The Third Duke's the Charm (27 page)

“You don’t sound very convinced, my lord. Why else are we here? If they had wished to harm us, they certainly had every opportunity.”

He
wasn’t
convinced. A young debutante locked in a room with a man who had a reputation for seduction?

When he looked at it that way, the angle reflected an interesting light on the situation.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, her slender, shapely form wrapped in the concealing folds of the coverlet, and she regarded him with discomforting directness. “If you will excuse me for saying so, Lord Andrews, you are much more likely to have enemies than I am.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed with a hint of cynical practicality, “but would they exact vengeance by locking me in with a beautiful young lady?”

Read on for a preview of the next captivating

Regency romance from Emma Wildes

A MOST IMPROPER RUMOR

Available March 2013

London’s most infamous murderess settled into the chair in his study in a swirl of expensive Lyon silk and a hint of floral perfume.

Now this,
Benjamin Wallace, the Earl of Heathton, thought,
is going to prove to be an interesting afternoon.

“Thank you for receiving me, my lord.”

“Not at all, Lady DeBrooke.” He sat also, but behind his desk, where a neglected amount of tedious correspondence awaited his attention. “Though I admit I am curious about your call.”

An understatement.

“You know all about me. Everyone does.”

To her credit, she didn’t sound bitter, accusatory, or even defensive. She just sat there, elegant and as exquisitely alluring as rumored, her poise impressive.

To admit or deny? He wasn’t sure, and as usual, he took the middle ground. “I certainly know who you are.”

“So diplomatic, Lord Heathton.” Her smile held a telltale hint of sardonic amusement. “You have a reputation for subtle intrigue, so I am sure you know exactly what I was implying when I said you know about me. Let me be more frank. You know all of the
rumors
about me.”

He did, but he was much more concerned about how she’d heard about
him.

“We’ve been introduced before. Your husband was a friend.”

He actually remembered the meeting quite clearly. She was a raven-haired beauty with crystalline gray eyes, her form graceful yet enticing, with an opulent bosom and narrow waist—she was the picture of feminine allure. Ebony brows were perfect arcs over those silver eyes, and her nose dainty and straight. Her gown was tasteful but seductive, with a fashionable décolletage, and when she reclined and crossed her ankles, the movement was languid and elegant.

The
haut ton
had given her the nickname Dark Angel, and her debut had been the event of the season the year of her coming out, with scores of dazzled gentlemen vying for her attention before it had all gone terribly wrong.

However, Ben was difficult to beguile, or at least he liked to think so.

“My second husband, you mean.” Her tone wasn’t combative, but instead neutral.

He inclined his head. “Thomas and I knew each other from Cambridge.”

“How close of friends?”

“Please tell me how important the answer is to this conversation and I’ll give due weight to the answer.”

“You have such a way of speaking and not saying anything at all, my lord.”

He’d been accused of that enough times instead of replying to the hint of challenge he asked, “Would you like a sherry before you tell me why you are here?”

After a moment she nodded. “Yes, thank you. Perhaps that will help.”

He thought it might. She wasn’t nearly as poised as she seemed. The facade was sleek and polished, but the inner trepidation showed to someone who understood how to read the small nuances.

And there was the true question:
Help what
?

He rose to go over to the small drinks table and pour her a glass, taking it back and handing it over with a small bow. “I believe my wife mentioned recently you had returned to London.”

As she accepted the drink, her hand trembled slightly. It wasn’t much, but it betrayed her, confirming his suspicion that her sophistication was only on the surface. Lady DeBrooke murmured, “Ah, yes, the society pages. They refuse to leave me alone.”

“Notoriety can be uncomfortable, I’m sure.”

If the frank observation stung, she didn’t show it. “Yes.”

He could play a game of dancing around the question as well anyone—and better than most given his past—but at the moment, he just wished to know her purpose. “I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“I need your help.”

The last time he’d heard those words he’d stepped into a nasty scheme that involved kidnapping and slander. Ben gazed at the woman sitting upright in the chair across from him and almost reflexively refused. His marriage was sailing along smoother waters than a few months ago, his financial holdings prosperous, and while being the earl wasn’t exciting, it was fulfilling in other ways . . .

Perhaps not the ways he craved, though he was happy that he and his wife were more in tune.

