Heiress in Red Silk by Hunter, Madeline (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📗

men outnumbered the women even with the two aunts helping to balance things. When they all lined up to go to dinner, she found herself last in the female line next to Kevin. Behind her straggled the youngest cousin, Philip.

Philip appeared to fancy himself as a fashionable man about town, from the way he dressed and also how he managed to pose rather than just stand normally. He kept sending her amiable smiles, and twice in the drawing room tried to start conversations. In both cases Minerva quickly crowded him out. “Trouble, every mincing inch of him,” Minerva had whispered the second time. “Profligate, indebted, and a wastrel. If he gets the chance he will ask you for money.”

At dinner she found herself sitting between the duke and yet another cousin, Douglas. She wasn’t sure she had met Douglas in the drawing room. Indeed, she could not remember seeing him before. All the Radnor men looked a bit alike, however. Clearly all peas from the same pod, each with his own distinction. Chase had that large-boned, rugged handsomeness and the duke a smoother, more typical kind. Kevin’s deep-set eyes and regular features set him apart, and Walter’s version of the Radnor appearance had a very predictable look, as if one had seen him a hundred times before. This one, Douglas, managed to be unremarkable, despite owning the same eyes and dark hair, the same height and good looks.

Kevin, she noticed, was placed across the way and farther down, out of earshot. Far away from her and from their hostess, who sat very close to her indeed. After a bit of eating, Lady Agnes’s dark eyes settled on her. “Tell me, my dear Miss Jameson. From where do you hail? I hear some accent. Subtle, but there nonetheless.”

Agnes’s voice shrilled through the noise at the table. Right across from her own place, Rosamund saw the other aunt, Dolores, abruptly stop talking to Walter and focus anew.

Not everyone gave Agnes center stage. Minerva kept chatting with Walter’s blond, pretty wife Felicity. Chase asked some question of Philip. Kevin, however, gazed right down at his aunt.

“Richmond,” he said. “You know that.”

“She lives there now,” Agnes said, cocking her head. “But I daresay she wasn’t born there, were you, Miss Jameson?”

“I was born in Oxfordshire.”

“Ah, yes, I can hear it now. Was your father in trade there?”

Briefly. Carefully. “He was a farmer.”

“Was he indeed? How interesting.”

“If not for our farmers, where would we be?” the duke said. “Not enjoying this fine meal, that is certain.”

Lady Agnes looked at him as if he had challenged her. “That is true, Hollinburgh. However, her father must have wanted better for his children if she was apprenticed to a milliner.”

Rosamund glanced quickly at Minerva, who was still chatting but who sent a sidelong glance that warned, don’t correct her. Not that Rosamund intended to. No one at this table had a right to quiz her about her life. If she allowed that, who knew where it might lead? Possibly back to Mrs. Darling’s brothel. Her time there would take some explaining, not that any explanation would save her from scorn.

“Do you have any family here in London?” Aunt Agnes asked.

“I don’t. I have a younger sister. She is in school. Mrs. Parker’s.”

“I have heard of it. Was that where you were educated?”

“I was not that fortunate.”

Aunt Agnes waited for the rest. Smiling. Watching. Rosamund just looked back at her.

“Most girls are not sent away, Aunt Agnes,” Kevin said. “You weren’t.”

“With an army of tutors there was no need. Yet Dolores and I were well educated in our father’s home.”

“That is the schoolroom most girls know, isn’t it? Instead of the past, let us speak of the present. Miss Jameson’s millinery is much sought after,” he said, changing the subject. “I would call it artistic.”

“What would you know about that?” Philip said. “Do you now claim expertise in that as well as engines and moths?” He leaned forward so he could catch Rosamund’s eye. “Have him show them to you someday. Moths. Not even butterflies.”

“You are right, Philip. I would never dare to claim my taste in bonnets is informed. However, Minerva has seen Miss Jameson’s creations. What did you think, Minerva?”

“They are superior. I think any woman at this table would be glad to be seen in one.”

“Indeed,” Lady Agnes said incredulously.

“Indeed,” Minerva said evenly.

“The bonnet she was wearing in the park was hers, Aunt. It was nice enough,” Felicity said in a condescending tone.

Across the table, Lady Dolores had been drinking some wine. Now she set down her glass with some force. “Oh, tosh. Bonnets and moths and farmers. Let us speak of what is on everyone’s mind.” She speared Rosamund with a sharp, dark stare. “What do you intend to do with our legacy? It really belongs to all of us, I’m sure you realize.”

That ended all other conversation.

“Aunt Dolores,” the duke admonished.

“Don’t ‘Aunt Dolores’ me. She must know it was a mistake. A passing impulse. If my brother had not met an untimely demise, he would have fixed it soon enough.”

“You don’t know that,” Chase said. “Nor does it signify, because that was the will when he passed. It has been a year now. You really must accept that.”

“I won’t. It is too unfair. Perverse. He had family to take care of. Instead this—this farmer’s daughter hat maker inherits an obscene amount of money for someone of her station.”

“That is enough,” the duke said.

“Yes, quite enough,” Walter echoed. “This is not the time or place.”

“It isn’t enough and there is no better time and place,” Dolores said. “If she had any decency at all she would turn it back to the estate, or at least most of it. She has to know he never really intended her to have it all. If someone hadn’t killed him—”

“Nicholas and Walter said enough and now I say it too. Must we all say it? You have forgotten yourself.” Kevin spoke sharply, and loud enough to silence Dolores. “Aunt