“Did you sell your share before you had it in hand? I can think of no other reason why twice now I have been encouraged by one or both of you to turn my halfback to the estate. As you say, its loss to the rest of you is like a puddle. Were you so confident it would be yours that you sold it in advance of receiving it?”
Walter’s expression revealed the truth. Felicity tried to mask her surprise with hauteur.
“How awkward for you,” Rosamund said. “I’m thinking that is illegal. You should probably give back the money.”
Like most men, Walter preferred anger to embarrassment. “I told you she would not listen to reason,” he snapped to his wife. He began to stand. “I’ll not be subjected to this by a common hat maker.”
“Wait!” Felicity cried, grabbing blindly for his arm. She turned wide, frightened eyes on Rosamund. “We can’t give it back. It is gone.”
Gone. Spent. Rosamund looked more closely at Felicity’s ensemble. New and fashionable. She wondered how much this woman spent in a year. Probably a lot. Walter’s fortune might be much like Kevin’s, but it could not support a woman who wanted to live like a duchess.
Walter stood. Red-faced, he walked to the door. “Good day to you.”
Rosamund waited for his boot steps to stop sounding on the stairs. Felicity dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“How much?” Rosamund asked.
“Three thousand. A trust pays out in June, but the man who purchased this grows impatient. Even if we can convince him to wait, should we give him that, there will be nothing left for us.”
If it was a trust like Kevin’s, it paid out twice a year, so five or six thousand in all. That was a huge income.
She should not pity Felicity for her current situation. Yet she did. The idea of her husband possibly being arrested for fraudulent business dealings hopefully mattered more than the loss of a new wardrobe this autumn.
“I think I can find a way to help you,” she said. “First, however, I want to talk about something else.”
Having heard the hint of a reprieve, Felicity calmed. She nodded and waited.
“You told me you had seen Kevin in London in the days after the duke’s death. What days and where did you see him?”
Felicity thought before speaking. “It was the next day. He was riding his horse. He did not notice me. He had that expression he gets when he is not paying attention to anything but his own thoughts.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
Felicity shrugged. “It was not far from Grosvenor Square. I assumed he was going to visit Lady Greenough. She is a widow, and very wealthy. There were quiet rumors about the two of them that winter. That was only notable for it being Kevin. He was not known for such flirtations.”
Rosamund battled to keep her surprise from her expression. She hated that jealousy rose fast and hot into her heart.
“I will help you out of your situation,” she said after collecting herself. “I want something in return, however.”
“I will receive you, if it is that. I will encourage the family to as well.”
“That would be nice, but it isn’t that. When you leave this chamber, you are to forget that you saw him in London that day. On considering it, you realized that you never saw that rider’s face, and made unwarranted assumptions. Because you question your own memories now, you will never again, to anyone, insinuate that Kevin had something to do with his uncle’s death. You will tell your husband that you made an unfortunate mistake, so he does not continue suspecting Kevin unfairly.”
Felicity nodded without hesitation.
Rosamund stood. “Have your husband send me the name of the man from whom he accepted the money, and the exact amount he owes. I will have a draft drawn and left with Mr. Sanders. Matters can be resolved in his office. You will have to sign loan documents for it that say the amount will be due immediately if either of you ever again gossips about my husband.”
Chapter Twenty
“What is that?” Chase asked Kevin.
The two of them were in the library of Chase’s chambers on Bury Street. Chase had lived here prior to his marriage.
Kevin continued unwrapping his bundle. “It is a small steam engine. I stopped by the house on my way here and spirited it out.”
“I hope you don’t intend to fire it up in here.”
“It is perfectly safe. Even if there is a mishap, it won’t do more than take down some plaster. I need it for demonstrations.”