“What kind of help?” he asked against his better judgment.

Lady DeBrooke stared at the liquid in her glass for a moment, a fringe of long lashes lending shadows to her perfect cheekbones. “I’m quite desperate and I heard you can clear up small puzzles with amazing skill.” She glanced up. “I hope that applies also to large ones.”

“Who told you that?”

“I am not supposed to say.”

That was fine, he’d find out on his own. Already he had his suspicions on who might have pointed her his direction. “How large?”

“Murder.”

He leaned back, taking stock of what that single word implied, particularly in her case, and then he sighed. She was entirely too beautiful to refuse, and besides, he was curious. Intensely so, damn him. He had letters to answer and other dull duties as well and getting caught up in anything else would put him behind. “I cannot promise you anything, but go on. I will listen.”

To her credit, there were no theatrics. She simply nodded, the coil of heavy, glossy hair at her nape a contrast to her slender neck. “As perhaps you know, my first husband died almost six years ago of an unknown ailment. He was ten years older than I, and the marriage arranged by my father. I had barely turned eighteen, but William had a barony and he was wealthy. Of the offers for my hand, my father selected to accept his and I had little choice. I will be frank and say it was hardly a love match, he simply wanted a fashionable wife.” Her smile was brittle. “He’s reputably my first victim.”

“That I have heard.” He kept his voice even and unemotional.

“Yes, I imagine you have.” Her tone wasn’t nearly as dispassionate. “Then I suppose you also know I remarried several years later.”

“To Thomas, Lord DeBrooke, who died of the same ailment.”

She made a small gesture of humorless affirmation with her glass. “I can see that the gossips have done their work well. Since you knew him, you’ll remember Thomas was a nice man, and of my choosing. He was healthy and vibrant and though once again I only married him because my father insisted, I was too young to be a recluse living at our country estate. I was saddened when he died so suddenly.”

Was she? He didn’t know her well enough to judge—he didn’t know her at all—so he didn’t comment.

“That was when the rumors truly started. It was insidious at first, and I was in mourning in the country so I had no idea I was under suspicion until my sister told me. You can imagine how shocking it was to hear.”

Shocking because she was innocent, or because she was certain that no one would suspect someone of her grace and beauty capable of maliciously poisoning two husbands?

It was almost four o’clock. He was supposed to have tea with his wife and her elderly aunt, but he was much more interested in having a brandy in his study while listening to his unexpected visitor and her fascinating story. To that end he rose and went over to a small table and uncorked the decanter to pour a small snifter. Alicia would forgive him for skipping tea. When he told her about this visit, she would be fascinated as well. His wife was far more inquisitive than he was.

“My brother-in-law even had me brought up before a magistrate, but there was no evidence to prove me guilty except his suspicions. The physician that attended Thomas at his death couldn’t say for certain it wasn’t an ailment of some kind, though the symptoms were very similar to whatever proved to be the end of my first husband.”

He recalled the scandal of the trial. She was correct. The society papers had clung to the story and still rehashed it long after her acquittal and Lady DeBrooke had retired once again to the countryside.

“I see.” Instead of sitting down he leaned against a bookcase and swirled his brandy while studying her expression. “I take it you are telling me you
do
think they were murdered, just not at your hand.”

“Very astute, my lord. This is where I point out I have the advantage of knowing I am innocent.” Her fine brows lifted. “A cliché, I know, but quite true. The more and more I have thought about it, the more I think it possible.” Her gaze was direct.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in the challenge but he wanted to be frank. “The
ton
is notorious for its lack of forgiveness. Do you really think if I even could possibly solve two murders that happened years ago it will restore your position in society, Lady DeBrooke? Or is it justice you seek?”

“Neither,” she answered quietly. “I wish to remarry.”

* * *

The Earl of Heathton wasn’t quite what she expected. Angelina had met him in passing once or twice so she recognized him, of course. He was handsome in an understated way with thick, dark blond hair and classic features, tall and wide-shouldered, and to that extent he was like many aristocratic gentlemen she knew, but the difference was in the keen intelligence in his eyes and the way he moved with a subtle athletic grace. She couldn’t define it, but there was an air of the hunter about him, and it did not involve horses and hounds.

