Little Coquette Read Free

muslin afternoon frock the woman wore. The bonnet and slippers, all her toilette suggested she was dressed for afternoon. He guessed her age to be in the thirties. Not in the first blush of youth, but not hagged either. Her face was a pretty heart shape with a slightly retroussé nose. She must have been pretty when she was alive. The state of the remains suggested she had not been in the water for more than a day.
    How had she come here? At least there was no sign of foul play. She had not been strangled or stabbed or beaten. She could not have come in a carriage or her driver would have reported her missing. The outfit, those kid slippers, said she had not ridden. Had she walked, stopped to look at the river, and slid down the bank? But the water was not deep enough to drown her. It was not over her head. Perhaps she had bumped her head? He hadn’t the stomach to remove her bonnet and examine her scalp. Let the sawbones do it. It was odd that her body had been so firmly lodged beneath the water. Almost as if someone had tried to wedge her under a rock or submerged tree.
    He looked down at the slippers and noticed the left one was badly scraped, the silk stocking torn. How was it possible, if she had accidentally fallen in? Perhaps she had not died here at all, but her body may have been brought here to conceal it. But why? If he had not happened to catch his hook in her jacket, she might have remained there for weeks or months, even years, until any hope of identifying her was gone.
    He was sorry Miss Trevelyn had been exposed to such a horrific discovery. Not that she had seemed very upset. Any normal lady would have pitched herself into his arms, sobbing and swooning, but not that cold wench. “She hasn’t been in the water long,” she had said, as if it were a dead fish she was looking at and not a woman. Who could she be?
    His gaze drifted across the river, to the soaring walls of Trevelyn Hall. Sir John’s mistress was said to be a redhead. No, it was impossible. The poor girl was some transient who had met with a mishap. It was ridiculous to think for a minute that this was his neighbor’s mistress. What the devil would she be doing here? Although it was odd that Sir John had been home for a week....
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Chapter 2
    The body found in the river caused a great commotion in the neighborhood. Everybody except Sir John was speaking of it. Lady Trevelyn felt the death might upset him when he was ill and had ordered Lydia and the servants not to mention it. Lydia had been seeking an outlet for her energies and felt she had now found something worthwhile to do. She would drive into Kesterly and see what the constable had discovered. She would then undertake to notify the drowned woman’s family in some kind and thoughtful manner. There might be something she could do for them. The woman’s toilette had not suggested poverty to be sure, but it was not quite the toilette of a lady either. A milliner, perhaps, to judge by that gaudy bonnet. She would see that the woman had a proper burial.
    This was the sort of good work Lady Trevelyn could approve of, especially when it cast Lydia in Lord Beaumont’s path. Naturally he would be taking an interest, as the body had been found in his river. He would see how kind Lydia was, how concerned for the less fortunate.
    “I shall go with you, Lydia,” she said at once, and called for the carriage to be driven the two miles through pleasantly undulating farmland to Kesterly, the village where they bought life’s small necessities. For more important purchases such as bonnets, they went the extra few miles to Watford.
    John Groom let the ladies out at the Rose and Crown and stabled the carriage. Lydia did not share her mama’s enthusiasm to see Lord Beaumont striding down the High Street toward them. She feared he was bent on the same errand as herself.
    To show him she had not got the idea from him, she said at once, “We are just on our way to the constable to find out what we