Page 101 of Once More, My Darling Rogue
“Why would Wigmore kill his wife?” Somerdale asked. “He already had her dowry, her money. What would he gain?”
“A younger wife, a chance for an heir?” Graves speculated. “I don’t understand the workings of the mind, only the body.”
“But he was wretchedly old,” Somerdale said. “Could he have even performed?”
“Does it matter?” Phee asked.
Somerdale’s face burned a bright red as though he’d forgotten his sister was there to hear the conversation about performance. “Apologies. Of course it doesn’t matter. I just find this entire circumstance odd. You and Darling traipsing about in the middle of the night. Poisoning. Suicide. Skullduggery. My God, the next thing I know I’ll discover a madwoman in the attic.”
Laughing lightly, she rubbed his arm. “I think that’s highly unlikely.” She turned to Graves. “We appreciate your coming in the middle of the night like this.”
“I’m sorry my services were needed, but I’m glad that it’s something from which she will most likely recover. I’ll come by to check on her tomorrow.”
While Somerdale saw Graves out, Phee went to look in on her aunt one more time. She looked so peaceful sleeping there. Then her eyes fluttered open.
“He was trying to kill me, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“We think so,” Phee replied.
“I married him because my father wished it. Marry for love, Phee, as your mother did.”
“Love is not so easy to find.”
“Recognizing it, that’s the tricky part. A man worthy of you is even harder.”
Being worthy of a man, that was the most difficult. Drake knew her secrets now, and while he might have thought he’d miss her, she suspected as time passed, he would be very glad that she was no longer in his life.
She was sullied. After Wigmore she’d never again wanted a man to touch her. Yet Drake had. From him she’d welcomed what she’d thought she’d never be able to tolerate. Now she wasn’t certain how she would carry on.
During the week since Phee’s return, Somerdale, bless him, tried to ascertain exactly what had transpired between the moment she’d walked from his library with the understanding that she would travel to Stillmeadow with their uncle, and the moment she had returned to his residence, but his questioning was frightfully ineffectual and she suspected he really didn’t want to know the truth of it. So she provided vague answers, muttered, and sighed, and he seemed content that he had at least done his brotherly duty and looked into the matter.
While she wandered through the residence striving to recall what she did with herself all day when she didn’t have to polish boots, or furniture, or banisters. She wasn’t up to making morning calls, not just yet, and looking after her aunt provided her with the perfect excuse to avoid all the gay affairs that were being hosted. She wasn’t receiving, which was completely understandable for a woman who had lost an uncle—not that she offered that excuse. Society, as its way, simply assumed, for which she was grateful. She was having difficulty erecting the walls that she needed to move about within polite circles.
Her aunt was recovering nicely. That afternoon she took her tea in the garden.
“You’re looking quite spry,” Phee told her aunt as she took a chair at the linen-covered table near the roses.
“Oh bosh. I’m years past spry, but I am feeling more myself.”
“I’m glad.” She prepared a cup of tea and passed it over to her aunt.
“Thank you, dear. Tell me, whatever became of that handsome fellow who helped us escape from Stillmeadow?”
Her stomach tightened. “Drake Darling? He’s quite busy.”
“Too busy to come see a girl he’s sweet on?”
“He’s not sweet on me.”
“Oh, I thought perhaps he was. But I was never good at it.”
“Good at what, Auntie?”
“Figuring out who the fellows were keen on. I thought Wigmore fancied me. I think he did in the beginning. But what did I know? I was only seventeen.”
Her heart lurched. Yes, the devil would have liked her aunt very much when she was seventeen.
“We never had much in common, and after I had the three miscarriages, well, I became more an ornament than a wife.” Reaching over, she patted Phee’s hand. “Don’t become an ornament, dear. It’s dreadfully lonely and boring as hell.”
