Page 23 of The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
“One might think, Mrs. Harold? Or you might think?”
She turned her head to look at me, giving me the look of someone who’s just realized that they’ve underestimated an adversary. “What do you know about Violet Markham’s death?” she dropped the overly friendly tone and switched into something more businesslike. “As her cousin, surely you must be interested.”
“I must admit I don’t know much.”
“Let me tell you something then. Mr. Markham is dangerous. There isn’t a villager in Stokeleigh who doesn’t think he murdered Violet, and his first wife too.”
“His first wife died of consumption.”
Mrs. Harold waved a hand dismissively. “That’s what killed her, yes, but that was just the method—he meant for her to die as soon as he married her. He never wanted to marry, you know. He traveled after his father died and thestoriesyou’d hear about the things he got up to. But then the family lawyers convinced him to come back and to wed, to have a son because there are no longer any living relatives to be listed as inheritors. They practically picked a wife for him—Arabella Whitefield—and you couldn’t have found a richer, more pedigreed girl anywhere. But she was frail—everyone knew that—she’d always been frail. Then he took her to Venice—hot, wet, rife with illness—for their honeymoon and she was so weakened by the travel and the weather that she immediately took sick.”
“I think that sounds more like a tragic circumstance than intentional murder.”
“You really think that a man in love, who knew his wife was sickly and weak, would subject her to such a journey? Would take her into such a warm, unhealthy climate? No. He wanted her to get sick. And don’t even get me started on Violet. They fought from the moment she moved into Markham Hall.” Her eyes were far down the path, and something in her voice hinted at more substance than speculation. “And then she took up with Gareth the servant—who used to be such a nice boy—just to spite him. No wonder he snapped and decided to kill her.”
“I’m not sure that qualifies as a certain evidence of homicide,” I said, but inside I wondered…could Violet have really carried on an affair with Gareth? There was a possessiveness to Mr. Markham; perhaps he would be very angry indeed if he discovered his wife had been unfaithful. And our childhood curate had always said that sexual immorality bred other types of sin—perhaps a man so rife with the vice of lust would be rife with others…
“Certain evidence?” Mrs. Harold said. “How about this? The night before she died, they had a dinner party, and of course, my husband and I were invited. They were in rare form that night, fighting from the moment the meal started until the guests started leaving late that night. At one point, he pulled her out of the room, but we could still hear them quite clearly. He told her he’d have no shame divorcing her, and thenshetold him that she would never submit to a divorce and that he’d have to kill her if he wanted free. The next morning, she was cold in the field. And do you know what Mr. Markham did when he found her body? He laughed. He threw his head back and laughed.”
This last comment gave me pause. The thought of him laughing next to Violet’s corpse, shrouded in the fog, her neck at an unnatural angle—it made me deeply uncomfortable. It made me doubt whatever surety I’d felt about Mr. Markham’s innocence. Who could laugh next to the body of his dead wife?
“How do you know?” I asked. “That he laughed?”
She pursed her lips, and a quick glance told me that I had struck upon something unexpected—information that Mrs. Harold was reluctant to share. “I spent the night at Markham Hall that night,” she said. “I had taken ill shortly after dinner, and Mr. Markham extended his hospitality until I was recovered enough to journey home. That morning, I heard the servants talking about it.”
“So the servants saw him in the field with Violet’s body?”
“Yes,” was the hesitant, cagey answer.
She was lying about something, or at least omitting part of the truth. But why?
We rolled up on Markham Hall, shaded and stony even in the bright sunlight, and I was surprised to see Mr. Markham striding towards us before Mrs. Harold had stopped the carriage. In the speckled light that drifted into the courtyard, I could see the faint highlights of gold hidden in his dark hair. He came up beside the carriage and, without a word, slid his hands around my waist and lifted me from the phaeton. He deposited me on the ground, keeping one arm firmly around me.
“Thank you for returning our Miss Leavold,” he said, his voice clipped. “I’m much in your debt.”
“Of course, Mr. Markham. Although she seemed to have wandered from the fold quite willingly.” I couldn’t quite decipher her tone—half-teasing, half-challenging, laced through with something else. Bitterness?
I looked at her as she squirmed under Mr. Markham’s piercing gaze. It was the town gossip confronted with one of her subjects, the gossip feeling both shame and judgment, I decided. Of course, he wouldn’t be unaware of the things she said about him.
Mr. Markham’s arm tightened around me. “I’ll have to keep a better eye on her in the future. Thank you again.”
I knew the polite thing would be to invite Mrs. Harold inside for refreshments, but that didn’t seem to be on Mr. Markham’s agenda. He gave Mrs. Harold a short bow and then turned away, taking me with him and leaving her to drive herself home alone.
“What exactly did you think you were doing, wandering off alone? I had no idea where you were—”
“What I do with my day is none of your business.” I shook off the arm that was still wrapped around my waist. We were in the foyer now, which was several degrees cooler than the outside, and much darker. A portrait of some indeterminate ancestor stared at us moodily, and a low murmur of conversation and laughter told me that the guests were in the drawing room nearby. Which meant that Molly would be nearby. I took a breath and lowered my voice. “I prefer not to spend the entire day indoors. Not in the summer. And you didn’t seem to mind my exploring earlier in the week.”
He softened. “You’re right. I don’t expect you to conform your day to my presence. But I woke up expecting you to be around and you weren’t.” He stepped closer. “I am just so used to getting what I want that when it doesn’t happen, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“I think it’s a little unfair to want me to linger around you all day when…” I trailed off. He didn’t know that I had overheard him and Molly last night and maybe it was better to keep it that way.
His eyes narrowed. “When what?”
“Nothing.”
“Ivy…”
The sound of my Christian name on his lips was intimate, proprietorial. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to hear him say it, over and over again.
