Violet rolled her eyes. “He’s only the land steward, Euphie. It isn’t as if he’s a gentleman from a good family. Besides,” she said practically, “George is eight and twenty. She’s too old to cause a scandal.”
“Thank you, dear.” George sounded rather dry.
“A scandal!” Euphie clutched her dish of tea. “I know you will have your little games, Lady Violet, but I do not think we should bandy the word scandal about so carelessly.”
“No, no, of course not,” George murmured soothingly while Violet barely refrained from rolling her eyes—again.
“All this excitement has wearied me, I fear.” Euphie got to her feet. “Will it put you out terribly if I have a small lie-down, Lady Violet?”
“No, of course not.” Violet suppressed a grin. Every day after tea, regular as clockwork, Euphie found an excuse to have a small lie-down. She had counted on her companion’s routine today as she had in the past.
The door shut behind Euphie, and George looked at Violet. “Well? Your letter was incredibly histrionic, dear. I believe you used the word diabolical twice, which seems improbable considering you summoned me to Yorkshire, usually a most undiabolical place. I do hope it’s important. I had to refuse five invitations, including the Oswalt autumn masquerade, which had promised to be full of scandal this year.”
“It is important.” Violet leaned forward and whispered, “Someone is poisoning the sheep on Lord Granville’s land!”
“Yes?” George raised her brows and took a bite from a tart.
Violet blew out an exasperated breath. “Yes! And the poisoner is from your estate. Maybe from Woldsly Manor itself.”
“We did see some dead sheep by the road this morning.”
“Aren’t you concerned?” Violet jumped to her feet and paced in front of her sister. “The servants talk of nothing else. The local farmers are whispering about a witch, and Lord Granville has said you’ll be liable if the poisoner is from this estate.”
“Really?” George popped the rest of the tart into her mouth. “How does he know the sheep have been deliberately poisoned? Couldn’t they just have eaten something bad for them? Or more likely died from disease?”
“The sheep died suddenly, all at once—”
“Disease, then.”
“And cut poisonous plants were found by the bodies!”
George sat forward to pour herself a cup of tea. She looked a little amused. “But if no one knows who the poisoner is—they don’t, do they?”
Violet shook her head.
“Then how do they know he is from the Woldsly estate?”
“Footprints!” Violet stopped, arms akimbo in front of her sister.
George quirked an eyebrow.
Violet leaned forward impatiently. “Before I wrote you, they found ten dead sheep on a Granville tenant farmer’s field just over the stream dividing the estates. There were muddy footprints leading from the corpses to the bank of the stream—footprints that continued on the far side of the stream on your land.”
“Hmm.” George selected another tart. “That doesn’t sound too damning. I mean, what’s to keep someone from Lord Granville’s land tramping into the stream and back again to make it look like he’s coming from Woldsly?”
“Geor-rge.” Violet sat down next to her sister. “No one on the Granville estate has a reason to poison the sheep. But someone from Woldsly does.”
“Oh? Who?” George lifted the tart to her mouth.
“Harry Pye.”
George froze with the tart still hovering near her lips. Violet smiled triumphantly. At last she’d gotten her sister’s full attention.
George carefully set the tart back on her plate. “What possible motive could my steward have for killing Lord Granville’s sheep?”
“Revenge.” Violet nodded at George’s incredulous look. “Mr. Pye bears a grudge for something that Lord Granville did in the past.”
“What?”
Violet slumped on the settee. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “No one will tell me.”
George started to laugh.
Violet crossed her arms. “But it must have been something terrible, mustn’t it?” she asked over George’s chortles. “For him to come back years later and enact his diabolical revenge?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” George gasped. “The servants or whoever has been telling you these tales are bamming you. Can you really imagine Mr. Pye skulking around trying to feed sheep poisonous weeds?” She went off again into gales of laughter.
Violet poked the remaining lemon tart sulkily. Truly, the principal problem with older siblings was that they never took one seriously.
“I’M SORRY I WASN’T WITH YOU, my lady, when you had the accident,” Tiggle puffed behind George the next morning. The lady’s maid was fastening an interminable row of hooks on the sapphire sack dress George had chosen to wear.
“I don’t know what you’d have done, except end up in the ditch with us,” George addressed Tiggle over her shoulder. “Besides, I’m sure you enjoyed the visit with your parents.”
“That I did, my lady.”
George smiled. Tiggle had deserved an extra day off to spend with her family. And since her father was the proprietor of the Lincoln inn they’d stopped at on the way to Woldsly, it had seemed an opportune time to travel on and leave Tiggle to catch up in a day. But because of the accident, Tiggle hadn’t arrived that much later than they had. Which was good, because George would’ve made a mare’s nest out of dressing her own hair. Tiggle had the hands of an artist when it came to taming George’s messy locks.
“It’s just that I don’t like to think of you alone with that Mr. Pye, my lady.” Tiggle’s voice was muffled.
“Whyever not? He was a perfect gentleman.”
“I should hope so!” Tiggle sounded outraged. “Still. He’s a bit of a cold fish, isn’t he?” She gave a final tug and stepped back. “There. That’s done.”
“Thank you.” George smoothed the front of her gown.
Tiggle had served her since before George had come out, so many years ago now. She had laced and unlaced what must be a thousand gowns and had lamented with George over the frizziness of her orangey-red hair. Tiggle’s own hair was a smooth golden blond, the preferred color of all those fairy tales. Her eyes were blue, and her lips the requisite ruby red. Indeed, she was a very lovely woman. Were her life a fairy tale, George should be the goose girl and Tiggle the fairy princess.