for hire’s somethin’ else, o’ course. Deeper waters. Still, criminals ain’t smart, mostly. I shoulda been able to hear somethin’. But I squeezed and squeezed and come up dry.”
“And what is that supposed to tell us?” demanded Sir Alexander.
“That it weren’t a criminal which done it. Like I said, a killin’ like this looks personal.”
Charlotte felt cold.
“You tell me Mr. Wylde didn’t have no friends, and he didn’t visit with his family…”
“My cousin Edward saw him at his club,” Sir Alexander interrupted.
Hanks looked aggrieved. “You never told me that.”
“Of course I did.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but you did not.”
“Well, I am telling you now,” replied Sir Alexander stiffly. Anger showed in the lines of his face.
Hanks’s notebook came out again. “That toffee-nosed feller at the club didn’t care to speak to me. Mebbe you could tell him that he should…?”
“This is ridiculous!” exclaimed Charlotte. “Edward did not kill Henry.”
Finally, Hanks looked at her. His expression made it obvious that he thought he was gazing at the person who had somehow accomplished the deed. And that he was determined to prove his suspicions correct.
She’d forgotten this, Charlotte thought, when she was summing up her reputation in society. Not only widowed and penniless, but a suspected murderess. Indeed, she had no reputation to lose.
Seventeen
Alec sat at his desk without really seeing the piles of papers there. It was late, and the house was quiet, and he was thinking about Charlotte. He thought of little else these days, despite the many calls on his time and attention. He neglected his work; he lost the thread of conversations in memories of the enticing scent of her, the feel of her soft curves against him, her lips demanding and yielding. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman. And if that had been all… ah, if only that had been all. He could have dealt with desire. One way or another. He didn’t think she would be averse; she’d given him reason enough to think quite the opposite. The image of Charlotte naked in his bed quickened his pulse.
But desire wasn’t all. Charlotte—the idea of her, the reality of her presence—attracted every nuance of feeling, as the Earth’s gravity drew each object down. Whatever he did or thought, she was somehow woven in. He was pulled and pulled with an inevitability he resented and mistrusted. He was not “falling in love.” He would not. Alec stood and began to pace his study. He despised the phrase and everything people seemed to mean by it. “Falling in love” brought idiotic decisions and a lifetime of regret. It seemed to make people stupid, laughably credulous. His case was quite different. He was moved by desire and… compassion perhaps, respect, warm regard. What paltry words. Damn it all to hell!
Edward, he’d meant to think about Edward. Alec returned to his desk, sat down again. He needed to talk to his cousin, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t like him. Had he ever liked him? Whether he had or not, when he saw him drape his arm along the back of Charlotte’s chair…
Edward. As young children they’d been closer, while Alec and his family were fixed at their grandparents’ home. Edward had lived nearby and often visited. Later, they’d encountered each other once a year at the Christmas holidays, after Alec’s parents moved to an estate inherited by his mother down toward Leicester. They could have visited more often, but the tensions of the senior Wylde household were intolerable. And his father wasn’t a man for visiting. He hadn’t cared for people much, Alec thought, beyond his wife and children. It occurred to him there was some similarity to Uncle Henry in that—far less extreme, of course—really quite different. The idea was ridiculous. His father had cared about his tenants, who were nothing at all like a collection.
After their grandfather died, when Alec was nine and Edward twelve, they’d seen each other even less. On the face of it, they should have had much in common. Older parents—Alec’s father had been thirty-seven when he’d set out to find a suitable bride. He’d done it for the sake of an heir to the baronetcy, but in the end, Alec thought, his parents had been contented. Or perhaps he’d just been told that his mother didn’t miss London seasons, was happy with her gardens and her four children. He couldn’t actually know; she’d died of complications of childbirth when he was eleven years old. Had that marriage simply