The Unexpected Wife - Jess Michaels Page 0,24

a year ago. He stayed with me just days and returned only three times.”

Pippa reached out and caught her hand. “I can see you are blaming yourself for something or questioning why he might have stayed longer with me. Trust that it isn’t you, it’s him. He was a rambler and a scoundrel, and not in the romantic sense. He must have been getting more desperate as time went on and he never cared about anyone but himself.”

“Why would he be desperate?” Celeste asked, marking the flash of bright rage in Pippa’s expression. “I know so little of him. He was not my choice and he made it clear very quickly that only my money was his.”

Abigail nodded. “Then we’ll start at the beginning. I have been married to the late Mr. Montgomery for almost five years. And I have reason to believe that for the first three, I was the only one to carry that name.”

“How did you meet?”

“As you do,” Abigail said with a shake of her head. “My father is the second son of the Earl of Middleton, and he and Ras’s father were cronies. They encouraged the match, but I desired it regardless of their machinations. I thought he did too.”

There was a faraway sadness to Abigail’s expression a moment before she blinked it away. “Courtship was followed by marriage, and for a while we were happy. He strayed, of course. He had more than one mistress, and it always came back to me. The first time it hurt me, but I convinced myself that was what men did. That I could be happy regardless, for he was affectionate enough when he was with me.”

Celeste flinched. “I’m so sorry. To hear what happened with Pippa and with me must have caused you so much pain. To offer us such kindness speaks to highly of you.”

Abigail smiled. “My dear, I might not have known he was strutting across the country, marrying young ladies, but by the time he began that foolishness, I was long out of love with him. He changed over time, you see. Became harder, sometimes even more cruel. He despised me for not providing him with a child, especially a son whose existence might allow him to demand his father give him more money. And when his brother inherited the title, it only got worse.”

“How so?”

It was Pippa who answered rather than Abigail. “They’re half-blood, you see. Erasmus grumbled ceaselessly about his brother and how he was so big for his britches after inheriting. But having met Lord Leighton now, I see that the real trouble was that they are such different men. Leighton is genuine and serious. Erasmus was…well, he made a bed his brother wouldn’t abide by. He cut him off a year before he married me.”

Celeste’s lips parted. “Is that why he started marrying all of us?”

Abigail nodded. “That is what Pippa and I theorize. He’d already run through my dowry, but Pippa’s was generous. I assume yours was the same?”

“My parents threw money at their problem, and their problem was me,” Celeste admitted, because at this point they were all so vulnerable she felt no reason not to carry that through. “And one can only assume that the Duke of Gilmore’s younger sister would be the biggest prize of all.”

“But that was where he made his mistake,” Abigail said. “He had chosen you two because your families lived in the country and neither of your fathers had powerful connections to London or the Upper Ten Thousand. But Gilmore was too big a fish for Ras to land.”

“Why do you think he did it?” Celeste asked.

“Desperation?” Pippa suggested. “Hubris? Who knows? I long ago gave up on trying to read his mind. Though I did chase him to London, so that tells you something about me, doesn’t it?”

“I think it completely rational that you would seek him out when he’d been unresponsive to your letters for months,” Abigail reassured her. “It says you are a decent person, nothing more or less.”

Celeste leaned back in her chair and observed the two women. It was impossible not to like them, but she couldn’t help but think of Owen’s suspicions when it came to them. He’d said for her to watch and listen. This was an opening for both options.

“Who do you think…killed him?” she asked, then took a sip of her tea so she could watch the pair surreptitiously over the edge of her cup.

Pippa flinched, but Abigail didn’t move at all. For