Read Online A Most Improper Rumor by Emma Wildes - Free Book Online Page B

here.” Heathton was almost infuriatingly calm. “So since I have ruled you out of the equation, who do you think might fit?”
    “How could she possibly have enemies?” Christopher sat back and took in a breath. “She is hardly the venal beauty, with nothing but gowns and parties on her mind. I’ve really never heard her say a harsh word about anyone, even in the extreme circumstances of her situation, and quite frankly, what would be the point of lashing back at her? She married well the first time, but I do not get the impression he was a man who inspired devotion beyond his fortune and title. The second time she chose for herself, but at the will of her father once again because he insisted she remarry.”
    “So she said.”
    “How could retaliation be productive? Once she was widowed, she withdrew from society both times, and she swears no one pursued her.”
    “I find it all curious myself.”
    Why
did
he find it curious? Christopher wasn’t sure, but as he took measure of the man, he did know it wasn’t idle curiosity. Heathton would never bestir himself because he wanted to pry into something that didn’t concern him. “I was not aware you knew Angelina.”
    “I don’t, really. But I did know her second husband. Even without that incentive I would probably help her for personal reasons of my own, but I
liked
Thomas, and if he was murdered and there is a chance to catch who did it, I would hardly be a friend if I passed it by. Tell me about her,” the earl said with a smile that managed somehow to be both affable and humorless, which should be impossible. “Leave nothing out, if you please. No detail is unimportant. I find I wish to foil whoever wishes her harm.”
    Put that way, how could he possibly refuse? Christopher took a moment and contemplated. “She’s warm, giving, and without artifice.”
    Heathton looked unimpressed. “And beautiful, intelligent, and poised. You misunderstand. I very much want something about her I don’t know. You are in a position to actually give me pertinent information, since you know the lady so intimately.”
    Intimate summed it up nicely. And yet it didn’t do their relationship justice. He took in a calming breath, and said, “Please give me one good reason I should showcase the details of my personal life, much less hers.”
    “I most certainly don’t need
those
sorts of details.” Heathton took a moment and looked abstractly at the wall, his gaze unfocused. “What I need is probably something that doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you haven’t even noticed it . . . I realize I am groping in the dark here, but is there something about her life, however incidental it might seem to you, that strikes you as odd or out of balance? I’ve wondered all along if there was a slighted would-be lover who wished to do harm to her and to her two former husbands, but she swears she can think of no one and I do believe her. It has to be something else.”
    Christopher believed it as well. Angelina was adamant that there was no one who wished her the degree of harm that had been done.
    He shook his head. “I don’t think so. If it exists, I am not privy to it. She’s remarkably artless under that sophisticated exterior. Please keep in mind that in reality, she barely made it into each season before she was engaged and then married off. I cannot see how she could possibly cultivate an enemy so vindictive.”
    “I can’t see it either,” Heathton muttered. “Damn all.”

Chapter 7
    T hey made a striking couple, Alicia thought, he so tall and masculine, and she so voluptuously feminine with her deep auburn hair . . .
    Only the man with whom the woman in the emerald dress was deep in conversation was
her
husband. They stood in a corner, just out of the milling throng, and it didn’t help that the minute Ben saw Alicia’s approach, he simply nodded and walked away without so much as a polite word of departure that she could see.
    If her stomach hadn’t already