AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jude frowned. "And his wife didn't accompany him? That's suspicious."
Aidan walked in and tossed his coat onto a chair. "She's with child. Four or five months gone, I think. Handsome woman. She seemed eager to help."
Edward nodded. "I believed her. I don't think it's him."
"What story did you tell?" Jude asked as he resumed his pacing.
"Said we had a dying horse. Same illness that had taken one of the LeMont mares ten years ago and we couldn't remember his old stable master's treatment."
Aidan poured them all a serving of brandy before slouching onto the couch. Jude couldn't sit still to save his life. "Where the hell were you two?" he asked as he stalked over to glare out the window.
"We headed hack," Edward grumbled, "but had to find an inn when it started to rain. Remind me never to share a room with Aidan again. He snores."
"That was you, old man." Aidan tossed back his drink, then tilted his glass toward Jude. "What's got you so foul? Courtship not playing gently on your soul?"
Jude ignored him and addressed Edward. "Is it Fitzwilliam Hess then?"
"Everyone we asked agrees that he's been on the Continent since the start of the Season."
"Perhaps he needs money?"
Edward shrugged. "He'd have plenty of targets to choose from. Certainly families more wealthy than ours."
"Could it he possible this is the way he supports himself? He's a wastrel by all accounts."
"A rich wastrel," Aidan interrupted. "I've dealt with some of the firms that handle his investments. He has no need for blackmail. His lifestyle is fully financed. I'm telling you that it's White!"
"Everything in life is not so black and white," Jude answered. "I spent my life around men active in one kind of transgression or another. I daresay I'm more familiar with the vagaries of the world than you."
Edward looked up. "But perhaps Aidan and I have a better understanding of honor among gentlemen." He said the words so casually, as if he didn't mean them as an insult at all. So Jude let them float away unanswered. He was a bastard. There was no denying that.
The silence stretched on. For a brief moment, Jude considered mentioning his suspicion of Harry, but he bit back the words. There wasn't even a hint of proof, and Marissa was right. Harry seemed a good, uncomplicated man. Jude would hold his tongue, but he'd keep his eyes open.
"Aside from White, who does that leave then?" Jude pondered. "Someone one of the men told? A friend?"
Aidan cleared his throat as if he were relieved to change topics. "A more recent lover?"
"That would be strange pillow talk," Jude said.
"I've heard stranger."
Well, he had a point. Men talked with their mistresses. "Right," he murmured. "Not a wife, but a lover." He puzzled back over the men. Peter White had seemed genuinely chastened, not to mention terrified. And aside from the woman he'd ruined and scorned, Jude hadn't heard rumors of a recent lady friend. Perhaps Harry would know.
Jude knew nothing of Charles LeMont to say whether he kept a mistress or not. But Fitzwilliam Hess . . .
His head snapped up in alarm. "Christ. What about Mrs. Wellingsly?"
"What about her?" Aidan asked with a wary edge to the words.
"Didn't she and Hess have a flirtation last year?"
"Not that I noticed, but it seems likely enough. Still, I can't think why you'd suspect her. She inherited nearly half of her husband's estate. She doesn't need money, and I can't imagine she'd do something like this just to punish me."
Jude laced the window again. "No, but she might do it to punish me."
Despite the softness of Marissa's voice, it managed to fill the whole room. "Why would she want to punish you?"
Alarm flooded his body as he turned around. Marissa stood in the doorway, and her stiff face matched the even tone of her words perfectly. "You told me you'd never even spent a moment alone with her."
