A Suspicious Affair Read Free Page B

milord, for being blunt, but word is you’re pockets to let.”
    His lordship nodded without disturbing his carefully arranged curls. “Dressing properly is not an inexpensive hobby. Ask Prinny. Then again, gaming is not a steady income. I make no secret of either pastime.”
    “And greed do be a powerful motive in these here circumstances. Jealousy, too.”
    “What, jealous of Arvid’s title? I never thought to step into m’father’s shoes. Heavy old things, no sense of fashion, don’t you know. I do admit the fortune is more tempting. But think, my good man. Why would I wait this long to do in old Arvid? Everyone knew we were at loggerheads since childhood. He never shared his toys, not even back then. It was no shock that he could never see his way clear to increasing my allowance now. Or make the occasional loan, not old Arvid.”
    “Then you two brothers were not close?”
    “About as close as two gamecocks in a pit. He was a bastard, may my dear mother forgive me for the slur to her virtue. Still, I could have arranged for highwaymen, you know, or thugs to follow him home one night any time these past ten, fifteen years that I’ve been on the town and up River Tick. There are any number of ways to succeed to a title.”
    “Without getting your own hands dirty.”
    “Naturellement non,
my dear sir. But again, I ask, why would I do the thing now?”
    “Pressing debts he wouldn’t honor?”
    “But my so-charming sister-in-law has a pressing date with the
accoucheur,
as my loving brother delighted in reminding me. M’brother’s heir is even now supplanting me from the womb.”
    “The babe could be a girl.”
    “With my luck? Not even I am laying money on that bet.”
    *
    Next Dimm had trekked up and down St. James’s to the men’s clubs. His big toe started throbbing again just at the thought. He’d been going from White’s to Brooks’s to Boodle’s, chatting up the various doormen and majordomos, trying to locate any of the recently deceased’s friends. He’d have found the lost continent of Atlantis sooner.
    Arvid Pendenning was one unpopular bloke. If he wasn’t a shade too lucky at the tables, he was a mite too familiar with wives and daughters. He was arrogant, rude, or downright cruel to anyone below his rank, anyone less deadly with a pistol, or anyone unfortunate enough to play cards with him. Most club members seemed amazed the killer had managed to get a pistol ball into his heart, so small and shriveled that organ must have been.
    Wagering in the betting books was heavily in the duchess’s favor, if you could call it a favor to be the one considered most likely to hang for the crime. The bucks were already calling her the Coach Widow, drinking toasts to her aim. There was even, in one club, talk of taking up a collection to hire Her Grace the finest lawyer in the land in return for the favor she’d done them all. Boynton Pendenning ran a distant second in the race to the gibbet in the betting book, with young Foster Laughton trailing badly. It was the long shot, however, who caught the Runner’s attention.
    One gambler had put his money, a considerable sum, too, on Carlinn Kimberly, Earl Kimbrough. Dimm whistled. The Elusive Earl, they called Kimbrough, because he rarely came to Town, never took part in ton gatherings when he did, and refused to be feted as one of the past heroes of the Peninsular campaign. He’d sold out, what? Three, four years ago, Dimm recollected, when he came into the title. Then Kimbrough seemed to disappear from the gossip columns as well as the dispatches. Now, it seemed, the earl had traveled to London for the express purpose of confronting the Duke of Denning about a parcel of land that separated their Berkshire properties. By all reports this confrontation was acrimonious,
ad hominem,
and an education in the high art of name-calling without issuing a challenge.
    “Absentee landlord” degenerated into “leech,” “lecher,” and “boil on the butt