Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,34
she had waited until Thorn wasn’t around to ask Greycourt if she could get right to work on her laboratory. She wished she’d told Thorn she didn’t want him there.
She wished she’d never laid eyes on the man. Why, he actually thought Mama could have murdered Grey’s father! The devil! How dared he? When it came to her and her family, he always thought the worst.
The dratted man even meant to intrude in her laboratory! He would not ruin this chance for her. She wouldn’t let him.
“You’re very quiet,” Thorn said as they walked along a gravel path that wound through the gardens.
“Is that a problem, Your Grace?”
He cursed under his breath. “You weren’t calling me ‘Your Grace’ last night when we were kissing.”
“You weren’t accusing my stepmother of murder.”
“I wasn’t—Damn it, all I’m saying is that she was a member of the group of ladies having their debuts in the same year. I just made the obvious conclusion that one of them might have—”
“Murdered your half brother’s father. Yes, I know all about your conclusions. I’m not sure how obvious they are, but you’re certainly free to make them. Just leave me out of it.”
They walked a few moments in blessed silence, but he of course couldn’t leave it alone. “What other explanation do you have for why someone would poison Grey’s father?”
“First of all, as a woman of science, I prefer not to speculate on anything. I amass facts, and then I prove my hypothesis. I have no facts yet concerning the possible poisoning of Grey’s father. Until I do, I can only postulate that his cause of death is undetermined.”
“All that aside,” Thorn snapped, “I’m not saying it was necessarily your stepmother who poisoned him. Just that there are three women who had the means and possibly the motive to murder him.”
“Four women,” Olivia shot back.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your mother had the means and ‘possibly the motive’ as well.”
His face darkened. “My mother had nothing to do with his poisoning, I assure you.”
She halted to face him. “Based on what evidence?”
“She was caring for her infant son, for one thing.”
“No matter what men think,” Olivia said primly, “a woman can take care of a child and do other things at the same time.” Though she truly didn’t believe his mother—or any of the other ladies—had killed Grey’s father, she was trying to make a point: At present he had no more evidence to prove her stepmother guilty than she did to prove his mother guilty.
“It wasn’t my damned mother!” he cried. When she lifted her eyebrow, he added, “There’s more to our suspicions than you know. Than we can reveal until we have additional information.”
“That’s precisely what I’m saying. Until we prove Grey’s father was poisoned, we shouldn’t speculate about who fed him the poison.”
“Fine. I will ignore my tendency to speculate for the time being. Will that satisfy you?”
“Perfectly.” She marched off down the path. Him and his secret suspicions. He was no better than Papa, slipping off into the night to do whatever he pleased.
He matched her stride. They went quite a way without speaking before he said, in a toneless voice, “The dairy is just around the bend ahead at the top of a hill.”
She walked on, but he had offered an olive branch, so she felt she should take it, at least for the moment. “I gather that you know your brother’s estate well.”
“Well enough. Grey and I used to travel up here to get away from town. Carymont is his nearest property to London. Sometimes we’d even invite other bachelors and make a house party of it.”
“Without any women present?”
“We-e-ell—”
“That’s what I thought.” She stifled the urge to torment him about it. “You and Grey are very close, I suppose.”
“Yes. Although less so now that he’s married.” He stared off ahead. “I don’t know how it happens, but once a man takes a wife, he seems to replace all his bachelor friends with her. And with other couples.”
“That’s probably why my uncle has never taken a wife. He prefers the company of his Oxonian friends.”
She could feel Thorn’s gaze on her. “And you,” he said.
“Yes. But not at the same time. A niece is different than a wife. No matter how much I tidy his rooms in town or he champions my work as a chemist, when his friends are there, he wants me nowhere around.”
Thorn surprised her by chuckling. “Probably because he doesn’t want them eyeing you with lust.”