The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(54)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

And then the rats…

Harry shook his head. What he couldn’t understand was why Granville hadn’t killed him at once. When he’d woken the day after he’d been caught at the stream, there’d been a moment when he had been stunned just to find himself alive. Why? Why capture him alive when Granville surely meant to kill him anyway? They kept telling him to confess to killing Will’s gran, but surely that didn’t really matter to Granville. The baron didn’t need a confession to hang him. Nobody would care much about Harry’s death or would protest it, except maybe Will.

Harry sighed and leaned his aching head against the mildewed stone wall. That wasn’t true. His lady would care. Wherever she was, either in her fancy London town house or her Yorkshire mansion, she’d weep when she heard of her lowborn lover’s death. The light would go out of her beautiful blue eyes, and her face would crumple.

In this cell he’d had many hours to ponder. Of all the things in his life that he regretted, he regretted that one thing the most: that he would cause Lady Georgina pain.

A mutter of voices and the scuff of boots on stone came from without. Harry cocked his head to listen. They were coming to beat him again. He flinched. His mind might be strong, but his body remembered and dreaded the pain. He closed his eyes in that moment before they opened the door and it all began again. He thought about Lady Georgina. In another time and place, if she’d not been so highborn and he not so common, it might have worked. They might have married and had a little cottage. She might have learned to cook, and he might have come home to her sweet kiss. At night he might have lain beside her and felt the rise and fall of her body and drifted into dreamless sleep, his arm draped over her.

He might have loved her, his lady.

Chapter Fifteen

“Is he alive?” George’s face looked like a piece of paper scrunched up and smoothed out again. Her gray dress was so rumpled, she must have been sleeping in it all the way from London.

“Yes.” Violet hugged her sister, trying not to show shock at the change in her appearance. She’d only been gone from Woldsly less than a fortnight. “Yes, he’s alive as far as I know. Lord Granville isn’t letting anyone see him.”

George’s expression didn’t lighten. Her eyes still stared too intently as if she’d miss something important if she blinked. “Then he might be dead.”

“Oh, no.” Violet widened her own eyes frantically at Oscar. Help! “I don’t think so—”

“We’d know if Harry Pye was dead, Georgie,” Oscar cut in, rescuing Violet. “Granville would be crowing. The fact that he isn’t means Pye is still alive.” He took George’s arm as if he were guiding an invalid. “Come into Woldsly. Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea.”

“No, I have to see him.” George flung Oscar’s hand off as if he were a too-eager vender importuning her with wilted flowers.

Oscar didn’t turn a hair. “I know, dear one, but we need to show strength when we confront Granville, if we hope to get in. Better to be fresh and rested.”

“Do you think Tony got the message?”

“Yes,” Oscar said as if repeating something for the hundredth time. “He’ll be on the road right behind us. Let’s be ready for him when he comes.” He put his hand on George’s elbow again, and this time she let him lead her up Woldsly’s front steps.

Violet followed behind, absolutely amazed. What was wrong with George? She’d expected her sister to be upset, to cry even. But this—this was a kind of harrowing, tearless grief. If she heard today that Leonard, her summer lover, had died, she would feel a certain melancholy. Maybe shed a tear and mope about the house for a day or two. But she wouldn’t be as devastated as George seemed to be now. And Mr. Pye wasn’t even dead, as far as they knew.

It was almost as if George loved him.

Violet stopped in her tracks and watched the retreating back of her sister leaning on her brother. Surely not. George was too old for love. Of course she’d been too old for a love affair as well. But, love—real love—was different. If George loved Mr. Pye, she might want to marry him. And if she married him, why… he’d be part of the family. Oh, no! He probably had no idea which fork to use for fish, or how to address a retired general who was also a hereditary baron, or the proper way to help a lady mount a horse sidesaddle or… Good Lord! What if he started dropping his Hs!

George and Oscar had reached the drawing room, and Oscar looked around as he guided her in. He saw Violet and frowned at her. She hurried to catch up.

Inside the drawing room, he was helping George to a seat. “You’ve ordered tea and refreshments?” he asked Violet.

She felt her face heat guiltily. Quickly she leaned out the door and told a footman what was wanted.

“Violet, what do you know?” George was looking at her fixedly. “Your letter said Harry was arrested but not why or how.”

“Well, they found a dead woman.” She sat and tried to order her thoughts. “On the heath. Mistress Piller or Poller or—”

“Pollard?”

“Yes.” Violet stared at her, startled. “How did you know?”

“I know her grandson.” George waved the interruption away. “Go on.”

“She was poisoned in the same manner as the sheep. They found those weeds by her, the ones that were by the dead sheep.”

Oscar frowned. “But a woman wouldn’t be so stupid as to eat poison weeds like a sheep.”

“There was a cup by her.” Violet shuddered. “With some kind of dregs in it. They think he—the poisoner—forced her to drink it.” She looked uneasily at her sister.

“When was this?” George asked. “Surely someone would have told us had they found her before we left.”

“Well, it appears they didn’t,” Violet replied. “The local people found her the day before you left, but I only heard the day after you’d gone. And there was a carving, an animal of some sort. They say that Mr. Pye made it, so he must have done it. Murdered her, that is.”

Oscar darted a glance at George. Violet hesitated, anticipating a reaction from her sister, but George merely raised her eyebrows.

So Violet soldiered on. “And the night you left they arrested Mr. Pye. Only no one will tell me much about his arrest, except that it took seven men to do it and two were very badly wounded. So,” she inhaled and said carefully, “he must have put up quite a fight.” She gazed expectantly at George.