Daniel asked whether she intended to stop the summons.
Catherine ignored the question.
She told him that if anybody learned what had happened, she would say he had threatened her.
Daniel understood that the announcement was not a confession offered in trust.
It was another lock placed on a door that had never belonged to him.
Richard Blackwood returned earlier than Catherine expected on a wet Thursday evening.
His arrival turned the manor into a hive of frantic servants and shouted instructions.
Daniel was repairing a stair rail in the rear corridor when he heard boots crossing the marble entrance floor.
Richard’s voice carried upward as he asked why his wife’s rooms were locked during the afternoon.
The question made Daniel’s hands go cold.
He had not been inside her rooms that day, but he knew Catherine might say otherwise if she felt cornered.
He placed his tools in their box and moved toward the workshop stairs.
Before he reached the landing, a pistol cracked somewhere near the west gallery.
The sound was followed by a cry and the heavy impact of a body against wood.
People rushed from the kitchen, but Richard ordered everyone back.
Daniel saw a young stable hand named Peter lying against the wall and holding his shoulder.
The boy had carried a sealed message upstairs and apparently entered at the wrong moment.
Richard stood above him with a pistol in his right hand.
He said Peter had startled him and that the discharge was accidental.
Peter’s blood darkened his sleeve, and nobody dared challenge the explanation.
Daniel helped the kitchen cook, Aunt Mercy, bring clean linen while Richard retreated to his study.
Mercy pressed the cloth against Peter’s wound and told Daniel that a man who blamed his weapon for his own anger would blame anybody for anything.
Catherine descended twenty minutes later dressed in a pale blue gown.
She looked at Peter, then at the marks Richard’s boots had left on the polished floor.
She ordered that the boy be moved out of sight before dinner guests arrived.
Daniel felt a wave of disgust so intense that he nearly spoke without thinking.
Peter was seventeen and had been sent upstairs at her instruction.
Catherine’s first concern was the appearance of the house.
Mercy caught Daniel’s wrist and shook her head.
Her warning prevented an outburst that would have endangered all three of them.
After midnight a wagon stood beside the carriage house with its wheels already greased.
