My husband’s blood.
I choked back a gag at the thought.
I was wretched. I had liked it—loved it, even. William Hart’s kisses were inspired.
And repulsive.
I had lain with men—a man—since I lost Gabriel. And I had enjoyed my time with Michael. But our encounters had been a means to an end for us both. We had been lucky to forge a friendship on the side of that.
But last night—those kisses…
They hadn’t been merely pleasant. I had been filled with bubbling delight, bathed in lust. One kiss and I was... I felt like I could breathe again.
Emotions and sensations so long dormant I thought them lost to time and Gabriel had roared to life again. Feelings that had abandoned me so long ago that I no longer knew the name for them, swam to the surface once again.
And forthatman to find them—to break them free—to bring them back to me… It was sick. It was disgusting.
It was wrong.
Once the hall clock struck five I recognized the world beyond the slip of parchment pinched between my thumb and forefinger.
The wooden floor of my study was cold, particularly in my once beloved—now loathed—plum gown.
From my vantage, I could see an oversized clump of dust under the bookshelf in the corner that the maid had missed—for at least a year if the size was any indication. The sun was rising, a coppery, fiery slash across the horizon spilling on the wood panels before me. And there was a little gray spider that had made its webbed home between the window and the curtain.
When the hall clock struck six, I finally managed to move, first one foot, then the other. At last, I slid myself up along the wall to stand. Carefully, I returned the ledgers, then the loose documents to the open trunk. Finally, I set the incriminating piece of parchment on top of the pile before shutting the lid with a decisivethunk.
In my distress the night before, I had knocked over the chair and I set that to rights as well.
Last night may have been the most disturbing of my life, but I had a mission now—a purpose. I had found my husband’s murderer… After seven long years. I was going to see him punished for his crimes.
And absolutely nothing was going to stop me.
Just as soon as I found someone to remove the spider from the house.
I consumed far toomany cups of coffee while formulating my plan. If they taught proper murder investigation procedures to ladies, I had missed it sometime between fleeing France and charming the beau monde.
Still, the difficult part was already complete. I had my culprit. I would simply work backward to find the evidence.
What that evidence looked like and how I would find it… Surely those details would work themselves out during the investigation. What I would do with the evidence once I found it… The answer would present itself at that time.
I was under no delusions about my husband having been a good man, but he had been the best husband. He had loved me deeply, fiercely, passionately.
I also knew that I had not known him at his worst.
“I do not seduce innocents. Not anymore.”
That had been his one rule, the same rule that nearly ended our romance before it began. Until I made him see sense, made him understand that I had seduced him and he had no say in the matter whatsoever.
The “anymore” held a great deal of significance and weight. Nothing could have prepared me to meet that frail, deathly ill innocent a few months into our marriage. Nor could anything have readied me for her companion, a man who wore his heart in his eyes and gifted insults the way other men gifted flowers.
Gabriel had been in town when Adriane stumbled across me in the country. After our meeting, I stewed for days, alone in the family estate, waiting for Gabriel’s return. That was the night he finally told me the worst of it.
I had known, of course, about the mistress, the gambling, the brothel he owned a stake in, and the scheme with the horse breeding. But she had been his greatest sin. He felt no guilt over the rest, butAdriane, she was his one regret.
In confessing that sin, he had told me the story of William and Adriane. The details were foggy from that emotionally fraught night. The most devastating argument Gabriel and I ever had.
Now, I racked my brain for threads of a story relayed to me nearly a decade ago. Anything, the slightest tidbit could be the key to it all.