It had cost her in pride to pay this call. Throughout the horrible series of events after Thomas died she had learned a great deal about scorn and suspicion, including being given the cut directly by former friends, not to mention her husband’s vindictive family’s strident accusations. There had been no guarantee Lord Heathton would even receive her.

The apprehension proved she wasn’t quite thick-skinned enough just yet to weather the scorn of her peers.

“You wish to be able to remarry because the world no longer thinks you poison your husbands, or you wish to marry someone specific?” he asked in the neutral tone he’d used throughout their conversation.

“I am too afraid for him to accept his proposal.” After the oblique answer she took a bracing sip of sherry. “It seems possible that the malice is directed at me. I realize that sounds melodramatic and perhaps even self-important, but they were two very different men, with no connection I can find other than both having the misfortune to be married to me.”

“An interesting theory to be sure. If you are correct, do have any idea who might have enough ill will toward you to take the drastic step of actually killing two people?”

“Who has enough ill will toward anyone to do that, my lord?” Her tone was brittle though she tried to control it.

“You might be surprised what drives certain individuals to extreme measures most of us would never consider.”

As if she hadn’t spent sleepless nights and restless afternoons in her exile contemplating that very question. With conviction, she said, “None.”

He didn’t seem deterred, but then again, his enigmatic expression seemed to be hard to read in general. “Perhaps a frustrated lover, Lady DeBrooke? You are very lovely.”

The compliment was flattering, but she shook her head. “I was faithful entirely to both of them, and when I married William, very young. I’d barely had my coming out when our marriage was arranged. There are no scorned lovers in my past, tarnished as it is reputed to be.”

And though he’d treated her more as a possession than a person, William had done her one enormous favor and left her a generous inheritance. After his death she’d discreetly taken the money and invested it with the assistance of a trusted friend under another name, knowing her father was going to insist she remarry. It was prudent that she had, for otherwise Thomas’s family would have ended up with not just his money, but hers also. Under English law, a husband controlled anything a wife brought to the marriage. While her brother-in-law hadn’t been able to send her to the gibbet, he had seized Thomas’s fortune at once and not gifted her with even a stipend.

Had anyone discovered she’d created another identity and quietly accumulated a small fortune, she might have hanged. The thought always made her grow cold. It hadn’t been anything more than caution on her part and a bid for some measure of independence, but admittedly, it seemed calculating. As it was, she lived modestly lest anyone inquire as to where the money came from.

“I will need a list of all servants that were with you in both households, and any friends and even family members that visited you.”

That sounded promising.

“Then you will help me?”

“I don’t know if I can actually help.” His tone was cool and thoughtful. “But I will at least try.”

Just the mere possibility of the weight being lifted from her shoulders brought her a poignant joy. She whispered, “That is all I can ask.”

“Tell me about your current lover.”

“What makes you think I . . .” She stopped, feeling a slight flush in her cheeks, and glanced away. “I suppose I am a mature woman, twice married, and it is logical to assume he shares my bed.” Actually, she’d just had her twenty-fourth birthday, but she felt far older.

“That isn’t my concern, but understandably, the more I know, the better I can discreetly gather information.”

Discreet. That was exactly what she wanted. The assurance Lord Heathton would provide his own brand of secrecy was part of the reason she was sitting in his study.

Angelina nodded once with as much decisiveness as she could summon. “He isn’t part of this except to the extent that I now am no longer willing to accept what has happened and do nothing. The awfulness of the trial and the scandal made me wish to hide away from the world. But that, I have found, does not work, and besides, it isn’t fair to me or him. Or even to William and Thomas for that matter, to not seek to uncover the truth.”

“I understand your motivations and agree, but if you wish me to look into this matter, then let me judge what might be valuable and what isn’t.”

That was fair enough. Actually, more than fair, for she’d offered him nothing in return. The Earl of Heathton did not need her money. That she knew already. She had little to give him but the challenge.

And she’d been assured that this sticky problem might pique his interest.

“He doesn’t care about the cloud over me and thinks he is capable of protecting himself,” she said with a careful lack of inflection. “I disagree. How can one protect oneself from some unknown poison? It isn’t possible if the murderer is determined, short of having someone else taste your food, and that barbaric custom is long gone, thank goodness.”