Page 38

“Unless, like me, you have fabulous parents who would support you no matter what, you must still conform to the rules of the upper echelons of lupine society. I have the choice to never go to another gathering, but if I was not given that choice, if it was do this or we’re tossing you out on your ass… then I would go to the parties and try and find an alpha to take me.”

“I hate that.”

“Well, fortunately for you, your mate has no connection with the jarl anymore, so you don’t have to be in attendance and watch the spectacle. But Graeme must still host parties and go to events, and his children, as well as Gigi and Stone’s daughter, will probably attend all the social functions.”

He shook his head. “Okay, back to the diary. Where is it now?”

“If I get into trouble, I don’t want you or Linden to be complicit, so I’d rather not say so you don’t have to lie.”

“Fine. But suffice to say, you’ve read the whole thing, you know what it says, and you took pictures of the parts where Mrs. Wellington laid out her plan, saw it to fruition, and put her son, who was not Clay’s, in the seat of power over the family.”

“Yes. He was an alpha, so no one questioned it.”

“If he’d been born a beta, gamma, or omega, would they have?”

“It’s doubtful, but with Clay dead and her being pregnant, when she did give birth and everyone found out it was an alpha, that was the cherry on the top of the cake.”

“So Mrs. Wellington—Wallis—she basically booted her brother-in-law and mother-in-law out of the house after Clay died.” Wade sounded sad. “That’s awful.”

“Yes. She moved her widowed mother in with her, as well as her own brother, his wife, and their family. That’s smart, right? Claim she needs her family near, and there they are.”

“What happened to the lover?” Wade asked.

“Interestingly, they still couldn’t be together. Once Clay was dead and she was in charge until her son came of age, with all eyes on her, she had to maintain a flawless reputation, so Donald Endicott, her lover, couldn’t be in the picture.”

“She chose protecting her son’s lineage over her own happiness?”

“As most mothers would. Their children are the most important thing,” I acknowledged.

“So after all the romance between them, he bailed?”

“No. I checked, and it looks like he was shot in a gambling establishment six months later.”

Wade grinned at me. “You did all this reading and all this research in one day?”

I squinted at him. “It’s my job.”

He chuckled. “Yes, it is. So, best guess?”

“I think, hope, whatever, that Beriah was a smarter guy than Wallis gave him credit for being, and he killed the guy who cuckolded his brother.”

“I wonder if Beriah knew Richard wasn’t his nephew.”

“I would think he suspected something since, by all accounts and according to the diary, Clay had a lot of women, and there were no pregnancies… so maybe he did know.”

“But there was no DNA testing in—when was this?”

“Eighteen eighty-one.”

“Crazy.”

“What would prove this, of course, is if Beriah’s descendants—who are they?” Linden asked.

“My mother thinks the Lovells.”

Linden thought for a moment. “That sounds right to me, but I have access to all those archives, as do you, so it takes time to go through.”

“Since that website was made in, like, 1985.”