Ivory and Steel Read Free Page A

No, I won’t be still.” She took another shaky step toward her sister. “Is Louisa—”
    She broke off. Her vision might still be a little hazy but her sense of smell was returning in full force. She’d visited the hospital often enough over the last few months to recognize that sickly combination of blood and bodily fluids that invariably meant death. An unnatural pallor touched Louisa’s rouged cheeks and a red stain spread across the carpet beneath where she still sat.
    Louisa… Rising nausea choked Phyllida and she swallowed, fighting it down. Louisa… She turned away, clutched Lord Ingram’s sleeve, then buried her face against his shoulder. He stiffened, then his reluctant arm closed about her. She shivered, cold, numb, unable to think or feel.
    After a long minute she realized the Runner spoke, but his words made no sense. “What?” she managed to gasp.
    Mr. Frake clucked his tongue. “I didn’t mean you to see her quite yet, miss, not until you was feeling more the thing.”
    She nodded, her cheek brushing the smooth green velvet of Lord Ingram’s coat, and hurriedly disentangled herself. “That-that’s all right. I had to know sometime.” Her eyes burned but no tears forced their way down her cheeks. This time when Ingram pressed her into her chair she didn’t resist. “How…”
    “Stabbed, miss. With her fan.”
    It took a moment for this statement to penetrate the fog that enveloped her. Her head came up slowly and an almost uncontrollable urge to giggle seized her. “Stabbed with a fan?” Her voice shook and the effort to control it proved too great. “That-that’s impossible!”
    “So one might think, miss.”
    “Then how—”
    “The outer sticks, miss. The ivory on this one here seems to have broken off. Only a thin overlay, it was, covering a cheap steel blade.”
    This time she did giggle, and almost couldn’t stop. “They-they assured me it was solid ivory!” she managed at last.
    “You were in charge of purchasing the fans, miss?”
    “Yes, of course I was. Oh, how dare they sell me inferior merchandise! They knew it was for a charity endeavor. If that isn’t just like those tradesmen. I never should have trusted them.” She babbled, she knew, but couldn’t stop. Louisa…
    Mr. Frake cleared his throat. “No way you could have known you was being cheated, miss. Not unless you went and broke one of them. M’lord, if you and the lady wouldn’t mind looking the other way?”
    Lord Ingram positioned himself in front of Phyllida. She peered around him only to see the Runner bending over her sister’s body, doing something with the fan. Suddenly she had no desire to see. She closed her eyes tightly and clenched her gloved hands until they hurt.
    “There we are,” Mr. Frake said after a moment. “Nasty-looking thing, I must say.”
    Lord Ingram turned to look, unfortunately enabling Phyllida to see as well. The Runner wiped blood from a thin blade, which had been pulled mostly free from the flimsy casing of broken ivory fragments. The chicken-skin fan, with its fine-boned support, hung at a sharp angle from the top. Someone, Phyllida noted with horrible clarity, had filed the point of the steel to a needlelike sharpness.
    Mr. Frake looked up, directly at her. “Do you know of anyone who would have wanted the marchioness dead?”
    “How-how could anyone—” She bit her lip in a forlorn attempt to stop her chin quivering.
    “Someone did, miss.”
    Phyllida nodded and forced the rapidly escaping remnants of her composure back into line. “She-she could be a little difficult at times.” She swallowed, her throat achingly dry. This isn’t real, her mind kept repeating, this can’t have happened, not to Louisa…
    The Runner waited in silence, watching her, pencil poised. He needed more.
    “She-she could be a trifle self-centered,” she managed at last. “She could throw tantrums, but she only wanted to be loved !”Her control crumbled. Tears welled over the rims