Let's Talk of Murder Read Online Free PDF

advantage to losing the Prime Ministership. He and Corinne could get on with their wedding. His leg was improving daily. He looked up and saw her gazing at him, with a dreamy half-smile on her lovely face, and knew she was thinking the same thing.
    Townsend soon left, and Coffen said, “Any chance of a fresh cup of tea before I run down to Somerset House, Luten? Or do you want us to leave so you and Corinne can cuddle a bit?”
    Luten reached out and took her hand. “No hurry now,” he said. He called Evans and ordered fresh tea. “With this business out of our way, we can get on with our wedding plans,” he said, when the butler had left. “I wager you have something in mind for us, Prance?”
    “Now that you mention it, I have been running a few themes through my mind, since you disliked the notion of a Japanese style wedding in my nino at Granmaison. That was foolish of me. Corinne mentioned her mama wishes to hold the wedding at Ardmore Hall, and use the gown from her own wedding, I think you said?”
    “Yes, if it fits,” she replied. This ruse had been invented to avoid the Japanese kimonos Prance favored during his brief passion for things Japanese. In fact, Corinne was by no means sure her mama still had her wedding gown.
    “A traditional wedding then, I think. The season is hardly conducive to orange blossoms, but even in late autumn, I daresay I can contrive something suitably romantic. An autumn wedding is appropriate. After all, you are neither of you exactly in the spring of youth,” he added with a hint of malice. “Will you have to cruise down the aisle in a Bath chair, Luten, or will you wait until you can walk?”
    “I can walk now, with my crutches. Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll not only walk without them, but dance at my wedding.”
    “Excellent!” Prance cried. “That will give me time to arrange things. I believe I shall pop over to Ireland and see what I have to work with at Ardmore. The church, the landscape, the Irish legends—Brian Boru, and so on.”
    “Good gracious, Prance, we don’t want some great lavish affair,” Corrine said, laughing.
    “Don’t be selfish, my pet,” he pouted, and to repay her added, “It may be your second trip down the aisle, but remember it is Luten’s first.” Her nostrils thinned in annoyance.
    Coffen glared and said, “That’s all a bridge under the water now. “
    “You mean, I expect, water under the bridge,” Prance corrected.
    “Exactly.”
    “Then why didn’t you say so?” Coffen regularly made fritters of the King’s English, yet somehow one always understood him. Well, that was, presumably, the purpose of language, to communicate. He sighed in defeat.
    “I did.”
    Before the conversation degenerated into a brawl, the tea arrived. Luten excused himself a moment to write a note to the prince explaining that, after speaking to Townsend, it was clear his services were no longer necessary. Every word was an agony. Brougham had been so excited when he heard of the prince’s promise.
    He had assured Luten that, as this coup was his, the reward of the Prime Ministership must certainly fall on his shoulders. A bright future of reforming England had glowed in front of them. And now it was all coming to naught. He was almost tempted to hire a thug to take a shot at the prince, being careful to miss him, of course.
    When he returned to the saloon, Coffen had left but Prance was talking to Corinne, teasing her about Byron, very likely. “He was most eager to meet you,” he was saying. The flush on Corinne’s cheeks showed her pleasure.
    “I daresay it’s Byron you’re speaking of, Prance,” he said.
    “Just so, Luten. It is well the wedding is being rushed forward, or you might lose this lovely girl,” he said in a rallying way, to show he joked.
    “I hardly think my fiancée is interested in a fellow who has made himself a byword for lechery,” Luten replied with an air of nonchalance. “Corinne is not so abandoned as