Elliott took her hand. “We will likely never know. But it is assured that he has been pushed into drastic action now. We must make sure you are safe.”
Lucas concurred. “The solicitor is on his way. Get the will read immediately. He’s less dangerous to her after he inherits. And it will give us time to investigate.”
“She’ll stay with Amber and me,” Elliott said firmly.
His wife concurred. “Come along. I’ll help you gather your things.”
Everyone seemed to be in agreement. Everyone, that is, except Diana. Looking at her, he saw determination coupled with an angry kind of resignation, but he couldn’t fathom why.
“Diana?”
She looked at him with a frustrated expression, and this time, he couldn’t stop himself from going to her side. He touched her shoulder and studied her face when she looked up at him. And then she gripped his fingers as if grounding herself with a touchstone.
“It won’t make it better,” she whispered.
“Why? Whyever not?”
She blinked away her tears. “Do you really think Oscar was that much of an idiot? That he didn’t see the way of things with Geoffrey? At least financially? From the moment Oscar became ill, I began to manage the household affairs. And then the full estate. The more unmanageable Geoffrey became, the more Oscar turned affairs over to me.”
Elliott nodded. “Then he had more sense than I thought.”
She shot her brother a frustrated look. Obviously, he didn’t understand what she was saying. But Lucas did, and he was terrified of the implications.
“You took control of the money,” Lucas said, verifying the details as he said them aloud. “You took control of Geoffrey’s allowance, which is why he is in such bad straights now.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you convinced Oscar to change his will such that Geoffrey wouldn’t beggar the estate as well.”
She nodded. “Geoffrey wouldn’t manage the land well. Likely not at all.”
“But you would,” he said.
She nodded. “He left it to me rather than destroy his tenants’ lives with a bad heir.”
The constable chose that moment to speak. He pinned her with a hard look. “So, you have the true motive to murder your husband, not Mr. Hough.”
Lucas couldn’t believe the man’s idiocy. “What motive? She already had control of the money. She had no need to kill anyone.”
Meanwhile, Elliott was still thinking of the terms of the will. “Isn’t the estate entailed? Doesn’t Geoffrey get it anyway?”
She shook her head. “Just the castle and the near lands. And the title, of course. But nothing able to sustain itself. And certainly not to fund his lifestyle.”
“Did he know?” Elliott asked. “Did Geoffrey know that the will had been rewritten?”
Dianna nodded. “Oscar told him a few weeks ago.”
Right before Geoffrey’s nastiness had increased. Which was when Elliott had brought Lucas into the household to protect her. It all made sense now. But it was still left to him to voice the biggest problem.
“And if you were to die?” Lucas asked, voice deadly low. “If the men at Vauxhall had succeeded in killing you?”
She touched her throat, as she no doubt remembered every detail of the attack.
“Diana!” Elliott demanded, his voice tight with urgency. “Answer him. If you die—”
“Then it all goes to Geoffrey,” she said. “It wasn’t meant to stay with me anyway. I was to manage the properties until I married or died, and then it returned to the regular line of succession.” She looked to the ceiling. “It was to give Geoffrey more time to mend his ways.”
“Or find a way to kill both you and his father,” Lucas said.
