appeared on the bridge. I had to hide from him.” He looked irate. “Hide, mind you! I never hide from anyone.”
“Aren’t you fortunate?” Grey had spent half his life hiding—from his aunt’s and uncle’s machinations, from women who wanted to snag him as a husband . . . from himself.
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Sheridan asked.
“Nothing. Anyway, today’s expedition didn’t turn out quite as planned.”
Sheridan rolled his eyes. “Obviously. But I discovered something important all the same.” He went to pour himself some brandy. “After I left the area, I decided to see what the gossips in Sanforth might have to say about Joshua. And that’s when I learned that Uncle Armie was planning to sell the dower house. Right out from under Joshua’s feet.”
A chill ran down Grey’s spine. “Not just Joshua’s. His sister’s, too.”
Looking suddenly uncomfortable, Sheridan downed some brandy. “It was well known in town that Uncle Armie wanted to sell the dower house to help pay his debts. And supposedly Joshua knew it, too. So the murder might have had nothing to do with the dukedom. Joshua might simply have decided to kill Uncle Armie to keep the man from selling his home.”
“Possibly,” Grey said grimly. “Though that theory doesn’t explain your father’s death.”
“Actually, it might.” Sheridan stared down into his glass. “I’d forgotten about it, but at some point after we took up residence here, Father mentioned that if worse came to worst we could always sell the dower house.”
Grey suddenly found it hard to breathe. “Could Wolfe—or even Beatrice—have overheard Maurice?”
Sheridan shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. But if Joshua did, whether from her or from town gossip—”
“Then it gives him a motive for wanting both men dead.”
Grey’s heart sank. It gave Beatrice a motive as well. And though he still couldn’t see her riding out to murder two men, she, not Wolfe, had known of the little hiding place not far from where their uncle Armie had died.
Still, Grey doubted she had the strength—or the will—to pull a man off his horse and break his neck, even a man in his sixties. She would need her brother to help her. Despite Wolfe’s bad leg, the two of them might manage it between them.
But to assume that, Grey would have to believe he’d been entirely wrong about her character, had mistaken every word, every blush . . . every sweet, hot caress. Could he really have been that wrong about her?
Staring off into space, Grey examined her behavior since they’d met. Until today, she’d actively avoided being around him, especially whenever he brought up her brother or uncle. Even today, she’d probably only taken him aside so she could keep him from seeing Wolfe’s reaction to the spot where her uncle had died.
All this time he’d assumed she might have another reason for her evasions, but what if she hadn’t? She’d accused Grey of cozying up to her . . . but what if all this time she had been cozying up to him, just more subtly and effectively than any woman he’d ever met? What if she’d been trying to allay his suspicions by tempting him into madness? Trying to find out what he knew, what Sheridan knew . . . if Sheridan was planning to sell the dower house?
If she had been such a schemer, she was even more manipulative than his aunt and uncle, which he had trouble believing.
The more he thought about that possibility, the angrier he got. What if, in his . . . foolish infatuation for her, he’d simply played into the hands of a murderer and his accomplice?
“Grey. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Grey rose. “But I need to go. There’s something I must check on.”
As Grey headed for the door, Sheridan said, “I almost forgot—what happened with you and Joshua on the trip to the ruins? Did he react to seeing the spot where Uncle Armie died?”
“We didn’t get that far,” Grey said.
No, they hadn’t. Because Beatrice had made sure that they hadn’t.
Beatrice was eating her supper when a pounding came at the front door. What on earth? It couldn’t be Joshua. He wouldn’t knock, and anyway, by the time she’d returned from Armitage Hall, he’d already ridden off to Leicester. At least that was what their maid-of-all-work, their only servant these days, had told her before going home to her family.
Leaving Beatrice alone here. Which made her reluctant to let anyone in now that night had fallen. She told herself it was