A Suspicious Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

haughty gesture that only served to disorder her hair more. “And I do not care. Do you understand, Mr. Dimm? I do not care what anyone says. I am going home to have this child. That’s all I ever wanted.”
    “Home being…?”
    “Oh, not my home. That’s been sold off ages ago, if you are afraid I’ll escape your clutches in the wilds of Lancashire. I’m going to Denning Castle, in Berkshire, where Pendenning children have been born for centuries.”
    “I understood you hardly ever visited there.”
    “That was Arvid’s choice. He hated the country, disliked having to give up the pleasures of Town life, the high-stakes gambling and the high-flyers.”
    “And you, ma’am? You like the country? Begging your pardon for asking so many questions, Your Grace. It’s me job, you ken.”
    Marisol nodded her understanding. “Berkshire is beautiful. All rolling hills and trees, flowers and farms. I loved it at first sight. I never lived in a city until my presentation and my marriage, you see.”
    “Yet you adapted something wondrous,” Dimm noted, recalling what he’d heard about her triumphal Season, her standing among the hostesses of the
haut monde.
    “I was raised in the country, Mr. Dimm, not in a stable. My father might have been improvident; he was still every inch a gentleman. My mother’s family could trace their ancestors to William the Conqueror.”
    So could Dimm’s. His forebears were the chaps carrying all the gear and picking up after the horses. “I meant no offense, Your Grace. Just wondered why, if you liked the country so much, you made your home here in Town.”
    “You didn’t know Arvid. I told you, he found the country dull. And he liked having me near him, he said, so he refused to let me live apart. He forbade the servants to help me, and they would have suffered terribly if I had disobeyed.”
    “Jealous type, was he?”
    “Of me?” She looked down at her ungainly figure. “I am not quite the goddess to inspire passion, am I?” Marisol stopped to think a moment. “No, Arvid was more possessive than jealous. At first I believed he saw me as an ornament, part of his collection of
objets d’art.
Then I became an asset to the smooth running of his household. Recently…?” She shrugged. “Recently he was just more perverse. He knew I wanted to be gone from London. That was enough to make him decide to stay.”
    “So you argued.” That was a statement, not a question.
    “So we argued,” she acknowledged.
    “And were you jealous of him?”
    “Of his affairs, you mean? Of his birds of paradise and his opera dancers and Lady Armbruster? Why don’t you simply come out and ask if I killed him, Mr. Dimm?”
    “Because his nibs at Bow Street says that ain’t the way to handle duchesses, Your Grace. But since you was the one what mentioned it, did you shoot the duke when you discovered him in the carriage with your next-door neighbor?”
    “No, Mr. Dimm. I did not. I was no more jealous of Nessie Armbruster than I was of Harriet Wilson. My husband was a known womanizer when I married him, and a constant philanderer later. It never mattered before. It certainly never mattered after. In fact, I was more than happy when he took his attentions elsewhere.”
    “I see,” said Jeremiah Dimm, wishing he’d never embarked on this line of questioning. For that matter, he wished he’d been given the Carstair case instead. What was a simple ax-murder or two compared to this mare’s nest? No wonder all those newspaper chaps were camping in Portman Square. He wiped his suddenly damp forehead and took up a new line of inquiry. “Do you have any idea who sent that note, Your Grace? Might be that whoever wanted you to find your husband in the carriage meant to throw suspicion your way.”
    “No, I have no notion whatsoever. The butler said an urchin brought it, and no one had any reason to detain him at the time.”
    “And you don’t recognize the hand?” Dimm held out the folded