High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Page 8

Despite the old-fashioned porcelain and brass fixtures, the bathroom was modern and utilitarian. The man believed in his creature comforts, Grace reflected. There was plenty of hot water, fluffy giant bath towels, and bars of vanilla-scented French-milled soaps.

  A few gallons of hot water soaked the ache out of her tired bones and tense muscles.

  Grace took her time, lathered in vanilla suds, leisurely massaging shampoo through her hair, and using a hot spring’s worth of H2O to rinse away the grime and fear of the past days.

  Feeling pleasantly drained, she wrapped a towel around her hair and padded into the bedroom to find her suitcases lying on Peter Fox’s four-poster bed. Rosy light from a silk-shaded lamp cast mellow warmth over the masculine furnishings. The bed looked big and inviting.

  Grace changed into a fleecy pair of navy sweats with St. Anne’s logo, and poked her head out the bedroom door. The tea things still sat on the glass-topped curio chest. There was no sign of Peter. It didn’t take much imagination to guess where he was. Dismissing her queasy stomach, Grace cleared away the tea tray. The man was mad. You couldn’t conceal a murder. What honest person would want to?

  “Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Wasn’t that what Lady Caroline Lamb had written about Lord Byron? It might as easily have been written about Peter Fox.

  There was still no sign of Peter by the time Grace finished washing up the tea things. Weariness dragged at her like Jacob Marley’s chains. She felt as though she were moving in a fog. No wonder she couldn’t think straight.

  Checking the front door to be sure it was locked, Grace wandered into Peter’s bedroom with its oyster watered-silk wallpaper and dark, heavy furniture.

  She shoved her suitcases off the bed, crawled on the too-firm mattress and snuggled into the eiderdown. In seconds she was fast asleep.