Page 46 of Undercover Duke
Mother snorted. “I can tell a woman who has set her cap for someone when I see her.”
“Trust me—she’s not interested in me. Long before she and I grew . . . cozy, she told Grey of her interest in Juncker.”
“If you say so.” Mother sounded skeptical.
Time to change the subject. “What were you and Sir Noah discussing? Or dare I ask?”
“Mostly we talked about Cora. He wanted a fuller explanation of what I was accusing her of, and I wanted to know where he’d been when all of it was happening.”
“Ah.” Sheridan put his arm around his mother’s shoulders, reminded of how small and fragile she really was, despite her fierceness. The grief of suffering three husbands’ deaths would weigh anyone down. “What did he say?”
“He reminded me of something I already vaguely knew from way back when Cora and I were friends—that his estate is far up north in Cumberland, which is one reason he and his wife rarely came to London before her death. The other was she was ill a great deal. So he didn’t like to leave her.”
“That all sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t so easily explain Cora to me: why she’s the way she is, what makes her so mean, and how she managed to raise a daughter as fine as Vanessa.”
“I actually think Grey might have had something to do with that.” Briefly he told her what Vanessa had said about growing up with Grey as an “older brother.”
His mother sniffed. “I think she merely got lucky with Vanessa. But more and more I believe Grey is right about Cora. She has the best motive of anyone to murder my husbands, if only out of resentment toward me. I married the duke she coveted, and then after she killed him, I landed in clover again with Thorn’s father. After she killedhim, I married a man she would have seen as inconsequential and, anyway, he was out of her reach in Prussia. Untilhebecame a duke, too, once again giving me what she wanted—prestige and wealth. So she had to kill him.”
Sheridan stifled a smile. “And the fact that she was vile to one of your children has nothing to do with why you believe this.”
Mother tipped up her chin. “It just shows she is vile in general.”
“There are two problems with your theory. The first is that the Armitage dukedom hasn’t had wealth in years, thanks to Uncle Armie’s spending.”
“But she didn’t know that.”
“Which leads to the second problem. Your theory doesn’t explain why she would wait all those years and suddenly decide to kill Uncle Armie to bring Father back to England, thus making Father into a duke as well. Wouldn’t his new status contribute to her envy?”
Mother’s lips thinned into a severe line. “Well . . . I mean, we don’t know for certain that your uncle Armie was murdered, do we? We’ve just assumed it was part of the pattern. But it might not be.”
That brought Sheridan up short. She had a point. If Uncle Armie had genuinely died from drunkenly falling off his horse and breaking his neck, then their father coming back and becoming duke might have merely infuriated Lady Eustace that Mother was once again “landing in clover.”
“It’s something to think about, I suppose,” he said as their carriage approached. “I’ll mention it to the others.”
The carriage halted, the footman put the step down, and Sheridan helped his mother inside. Once they were settled into their seats and on their way back to Armitage House, Mother asked, “Are you angry with me?”
“For what?”
“Letting Cora have it with both barrels. I know I was supposed to question her about the house parties, but I just saw her sitting there with her cat-in-the-cream smile, and I . . . I wanted to tear her hair out after what she did to Grey.”
“How could I be angry over that? She deserved it.”
“But it makes your task all the more difficult.”
Mother had no idea. He’d be lucky if he could even get inside the Pryde house now. “I will work it out, never fear. At the very least I have to uphold my promise to Vanessa that I will bring Juncker to visit.”
“Ah, yes. And how will you convince him to join you?”
“She and I concocted a plan. I just need to hunt him down tonight so I can set the plan in motion.”
“I see. Good luck to you then. Both of you will need it.”
How true that was. Worse yet, after tomorrow he’d have no more reason to see Vanessa. Either she would have caught Juncker at last, or Juncker would have made it clear once and for all that he had no interest in her.
You could court her yourself. Make her your wife and have her in your bed where you want her.
