A Lady Never Lies Read Free

a benevolent smile across the table and reached for his toast. “No, the lease will be entirely in my name. You two shall be my guests, nothing more. Penhallow, the marmalade, if you will.”
    Lord Roland passed him the pot of marmalade as if in a dream.
    Really, it was all proving even more amusing than Finn had imagined. The look of dazed confusion on Penhallow’s face. The slow purpling of the duke’s expression, the whitening of knuckles clenched about two-hundred-year-old silver cutlery.
    Who would speak first?
    Wallingford, of course. “I’m certain, my dear Burke,” he said, biting out the
dear Burke
in discrete chunks, “I must have misheard you.”
    “I assure you, you haven’t.” Finn spread his marmalade over his toast with neat precision. “My dear fellows, I shall lay my cards upon the table, as they say. I’ve been concerned about the two of you for some time.”
    Wallingford’s expression grew even blacker. “I can’t imagine why. Our poverty, perhaps? Our lack of female companionship?”
    “There it is! There’s your trouble, right there. You don’t even recognize how frivolous your lives have become. You’ve no purpose, no driving force. You drink yourselves into oblivion, night after night . . .”
    Lord Roland set down his fork with a clink. “Now look here. As if I haven’t seen you positively legless, on more than one occasion.”
    Finn flicked that away with a brusque movement of his hand. “Once or twice, of course. One’s allowed a bit of high spirits, now and again. But you’ve made a career of it, you two. ‘Wine, women, and song,’ as the saying goes.”
    “I object to that. There’s been very little song at all,” said Lord Roland.
    “And that of very poor quality indeed,” Wallingford added. “Hardly worth noting.”
    Finn leaned forward and placed his elbows squarely on each side of his plate. “Three days ago,” he said, in a quiet voice, “I came across an old acquaintance of ours, from Cambridge days. Callahan. You’ll remember him?”
    “Callahan, of course. Jolly chap. A bit thick, but good company on a lark.” Lord Roland’s brow puckered inward. “What of him?”
    “He was dead. Choked on his own vomit in his mistress’s parlor in Camden.”
    In the silence that followed, Finn fancied he could detect the tiny scratches of the ancient ormolu clock above the mantel, counting out the passing of each second into eternity.
    “Good God,” said Wallingford at last.
    “Camden,” muttered Lord Roland, as he might mutter
Antarctica
.
    Finn removed his elbows and picked up his fork and knife. “I came across his funeral procession, you see. They’d taken his body back to the old family place, in Manchester, not far from a machine works of which I’ve been contemplating purchase. An only son, did you know? His mother looked quite destroyed.”
    “There, you see?” Wallingford shrugged. “Our mother’s been gone these ten years. Nothing at all to worry about.”
    Finn went on. “I’m told the body was not even viewable. The mistress discovered him in the morning and fled with her cookmaid. Poor fellow wasn’t found for a week.”
    Wallingford sat back in his chair and regarded Finn with a speculative expression. He crossed two solid arms against his chest. “Very well, Burke. A fine point. The dissipated life ends in ignoble tragedy and whatnot. Women are not to be trusted. Forewarned is forearmed. I shall retire instantly to the country, call for my steward, and endeavor to live a life of sobriety and virtue.”
    Finn had expected resistance, of course. One didn’t go about telling dukes to mend their ways without anticipating a certain bristling of the old hackles, after all. He smiled kindly and said, “I have a proposition for you.”
    “I daresay you do. I daresay it has something to do with castles in Italy.”
    “I have been corresponding for some time with a man near Rome, who’s approaching the same project as I am, only with