Elise by Jackie Ivie Page B

Everything on her looked to be a dried reddish color. Horror overwhelmed her. I’ve taken a life! She gagged on the recurrent thought.
    “I doona’ hear any cloth moving.”
    “I’ve got to get clean.” Elise stopped her own throat’s motions, swallowed, and then managed to whisper the words.
    “I doona’ hear any water, either.”
    Elise grabbed the pitcher. She spilled water onto the walnut-grained cabinet as she poured. The empty ewer tipped over when she set it down. She ignored it.
    She spilled more water onto the wood as she shoved her hands into the bowl. She didn’t care. Elise splashed water again and again onto her face, chilling her and making it difficult to breathe. She felt for Colin’s soap and started scrubbing. She couldn’t seem to get clean no matter how much soap she used or how many times she rinsed. The soap slipped from her hands, and Elise’s tears started up again as it fell into the water.
    Oh, dear God, I’ve murdered a man!
    She wiped the moisture from her face roughly with a towel. The tears wouldn’t stop, no matter how she sponged at them. Elise buried her face in the towel. She’d killed Sir Roald. She’d broken the number one commandment. There was no penance for that There was no going back. No salvation for her. Ever.
    She recognized the horror in her eyes when she moved the towel away and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mouth fell open to scream, but no sound came. Her nightgown gaped to the waist, and more of Roald’s blood was staining her bared breasts.
    She started ripping the gown from her, and the more of it she got off, the more she ripped and pulled and cried.
    “I did warn you, lass.”
    The hulk of a man was in the space with her, his mouth a slash of a line, his teeth clenched, and his face averted. Then he helped, lifting her out of the mass of cloth at her feet, before setting her back onto them.
    Then he was gone, his head bowed, and his back hunched as he backed from her. Elise heard his steps, then the door, and then complete and absolute silence.

 
    Chapter 7
     
    There was a stag head mounted above Colin’s unlit fireplace. Elise studied it when she wasn’t tossing playing cards onto the table in front of her. The stag’s eyes were on her. They had been all night.
    She knew the duke had been gone for hours. The clock, out in the hall, chimed every quarter hour. According to that clock, it was nearing four in the morning. It would be dawn soon, and still Colin hadn’t come with further information for her. That didn’t bode well.
    Her hands wouldn’t warm. No matter how much she rubbed them together, she couldn’t keep them warm. She’d had the same trouble with her feet, until she’d rifled through the duke’s armoire and found two pairs of socks. He wasn’t going to like that, she supposed. He probably wouldn’t like the fact that she was wearing his cast-off dressing robe, either. It was made of a fleece-type material softer than any fur. It was also patterned in red, green, and black plaid, as was most of his wardrobe. There was an embroidered crest of the MacGowans on the right front yoke. Elise felt the weight against her skin like a rock. There was probably real gold in the thread. That would explain the weight and rigidity of it, and why it chafed her breast every time she moved her arm.
    She wondered what he was doing and how he expected to get away with it. Was he hiding the body, adding his sin to hers? How were they supposed to explain that? Sir Roald Easton couldn’t just disappear. He’d be missed by someone who cared. Surely there was someone, somewhere, who cared for him. Elise was ashamed to admit that she didn’t even know if he had family who would care.
    Was this another lesson she needed to learn? Was the duke, even now, awaiting the arrival of Barrigan’s constable to have her arrested? And why won’t my hands warm? she wondered.
    Elise had been watching the wrong door. She had no warning as the ornate chamber