The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery, L.C. Sharp [beach books .TXT] 📗

She gave up on stealth. As she sat up, gore squelched beneath her. She turned her head slowly, afraid of what awaited her.

Godfrey lay on his back, naked, the sheets rolled down to his waist, his brawny, hairy chest matted with blood. His pale blue, protuberant eyes were open, but he saw nothing. Because a knife was deeply embedded in his chest.

Juliana leaped out of bed, breath catching in her throat, her mouth open in a silent scream. As she concentrated on her husband’s pale, goggling, dead eyes, her breath came back in a single, great gasp.

When she screamed again, this time people came running.

Chapter Two

Events happened outside of Juliana, as if she was sitting in the middle of a glass sphere, one that allowed her to see and hear, but not to participate. She had forced that condition on herself for most of her life, for tedious attendances at court when she was dressed like a doll in stiff brocades, sitting through a recitation by someone who fancied herself an opera singer, smiling at suitors who saw gold coins where her eyes should be. But this time she couldn’t break out. She was trapped.

Her mother-in-law screamed, and in the same breath berated her. “You should not have made such a noise. Now all the servants know. Have you no restraint, no sensibility?”

Striding around the room like a giant bird, her loose gown making her appear even larger, the Marchioness of Urmston poured out her fury. “I do not know what I was thinking, arranging your marriage to my beloved son.” Her ladyship wrung her hands, standing staring at the body of her son, her face whiter than her face paint. Her hair, still in its curling rags, added to the grotesquerie of her appearance.

“Oh my God!”

The marquess stood in the doorway, taking in the gory scene in one glance. Turning, he grabbed the footman by his arm and shoved him toward the housemaid. “Get out! All of you except that one, go!” He indicated Wood, Juliana’s maid. “You stay! Your mistress will need you.”

Grabbing the housemaid, he forcibly shoved her out of the room. Three other servants followed, all except Wood. The woman’s tendency to tell Juliana’s father everything she did or said mattered less now than having someone witness what happened. The marquess looked as if he was ready to kill her, and perhaps the presence of her maid would make him think twice.

His face was heading swiftly toward purple. His prominent blue eyes, so like his son’s when he’d been alive, bulged from his head and veins stood out on his neck. He bunched his fists.

“You killed my boy!” he shouted at Juliana, the words rolling over her head. “You will die for this.”

Wood brought a robe. Juliana slipped her arms in the sleeves. Nobody looked away. They stared at her gore-bedaubed body as if she was an exhibit in a horror show. The robe would be ruined, but Juliana was glad of its shelter.

The marchioness, pale as death, strode across the room and delivered a sharp slap to Juliana’s left cheek. If Juliana had not grabbed the nightstand for support, she would have tumbled to the floor. At least she could feel the sting from the blow.

“How could we have allowed such as you into our house?” her ladyship cried. “What foolish impulse led us to believe we could trust you?”

Spinning on one heel, she flung herself away. “We have lost all we fought for.”

That was her first thought? She was not as grief-stricken as Juliana had supposed. Her fury was from thwarted ambition, not grief. After all, she had other sons. Godfrey was—had been—her second son.

“Our son is dead,” the marquess said blankly. He turned to the window, the glimmer of tears in his eyes.

Juliana was too shocked to weep. The glass sphere separating her from the rest of the world served as an insulator. She could not stop the fine tremor running through her body, so she folded her arms and hugged herself tightly.

“I did not do this,” she said into the silence.

She couldn’t remember much after the last time Godfrey had taken her. She had definite patches in her memory, but she knew with absolute certainty that she hadn’t killed her husband.

Could she have done this without recalling it later? Surely not. Not unless she had run mad; and while she was not herself, she could think rationally. Surely mad people could not do that.

No doubt the news would reach her parents, if it had not already. Enough people had seen this room, and servants’ gossip traveled faster than lightning. They would be here soon enough. Or send a message that she was dead to them. Juliana would welcome that, but she doubted it would happen.

While she was alive, she had value. As the only offspring of a great house, she bore the burden of inheritance on her shoulders.

“Who else could have done it?” her mother-in-law demanded, her thin mouth hard, her eyes flinty. “Did someone enter the room in the early hours and slaughter him with you by his side? Or did you call for someone? Did you have help? What has my son done that you would do this to him?”

The only thing Juliana’s wayward mind retained was that denial. In her very bones she knew she had not done this thing. “Why would I do this? I married him, didn’t I?”

She cut off what she was about to say next. The marchioness might have killed her for it. But in her heart, she knew that her husband—her late husband—deserved to die for what he’d done to her. And what he’d planned to continue to do. Juliana knew because he’d told her, tortured her with the reminder that this was her life to come.

The woman walked around her, the silk of her blue gown hissing. She stopped a foot away, glaring at her.

She eyed Juliana as if assessing a statue or a side of meat. Totally impassively. Her anger had