A Stroke of Malice (Lady Darby Mystery #8) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,26

up, and the fatigue of the long day threatened to topple me where I sat.

Lady Helmswick’s heaving breaths slowed and the ire slowly faded from her eyes.

“Where is Mr. Gage?” the duchess asked, evident concern tightening her features. “Shall I send for him?”

I inhaled shakily. “No, he’s retrieving the body from the crypt with the assistance of Lord Edward and a number of your servants.” I forced myself to take another calming breath, pushing away my discomfort to address Lady Helmswick. “When was the last you heard from your husband? Could we be mistaken?”

Her gaze dipped to her bright cherry red skirts, the shiny sleigh bells she’d draped around her jingling as she moved. She reached up to remove the string from around her neck, pulling them past the ringlets now drooping over her brow. “I haven’t received word from him since he left,” she admitted. “But that isn’t unusual. Helmswick isn’t exactly the most attentive of husbands, and he absolutely abhors letter writing. It’s not uncommon for us to pass two or three months when we are apart without any direct correspondence.”

I felt a stab of pain at the thought of passing two or three months without any word from my husband. Gage was no great correspondent himself, but I knew he would never let such a gap occur in our communication, let alone willingly allow me out of his sight for such a length of time. The same could be said of my brother-in-law, Philip, whose efforts in the House of Lords sometimes called for him to be away from his family. But upon those occasions, his letters to his wife still arrived with almost unerring frequency.

Lady Helmswick wanted to appear as if this truth did not bother her, but I could tell from the tightening around her eyes that it did.

“Is there someone he would correspond with?” I queried cautiously.

“His solicitor. Maybe his steward.” She turned away. “I honestly can’t say.”

“We will need their names and direction so that we can contact them and try to verify Lord Helmswick’s whereabouts.”

“Of course.”

It was evident she was struggling with some strong emotion, but I didn’t think it was worry or even grief. In fact, if I’d had to put a name to it, I would have called it relief, though a tremulous one at that. I recognized it because it was what I’d felt at Sir Anthony’s passing. To suddenly be presented with the realization that I was free of him after three years of horror and degradation had overwhelmed me, though not with pain but release. Of course, I couldn’t have known what was to come next, but at least I had been liberated from that nightmarish marriage.

This observation made me view Lady Helmswick in a different light. I knew little about her or her husband, which meant I knew almost nothing about their marriage. But if the thought of Helmswick’s death gave her such relief, then I had to wonder what she would receive a reprieve from. Had Helmswick been such a terrible spouse, or was she eager to escape him for another reason? After all, their marriage wouldn’t be the first union to have potentially been arranged for political and financial advantages that the parties later regretted.

Her parents, for example. I glanced at the duchess. For all their outward display of accord and indifference to each other’s affairs, her grace had let slip how she, at least, had entered her marriage to the duke with faithful intentions. Her husband’s infidelity had been both shocking and cutting. But society was vicious to the unsophisticated, and she had quickly learned to adjust her expectations and, once the requisite heir and a spare were born, to seek her happiness elsewhere.

Having given birth to a daughter and only one son, Lady Helmswick had not yet met this unspoken requirement that would give her license among much of society to take a lover. And yet I had seen the way Marsdale’s hand brushed against her lower back earlier that evening as she entered the ballroom. I’d seen the look in his eyes. Was his attraction reciprocated, and if so, had it been acted upon?

I rubbed two fingers against my temple, disconcerted by the rampant infidelity among the members of the ton, and the frank acceptance of it by many. Sadly, it all too often had a part to play in our inquiries, and as such I’d grown much more accepting of it and all of human nature’s follies than I’d ever