What a Lady Needs. Kasey Michaels

      “Excuse me, Kate, for this indelicate question, but I have to know,” Simon said, “as I’m already building a picture of this in my head. Val, were his breeches on or off?”

      “On,” Valentine responded, his smile lopsided, at last losing the glowering expression he’d arrived wearing. “But buttoned incorrectly. Otherwise I might have been tempted to choke him with them. That boy needs some straightening out, with no thanks to the claptrap his father fed him. I ordered him to present himself to me—properly buttoned—in Gideon’s study in one hour. If you knew what he said to me—” Again, he looked at his sister. “Never mind.”

      “Don’t look at me like that, Val. I don’t need to know everything. Besides, I’m busy building my own unlikely pictures, although I’m having some trouble painting one of you being the stern voice of reason and maturity.”

      Valentine looked relieved she hadn’t pressed him for more. “Don’t pin all your hopes on that eventuality, Kate. I may bring home my points by repeatedly dunking him head and shoulders into a horse trough until he either drowns or promises me he understands.”

      They all laughed, but then Kate remembered the last piece of Valentine’s tale. “If you’re busy schooling Adam, does that mean we can’t continue the search until this afternoon?”

      “No,” Valentine said, extracting a large black key from a pocket in his hacking jacket, “you two can manage well enough on your own this morning without me, I’m sure. It may be time to broaden the search from the house to the grounds, anyway. Now let’s get this over with, not that there can be much of anything to see.”

      Kate looked to the heavy iron doors, suddenly not so anxious to go inside the family tomb as she had been the moment she’d heard about the theft of her father’s body. She’d never been inside the mausoleum, not in all of her life. No Redgraves had died in her lifetime except her parents, and Trixie was adamant about leaving the dead in peace, even going so far as to say she’d probably haunt anyone who dared disturb her rest with weeping or the cloying smell of too many flowers.

      Now Kate found herself wondering if her grandmother feared death, and deliberately avoided any reminders Redgraves weren’t immortal. It certainly couldn’t be just any mausoleum that bothered her; she’d just tripped merrily off to a pair of funerals. Or was it that she couldn’t face evidence of her only son’s death in particular?

      “Kate, are you coming?” Valentine called to her. “This was your idea, remember?”

      “I remember,” she said, allowing Simon to take her hand as he stood on the marble steps, to assist her. “You can let go now,” she reluctantly whispered as they followed Valentine into the high-ceilinged, dome-top crypt. It was both cold and dim inside, the only light provided by the leaded glass panes in the ceiling and two small stained-glass windows, one definitely a recent replacement, as its many-colored panes were grime-free. Clearly even Mrs. Justis and her small army of maids considered the mausoleum out of bounds between interments.

      That explained why it had taken nearly twenty years and a fallen tree branch for anyone to discover her father’s body had gone missing. It didn’t explain Trixie’s avoidance of the final resting places of both her son and husband.

      Or was Kate now looking at everything she believed with new eyes?

      “You won’t see much if you don’t open your eyes,” Simon told her softly, leaning in close to her as if he knew she was all but shaking in her boots. “Stacked to the dome on three sides. Extremely impressive. There must be more than a hundred tombs in here.”

      Kate kept her chin lowered and peered upward through her lashes, not really wanting to see. Simon was right. Everything was excruciatingly neat, almost mathematically so; row upon row of long cubicles, each fronted with marble and inscribed with a name and two dates. They’d started at the top, and descended from there, row by row, as if the tombs were a linear depiction of the Redgrave family tree.

      The family must have dug up any ancestors who had been planted elsewhere and brought them here when this enormous mausoleum was built. And wasn’t that...disturbing.

      On the right wall there were still four rows of empty shelves. Twenty more bodies and the mausoleum would be filled. They looked like dark, empty maws, awaiting their prey.

      Kate looked away, feeling ashamed. She’d never considered herself fanciful, but she could swear all these generations of Redgraves were calling to her; pleading fix this, don’t allow us all to be shamed by the actions of a few.

      “Here it is, Kate,” Valentine said, directing her attention to the last opening on the fifth shelf. “Gideon thinks they chiseled out the stone and then carefully put it back, but with inferior mortar. That’s what happens when supposed gentlemen are forced to put their hands to real work. The stone was found on the floor, cracked in two, and Barry’s coffin gone. You can see bits of mortar sticking to the iron shelving and the stone, as well. Now can we get the hell out of here?”

      “In a moment,” Simon said, still holding Kate’s hand as he approached the violated tomb, but then passed by it to the next one. “‘Charles Barry Redgrave, Sixteenth Earl of Saltwood.’” He rubbed his hand across the stone. “It looks as if something was affixed here, just below the dates, and then removed. See the holes, and the damage to the stone? As if someone went at it with a chisel, and rather angrily at that.” He leaned in closer. “A coat of arms, perhaps?”

      Valentine repeated Simon’s action, and then began examining other stones, walking around the room, stopping here and there. “Well spotted, Simon. It looks as if each earl sports a replica of the Redgrave coat of arms, all done up out of silver and colored enamels. I suppose we need to replace my grandfather’s, and Barry’s, as well, if we can find it. You’re certain it didn’t just loosen and fall out?”

      Now Kate took her turn in front of the stone, running her gloved fingers over it, still able to feel the small chinks in the otherwise flat surface. “But wouldn’t both have been found on the floor when Gideon came to inspect it after the servants’ report about the crypt being empty? Do you think they were stolen?”

      “They’re silver, Kate, so it’s possible. But why steal only two when you can take them all? Besides, Dearborn actually keeps the only key inside a locked box, and that key with his ring of butler keys that never leaves him. Nobody comes in here unless they’ve got his permission. Any other suggestions? A ghostie wielding a hammer and chisel, perhaps?”

      Kate pulled a face at her brother and turned to leave the mausoleum. She didn’t know what she’d hoped to find, or feel, or learn here. She’d just known she’d had to come. Now all she wanted was to be gone, flying across the fields of the West Run with Daisy, the chill of the stone tomb and the stench of stale air replaced by the warmth of sunlight and a clean, fresh breeze. She needed to take herself as far from death as she could get.

      “Here, I’ll boost you up,” Simon said from behind her, even as his hands clamped about her waist and she was lifted high, then settled into the sidesaddle with such ease it was embarrassing.

      “You didn’t have to do that,” she told him, adjusting the military shako hat that had slipped down over her eyes. “I could have managed. My brothers never believed in coddling me, and I actually much prefer it that way. I often ride alone on the estate, and they felt I should know how to remount if I fell off—which I never have.”

      “That very nearly makes sense, except for the part about you riding out without a groom in tow, which is bloody stupid.” He handed her the reins. “Very well, remind me to do you no more favors.”

      Rough and tumble. That’s what he’d said was how his father had described his younger son. And for all Simon’s outward polish, clearly something about her allowed him to speak and act as his real self. She believed she could be either flattered or insulted, and immediately decided on flattered. Especially since it allowed her to be herself.

      “I have reminded you, repeatedly. I’m not helpless, and don’t care to be made to feel that way.” She raised