her die. He’d then acted with stunning calculation to conceal his act by staging the body in such a way that her death should by rights have been deemed a suicide.
Taken all together, those actions suggested a killer with a degree of steady calm that was both rare and chilling. The fact that Emma Chance was a stranger to this small, quiet village only served to make her death all the more inexplicable.
Still lost in thought, Sebastian left the curricle in the stable yard with Tom and was headed toward the Blue Boar when he heard himself hailed by a gentlewoman’s carefully modulated voice.
“Lord Devlin? It is Lord Devlin, is it not?”
He looked around to find an elegant little whiskey drawn by a glossy bay pulling up beside him. The small carriage’s body and the spokes of its two wheels were painted bright yellow and, as if in careful coordination with her carriage, the slender, attractive gentlewoman seated on the single padded bench and handling the reins wore a blue-and-yellow-striped spencer and a yellow chip hat tied beneath her chin with a saucy blue satin bow. The only off note came from the shaggy, overgrown mutt seated beside her, its tongue lolling out happily, its curly brown fur shimmering in the late-afternoon sunshine.
“I do hope you’ll pardon my forwardness, my lord,” she said, smiling sweetly as she shifted both reins to her left hand so she could hold the right out to him. “I’m Lady Seaton, of Northcott Abbey.”
He knew who she was. An ethereal woman with fine, fair hair and pretty features, she’d been born Grace Middleton, the daughter of a prosperous Yorkshire baronet. Married at seventeen to Leopold, Lord Seaton, she’d managed to present her lord with a son and two daughters before he died, leaving her a widow before the age of twenty-five.
Seaton had been dead some fifteen years now, which meant his widow must be close to forty. But her carefully guarded complexion still glowed with the dewy softness of a new rose petal, and her form was as slender and supple as a young girl’s.
“How do you do?” said Sebastian, taking the tiny gloved hand she offered him. “Won’t you come in and meet my wife? Perhaps join us for a cup of tea?”
She gave him another of those radiant smiles and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of the dog at her side. “Why, thank you. And I truly wish I could. But I daren’t
The depths of compassion revealed by the old doctor’s words took Sebastian by surprise. He stared off across the sunlit field, where sheep grazed lazily in a tableau of bucolic peace that was so cruelly misleading. “A very cold, dangerous one.”
Chapter 10
S ebastian drove back toward the village through pastures scattered with wild scarlet poppies, past a sunlit field of ripe grain where a half dozen or more men moved in a line, their sickles rising and falling in rhythmic sweeps. Behind them came their women, backs bent as they tied the stalks into sheaves, while the youngest children ran across the stubble, laughing and shrieking as they chased rabbits and rats disturbed by the reaping.
It was a timeless scene, repeated every summer on down through the ages. And the attempt to reconcile this image of cooperation and tradition with the brutal reality of Emma Chance’s last desperate moments left Sebastian feeling oddly disconcerted.
In his experience, most murders were messy things, usually spur-of-the-moment and born of rage, fear, or greed. But Emma Chance’s murder hadn’t been messy. Sebastian didn’t know yet what had motivated it, or if her death had been carefully planned. He didn’t even know where she had actually died. But he did know that whoever took her life had deliberately chosen a method that would be easy to conceal even though it required her killer to hold her down for five long, agonizing minutes while he patiently, coldly watched her die. He’d then acted with stunning calculation to conceal his act by staging the body in such a way that her death should by rights have been deemed a suicide.
Taken all together, those actions suggested a killer with a degree of steady calm that was both rare and chilling. The fact that Emma Chance was a stranger to this small, quiet village only served to make her death all the more inexplicable.
Still lost in thought, Sebastian left the curricle in the stable yard with Tom and was headed toward the Blue Boar when he heard himself hailed by a gentlewoman’s carefully modulated voice.
“Lord Devlin? It is Lord Devlin, is it not?”
He looked around to find an elegant little whiskey drawn by a glossy bay pulling up beside him. The small carriage’s body and the spokes of its two wheels were painted bright yellow and, as if in careful coordination with her carriage, the slender, attractive gentlewoman seated on the single padded bench and handling the reins wore a blue-and-yellow-striped spencer and a yellow chip hat tied beneath her chin with a saucy blue satin bow. The only off note came from the shaggy, overgrown mutt seated beside her, its tongue lolling out happily, its curly brown fur shimmering in the late-afternoon sunshine.
“I do hope you’ll pardon my forwardness, my lord,” she said, smiling sweetly as she shifted both reins to her left hand so she could hold the right out to him. “I’m Lady Seaton, of Northcott Abbey.”
He knew who she was. An ethereal woman with fine, fair hair and pretty features, she’d been born Grace Middleton, the daughter of a prosperous Yorkshire baronet. Married at seventeen to Leopold, Lord Seaton, she’d managed to present her lord with a son and two daughters before he died, leaving her a widow before the age of twenty-five.
Seaton had been dead some fifteen years now, which meant his widow must be close to forty. But her carefully guarded complexion still glowed with the dewy softness of a new rose petal, and her form was as slender and supple as a young girl’s.
“How do you do?” said Sebastian, taking the tiny gloved hand she offered him. “Won’t you come in and meet my wife? Perhaps join us for a cup of tea?”
She gave him another of those radiant smiles and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of the dog at her side. “Why, thank you. And I truly wish I could. But I daren’t
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