Dolores recovered first. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A very simple one. I can find out other ways, but it is easier to ask you.”
“Then have my simple answer. I. Was. Not.”
“Nor I,” Agnes added. “Did someone say we were there? Is someone impugning us and trying to say—”
“No one has impugned or accused or in any way named either of you. I had to ask this question in order to eliminate possibilities. Thank you for your honest answers.”
They both relaxed but their alarm had subdued them.
“My other questions are for you, Aunt Dolores. They are less simple. You may want to hear them privately.”
“I will go.” Agnes began rising.
“Don’t,” Dolores blurted. She reached out her hand. “Please don’t.”
Agnes looked at her sister, whose worry dragged at her face. She glanced at Chase, then sat again.
“Aunt Dolores, did you have an old, long-held resentment against your brother? A slight that had not been forgotten?”
Dolores tried to appear surprised, but it didn’t work. Rather her attempt dissolved into cold anger. “This is of no concern or interest to you, Chase. Whoever told you about this was disloyal and cruel. As you said, it was an old slight, from very long ago.”
“But not forgotten.”
She licked her lips. “I never forgave him.”
Agnes reached over and took her sister’s hand. “Tell him, Dolores, lest someone make more of it than it is.”
“I will not speak of it. I cannot. But . . . I give you leave to do so, Agnes.”
Agnes kept her hand on her sister’s, her arm stretched in connection. “There was a man in her life, Chase. She was twenty-four, so not a child. She was very much in love.”
Dolores closed her eyes.
“Unfortunately, he was a scoundrel,” Agnes continued.
“He wasn’t,” Dolores said.
“Oh, Sister, he was. Believe what you want, but he was a rogue.” She turned her attention to Chase. “A fortune hunter of the first order. An assumed name and heritage. A charlatan. Frederick saw the truth of it on first meeting him. Dolores was not to be dissuaded. So Frederick put the fellow to the test.”
“He betrayed me horribly,” Dolores said.
“He saved you.”
“He condemned me to a loveless life.”
Agnes ignored her. “He offered this worthless man a great deal of money if he left Dolores alone, and indeed if he left the realm. South America for a year, that was the requirement. What a quandary that must have been for the blackguard. Dolores in theory might be worth much more, eventually. This was immediate, however. Instant wealth that he could carry out the door.” Agnes patted Dolores hand. “He was gone from town by morning. Frederick then sent Dolores and me on a grand tour. We had a wonderful time.”
“I hated it.”
“You danced at balls at every court in Europe and flirted with princes.”
“He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have tempted him like that, with so much—what man would turn down all that—like a devil my brother showed him the money. Gold, all of it. He always kept gold at hand but this was a huge amount. A mountain of gold.”
“Did you and he ever speak of it?” Chase asked.
Dolores shook her head. “Other than the row when he first told me what had happened, we did not. He knew what I thought. I had said I would never forgive him, and he accepted that I never did.”
“He was generous to both of us, nevertheless,” Agnes said. “Only at the end, with this will, did he fail us.”
“It was his idea of punishment,” Dolores said. “His way of showing his disappointment in me.”
“Oh, Sister, stop talking nonsense. He did not single you out, did he? Surely we weren’t all disappointments.”
“Who told you about this?” Dolores had reclaimed her composure. “I want to know.”
“No one in the family, I assure you. It was someone I don’t think you have ever met.” A brilliant woman who overheard one sentence and guessed the rest.
Dolores sighed. “People talked, of course. I suppose some still do.”
Chase stood. “Thank you both. When doing such inquiries, it is always good to cross something off the list of duties, without it taking days of investigating.”
“Then we are crossed off the list?” Agnes asked.
He bowed and took his leave.
* * *
Gentleman Jim’s was busy in late afternoon. Among the men boxing, Chase spotted Nicholas and Kevin near the far wall. He made his way over and watched from the corner.