Chapter 38-3

--- By the time Hoss had finished drying off and changing his clothes into cleaner drier garments his meal was sitting steaming in the study along with his Master who pouted most unbecomingly for having to wait on the answers he’d wanted for the last two days. “For God’s sake! What is he doing, preening like some dandy!” William barked at the room, receiving yet another annoyed glare as she sat across from him sipping her tea. “Yes, William I imagine that’s exactly it.” Nan remarked, sarcasm dripping from her every word.  “Nathan Hoss is taking your precious time to clean and dry up just to look especially beautiful for you.” She stated, with a roll of her eyes. “I had no idea your ladyship could see my intentions so well.” Hoss’ voice rang out jokingly as he entered the room beaming at his Master who glared at him like and ill tempered bull and Nan who had to hide her soft laughter behind her hand. “I don’t give a good god damn about your intentions man. I want to know why you sent me no more information than a single line telling me my wife was dead!” William shouted, thrusting up out of his seat so quickly sent the heavy object skidding backward a few inches. “Quite right Sir,” Hoss nodded curtly, his jolly smile replaced with a more somber expression. “When I discovered your late Lady was dead I had only just found her. The police had discovered her body several hours before.” “And how, pray tell, did she die?” William snapped, impatiently. “Did she fall? Did a horse run over her? Did she drown?” On this Hoss hesitated, “She was murdered.” “What?” William asked. Of the many possible ways he had thought his wife’s life had ended, murder had been among the rather long list of possibilities, but it had also seemed the most farfetched of the lot. “The Chocolates she gave Jamie. They were sent to her…by one of her lovers.” Hoss explained, keeping a keen eye on his Master as he spoke. “You mean to tell me my wife’s lover killed her?” William queried, the very statement seeming utter nonsense even as he asked it. Men were putty in Sophia’s hands and well she knew how to mold and form them to her will, she’d done it to William well after she had left him bitter and broken. “No Sir.” Hoss shook his head. “Her lover’s wife.” “Oh, well that makes more sense.” William replied with an accepting nod of his head as he turned back to his seat. “Are the police now looking to this lover’s wife for the murder?” William asked, as he took his seat, calmer now that he knew the police would be pointing no fingers at him for his wife’s sudden end. “No Sir, it would seem that after the woman sent the chocolates to Lady Horton under the name of her husband, she shot him and then drowned herself in the pond near their residence. Apparently she discovered a letter to Lady Horton outlining a plan for the two of them to run away to America.” Hoss concluded, with a light shrug of indifference. “So the police aren’t looking to William for any of this?” Nan asked, slight disbelief that her greatest fear of William be accused for a crime he had not committed seeping into her words. “Not all Ma’am.” Hoss shook his head. “They’d had some suspicions when the issue of Lady Horton and Sir William’s divorce was discovered, but once Lady Horton’s lover was found alive—“ “Alive?” Both Nan and William echoed as the full weight of their attention was brought down on Hoss and this unexpected bit of information. “Aye,” Hoss nodded. “Apparently after his wife fired the pistol she did not bother to see if her aim was true. She simply assumed him dead when he hit the floor. In truth he suffered nothing more than a small graze to the head.” “And he simply admitted the affair to the police?” Nan questioned, “The police had already discovered the letters when they found Lady Horton’s lover unconscious on the floor of his home. A neighbor had heard the shot and sent her son for the town sheriff, they arrived within moments of the incident. Sadly, however they did not discover the whereabouts of his wife until the next morning when her body was found caught in a stand of cattail by a fisherman.” “How was Sophia discovered?” Nan asked, her eyes painted firmly on the ground. “Nan—“ William began only to stop when her eyes rose to his. Cold determination to hear what William thought she should not squelching his protests. With a resigned nod William looked to Hoss who it now seemed waited for William’s permission to tell what he to thought unfit for his soon to be mistress to hear. “Much like Jamie’s dog ma’am. She came stumbling out of her room coughing up blood until she died. It was neither quick nor painless. But at least you can sleep knowing you didn’t order the death of an innocent woman.” “Innocent?” Nan repeated the word looking to Hoss as though he was a fool for saying such. “If it were not for her carelessness, Willey would not have died and my son would not be mourning the death of his first and only pet.  If it were not for her greed, another woman would not had ended her life because Sophia Horton deemed she was entitled to a man she had no business being within the first place. That woman was no innocent, whether she meant to hurt Jamie or not. She is just as much responsible for her death as the woman who caused it.” Nan stated unrelenting in her final opinion of a woman who had deemed herself entitled to nearly everything when she had earned none of it. “Well, then.” William breathed, sinking back into his chair, staring into the empty air as he thought on all he’d heard. “I’m now a widower. The police aren’t going to blame me for my wife’s …well rather timely death.  I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.” William shrugged leaning forward as he dug into his waist coat pocket and rose from his seat taking three strides forward until he knelt before Nan and produced a small modest ring, at least by William’s standards, of silver set with a single marquise Sapphire and two tiny diamonds flanking its sides. “Nan Harris, will you marry me?” “No.” she answered almost instantly.