Facing the door, Benton sat on a low bench created from full sacks of flour. She raised a hand to shade her eyes against the lanterns’ glare.
Once again, Julian caught and held Melissa’s hand. Letting his thumb gently stroke her palm, he studied Benton, then somewhat wearily asked, “Who sent you here?”
He caught the glint of her eyes beneath her raised hand, but her lips remained set in a thin line.
He let several seconds tick past in silence, then almost conversationally inquired, “Were you ordered to poison the countess, or was that your own idea?”
Her lips compressed as if she was battling an impulse to reply, yet the moment passed, the impulse clearly faded, and she continued to say nothing at all.
Just like the other two.Julian thought the words, but didn’t voice them.
Felix gave vent to a frustrated sound. “You could at least tell us how many of you there are.”
Benton frowned at that, then wonder of wonders, said, “We don’t know, do we?” She jutted her chin in the direction of the cell where Mitchell and Manning languished. “They didn’t know about each other or about me, and I didn’t know about them. We were only told what we were supposed to do and when—in what order things were to happen.”
Julian frowned. “So there could be others we haven’t yet caught?”
Having grown accustomed to the light, Benton lowered her hand and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
Now she could see Benton’s face clearly, Melissa studied it. She also heard what seemed to be candor in the other woman’s voice.
Gently, Melissa nudged Julian aside. He glanced at her, but deigned to shift so she wasn’t peering around him. Facing Benton, she finally succeeded in catching the maid’s gaze. “Why won’t any of you name the man who has put you up to this?”
Benton regarded her steadily, if guardedly, for several seconds, then sighed. “At least you’re asking the right question.”
“And the answer?” Melissa prompted.
Benton continued to look at Melissa. It was plain Benton, as much as Mitchell and Manning, felt constrained by some powerful compulsion from uttering their master’s name. Equally obviously, unlike Mitchell and Manning, Benton was trying to find some way out of the bind.
Eventually, she drew breath and, her head and shoulders lowering in defeat, sighed. “All I can tell you is that, if the other two are like me, then it’s because the man pulling our strings has each of us over a barrel. We can’t save ourselves for the same reason we had to do what he ordered us to do. If we talk and tell you who he is, he has the power to ruin…” Melissa expected her to say “us,” but instead, Benton continued, “Things we hold very dear. More dear than our lives. So if we talk, we lose everything, guaranteed. If we don’t talk? Well, then, it all depends, doesn’t it?”
Confused, Melissa asked, “Depends on what?”
Benton’s head tipped as if she was considering an outcome the rest of them couldn’t see. Then she softly said, “On whether he succeeds, I suppose.”
She stopped speaking after that, and no matter what questions they posed, they got no more from her.
It was late when, with Felix and Damian, Melissa and Julian trooped back up the main stairs.
With weary goodnights, Damian and Felix peeled off to their own rooms, leaving Melissa and Julian walking hand in hand down the corridor to the earl’s apartments.
Julian opened the door, and they went in.
No wriggling golden body came to greet them. Melissa glanced at Ulysses’s empty blanket. “I told Jolene to take him down to the kitchens.”
Julian grunted. “I’ll have to remember to tell Cook to reward him with the juiciest bone she can find.”
Melissa had told them of the pup’s insistence on playing with her and how his rope had knocked over the mug of milk she might otherwise have drunk.
He considered that fact and how close they’d sailed to disaster, then pushed such thoughts aside. He was in no mood to dwell on what might have been.
He followed Melissa into her room. Jolene, he was pleased to note, had made herself scarce.
Good.
He shut the door, and halfway across the room, Melissa paused and looked back at him. They’d fallen into the habit of him going to his room and disrobing, then waiting until Jolene left before he joined Melissa in her big bed.
Tonight, however…he couldn’t find that much patience.
