“Her or me?” Agnes said.
“Both of you at first. Then only her.”
Dolores stiffened. “Bold of you.”
“You don’t even know what the questions are yet,” Agnes said.
Chase decided to ignore all asides and commentary. “Were either one of you at Melton Park the day that the duke died?”
Agnes looked aghast. Dolores’s color drained.
Dolores recovered first. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A very simple one. I can find out other ways, but it is easier to ask you.”
“Then have my simple answer. I. Was. Not.”
“Nor I,” Agnes added. “Did someone say we were there? Is someone impugning us and trying to say—”
“No one has impugned or accused or in any way named either of you. I had to ask this question in order to eliminate possibilities. Thank you for your honest answers.”
They both relaxed but their alarm had subdued them.
“My other questions are for you, Aunt Dolores. They are less simple. You may want to hear them privately.”
“I will go.” Agnes began rising.
“Don’t,” Dolores blurted. She reached out her hand. “Please don’t.”
Agnes looked at her sister, whose worry dragged at her face. She glanced at Chase, then sat again.
“Aunt Dolores, did you have an old, long-held resentment against your brother? A slight that had not been forgotten?”
Dolores tried to appear surprised, but it didn’t work. Rather her attempt dissolved into cold anger. “This is of no concern or interest to you, Chase. Whoever told you about this was disloyal and cruel. As you said, it was an old slight, from very long ago.”
“But not forgotten.”
She licked her lips. “I never forgave him.”
Agnes reached over and took her sister’s hand. “Tell him, Dolores, lest someone make more of it than it is.”
“I will not speak of it. I cannot. But . . . I give you leave to do so, Agnes.”
Agnes kept her hand on her sister’s, her arm stretched in connection. “There was a man in her life, Chase. She was twenty-four, so not a child. She was very much in love.”
Dolores closed her eyes.
“Unfortunately, he was a scoundrel,” Agnes continued.
“He wasn’t,” Dolores said.
“Oh, Sister, he was. Believe what you want, but he was a rogue.” She turned her attention to Chase. “A fortune hunter of the first order. An assumed name and heritage. A charlatan. Frederick saw the truth of it on first meeting him. Dolores was not to be dissuaded. So Frederick put the fellow to the test.”
“He betrayed me horribly,” Dolores said.
“He saved you.”
“He condemned me to a loveless life.”
