Then Comes Murder

Dancing with Devils (part four)

All the exhilaration of her ride evaporated by the time Nora prepared for dinner. She'd washed off the layer of mud and horse sweat, and let Caroline style her hair as she continued to read the molding tome on botany. Normally, Caroline might have made some comment on its peculiarity, but her cousin seemed too focused on twisting the pale blue ribbon ribbon through Nora's dark hair to notice. Since the moment she'd entered the small bedroom, Caroline had been caught in a cloud of worry.

While they normally were happy to share a bed, Caroline had not been able to refuse the decorated bridal bedroom the duchess had offered. Its small connecting room, charmingly furnished, had been promised to the dowager countess. Nora, without an official chaperone, was to share a room with Margaret; Lady Blakemore, a widowed viscountess, was a perfectly acceptable chaperone according to everyone who did not know her. However, since Caroline's mother, had yet to arrive, Caroline had instead insisted Nora be nearest to her until Lady Leighton came to claim it.

"And that is if she comes to claim it," Caroline said, unbothered.

Where Nora did not know her mother, Caroline celebrated the absence of the dowager countess. Daughter of a wealthy French chevalier, Lady Leighton had permanently returned to Bordeaux shortly after the death of her husband. I've never felt welcome on British soil, she'd said with an imperious sniff. On her rare visits, she had taken the time to criticize her daughter as the only form of endearment she was capable of expressing. She claimed that her barbed comments towards Caroline's posture, her figure, her French pronunciation were a sign of the most maternal and abiding affection.

Despite their lack of shared blood, that same maternal affection seemed to extend to Nora. If Caroline made the occasional mistake that needed correction, then Nora was a walking disaster, and Lady Leighton loved nothing more than to point out each and every flaw. Caroline needed suggestions, Nora needed direction.

Nora had been barely fifteen when she'd first met her cousin. Caroline had been thin, pale, and half-hidden in her mother's shadow. Both of them fair, and made fairer still in their mourning colors, had turned to measure her. Elle est trop grande, Lady Leighton had cried to her daughter before continuing in rapid French, as if it were her daughter's fault to have inherited such a giantess for a cousin. Gawking and insecure, Nora had not known how to mention that she understood all of the cruel words that were being said about her. It had been Caroline who had met Nora's eye and vocally decided, then and there, that she would live with her cousin in England.

After that, how could Nora not have loved her cousin? Caroline had inspired a sense of bravery in her, for what could be more courageous than standing up to one's parent? Nora smiled at her in the reflection of the looking glass. Caroline, however, did not return it. Her brow was furrowed, a concerned knot at its center. It was not thought of her mother that worried her cousin, but that of Nora's father.

"Though I do hope your father makes it in time," she said softly.

Doctor Nicholas Fane was notorious for his difficulty with punctuality. He was the type of man to be lost in a conversation, or a book, or a thought, and lose track of time and self and reason. A slave to his curiosity, something so inconsequential as time could not stop him from himself. Tall and bespectacled, his passion for knowing was met only by the love he had for Nora and Caroline.

"Is that what worries you?" Nora asked. "He wouldn't miss this for the world."

"He should have arrived yesterday," Caroline said, biting at her thumb. "What if he isn't here by morning?"

"He will be here soon," Nora said soothingly. "Newmarket's a bit further than London, is all."

"But what if he isn't?"