Especially as the magistrate, Mr. Henrickson, was doing his damnedest to make Katrina feel as if she were somehow responsible for all this.
“You say you knew this Lord Landon?” He peered hard at Katrina. “And yet you do not know why he was attempting to climb into your bedroom?”
Miss Seraphina Athwart, proprietress of the Quayside Circulating Library and one of Katrina’s closest friends, glared at Mr. Henrickson from her place beside Katrina on the low settee. “Just what are you implying, sir?” she demanded, eyes narrowed dangerously behind her wire-rimmed spectacles.
He glared right back. “Miss Athwart, I don’t believe this has anything at all to do with you.” He smirked. “Perhaps it’s best if you went back to your little bookstore and left this to me.”
“It is not a little bookstore, but the premier circulating library on Synne,” she shot back coldly. Phineas, her ever present green-and-red parrot, glared with equal chill from her shoulder.
“I think what my friend is trying to say,” Miss Adelaide Peacham, owner of the Beakhead Tea Room, cut in with a complacent smile that did not reach her dark eyes, “is that Miss Denby has told you several times she has no idea why Lord Landon was attempting to gain access to her room. She has not seen the man in four years, after all.”
“So she says,” the magistrate drawled, disbelief ripe in his voice.
“Yes, she has said,” Bronwyn, formerly Miss Pickering but recently married and now the Duchess of Buckley, bit out as she looked over her spectacles at the man. “I sincerely hope you are not doubting her word, Mr. Henrickson.”
The magistrate, however, was not the least bit daunted by the possibility of insulting a duchess, if his patronizing glance Bronwyn’s way was any indication.
Blessedly Lady Tesh intervened just then, preventing the situation from getting any uglier. “Mr. Henrickson,” she snapped, bringing her cane down on the floor with a sharp thud lest the man dare try ignoring her, “I do believe you are through here. You can see my companion is overcome and exhausted beyond bearing. Why, she looks as if she is about to faint.”
Katrina blinked. Did she? She had thought she was doing quite a good job at keeping her composure, considering the circumstances.
But a quick jab in the ribs from Seraphina had her realizing what Lady Tesh was attempting to do. Placing her teacup on the low table, she pressed a hand to her forehead and gave a low moan, swaying in her seat.
Mr. Henrickson did not look the least convinced. But what could he do? Especially when Miss Honoria Gadfeld, the vicar’s eldest daughter, rose and shooed him toward the door.
“It was so very kind of you to make certain our dear Miss Denby is well,” she said with a syrupy smile. “I will be certain to tell my father how wonderfully you have handled this whole horrible mess. I am sure I can speak for him when I say God will look well on you for the work you have done here this night.”
“Oh!” Mr. Henrickson looked startled, then pleased as he was hustled toward the door. The man may be a blowhard, but he was a pious blowhard. Or if not pious, at least eager to earn his way into heaven by kowtowing to the local vicar. “Well, you know I do my best, Miss Gadfeld. That I do.”
“Of course you do,” she said complacently. “Do take care returning home; the sun is not quite up yet. And do give our best to your lovely wife.”
Before the man could reply, Honoria pushed him out the door and closed it firmly in his face. She leaned back against it, her pleasant expression disappearing as she rolled her eyes heavenward.
“The blathering idiot,” she mumbled.
“Kinder words than I would have used,” Seraphina muttered darkly.
“Doaty lavvy heid,” Phineas squawked in his strong Scottish brogue, ruffling his feathers in outrage.
“Quite right, my dear,” Seraphina murmured, reaching up to give his neck a scratch. “I could not have said it better myself.”
Katrina, however, was hardly aware of the exchange. The moment the man’s footsteps could no longer be heard she was up and racing across the room to the door that connected into Lady Tesh’s bedchamber. Yanking it open, she dropped to her knees and intercepted Mouse as he came tearing into the room, throwing her arms about him and pressing her face into his warm neck. He wiggled under her, attempting to reach her face so he might bathe it with his lolling tongue, his long tail thrashing to and fro in his joy at being invited into the group once more.
Katrina did not realize anyone had noticed her exit from the group until a soft hand landed on her shoulder and an even softer voice sounded in her ear. The scent of baked goods, Adelaide’s signature perfume, surrounded Katrina like a hug.
“They aren’t going to take Mouse away, Katrina,” her friend said gently.
“How do you know that?” she demanded, her voice muffled by the dog’s smooth fur. “What if Mr. Henrickson blames Mouse for Lord Landon’s fall? What if they try him for murder? What if they sentence him to death?”
Which, even as she babbled question after question, she knew was ridiculous in the extreme. Yet Katrina could not stop the panic from rising in her. Mouse was all she had left, the one thing her brother had gifted her, proof that he loved her. She could not lose the dog, this one last connection to him, too.
Anyone else might have laughed at her for her idiocy. Not Adelaide, however.
“I have every faith that Mouse shall not be tried for murder,” she soothed. Disentangling Katrina’s arms from about the dog, she assisted her to standing. “Now,” she said with a bracing smile, “why don’t we get you back to bed? You must be exhausted after such a troubling night.”
“Oh, yes,” Honoria chimed in, rushing over to them. “That’s a capital idea, my dear. Katrina, once you’ve gotten some rest you will be able to view the whole ordeal in a more positive light. Rather,” she amended sheepishly as Adelaide shot her a disbelieving look, “not exactly positive, as a man has died—”
“What Honoria is trying so valiantly to say,” Seraphina interrupted in her brisk, no-nonsense way as she approached, “is that things will not look quite so dire once you have rested. Exhaustion has a horrible effect on a person’s mental capabilities. Don’t you agree, Bronwyn?”
“Absolutely,” the woman in question answered, joining the group that surrounded Katrina. “You are not thinking clearly, and rightly so. Rest will provide you with a clear head.”
As one the four friends began to herd Katrina toward the sitting room door. She should be glad for their concern, she told herself. Yet the panic swelled up, choking her, filling her with so much tension she thought she would burst.
And finally she did, breaking away from arms that should have given comfort but instead felt suffocating. It was only as she stood apart from her dear friends, the self-styled misfits called the Oddments, that she realized why she was about to jump out of her skin.
“It does not matter how much sleep I get,” she managed, hugging herself about the middle. “The fact of the matter is, this is a huge scandal, one I won’t be able to escape from.”
At once her friends exploded in protest. Mouse, still in the middle of them all, looked at each one in turn, huge tongue lolling from his mouth, utterly clueless as to the chaos his exuberance had caused.