The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery by L.C. Sharp (books to read as a couple TXT) 📕

did. As he’d squeezed past him, Jack had slipped one into Ash’s pocket. The invitations to this particular masquerade were tokens stamped into thin base metal.

The duke spun a similar token and snatched it out of the air, pocketing it in a smooth motion. “Society’s in a state after the scandal of the murder and the mob,” he observed.

He was fishing, Ash thought. “Hmm. Did you know either of them?”

Abercorn gazed at him, his eyes reflecting nothing. “The murderess and the victim? I knew them a little. Hawskworth approached me about marrying the heiress, but I have enough of my own, and no interest in marrying. I was almost sorry when I saw who she was paired with. Uppingham fancied himself a knowing one, but he tended to force where gentle persuasion would have gained him better rewards.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “A damned brute.”

Interestingly perceptive comment, considering Uppingham took care to hide his proclivities from his own class. A man hunting heiresses tended to do that. Not that Juliana’s parents seemed to care. Ash felt his flare of temper on her behalf, accepted it, and put it away.

The duke behaved like a dilettante, but there was a sharp mind behind that smooth, confident exterior. If he didn’t pickle it in the next few years, that was.

“Did you join Uppingham in his play?”

The duke shook his head. “Not a pastime I enjoy.” He shrugged. “I prefer willing playfellows.” He gave a tight, white-toothed grin. “I need entertainment, and it is sadly lacking in the places Uppingham frequented. If his fresh new wife killed him, I’m sure he deserved it.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “And that journalist was very curious about it. Asked me as if he assumed everyone in society knew everyone else. I told him to...” He shrugged. “I’m sure you can guess.”

Indolence personified. Or something else. Certainly the duke had let slip a few interesting snippets without seeming to notice.

The duke wasn’t careless and feckless at all. He was careful. “You’ve done it all?” He sent Abercorn a raised brow and slight smile, as if he sympathized with him.

“Perhaps not everything,” the man conceded. “But I’ve seen a few deaths. Heard of more.”

“If you hear more about this one, I’d appreciate you letting me know.”

“I’m sure you would.” Abercorn stepped away and collected his hat from the peg on the wall behind him. “But don’t count on it.” With a wink, he strolled across the room to the exit.

Ash watched the way he avoided the thieves and nodded to a rare selection of people. Ash had tolerated him because he showed no sense of superiority; he could melt into whatever company he found himself. But how much of that was more calculated than people thought?

Abercorn deserved a closer eye.

Chapter Fourteen

“Don’t look at those.” Amelia strode into the back parlor and pushed the cartoons to one side. “They’re lies.”

Juliana rescued one, plucking it out of the pile. It had been done before the accusation of murder, when she was still the pampered princess. A white-faced marionette, her strings held by a cruel depiction of her father, stared back at her.

“This one is not. It shows me as I was. I lived behind that mask. Those elaborate gowns, that heavy face paint and powder. I sat behind it all watching the world go by and wondering when my turn would come.” She pulled a couple of others from the pile. “I should have realized that I had to make the first move. I would like to keep these when Ash has done with them. A reminder that waiting for something to happen is futile. I’ll never go back to that person.”

“You will never go back?” Amelia echoed.

Smiling, Juliana shook her head. “No.” Despite the sentence of death hanging over her, she knew she’d made the right decision. Finally, she was free.

“Won’t your parents want to care for you? Isn’t your mother prostrate with grief?”

Juliana’s bitter laugh rang around the walls. “My parents? My mother left London without bothering to see me.” Hurt pierced her, but not as badly as before. Facing reality was good for her. “I am their brood mare. My father could force my marriage to another luckless peer if I am not already with child from Godfrey, and I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.”

“I thought widows were independent?”

“They are. But you know how many heiresses are abducted every year. I will guard against that.”

Going back to what she had been, marrying another careless, brutal man? No indeed.

“Would you rather die?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I would rather be acquitted of the crime I did not commit and be left to live my life the way I want to.”

Amelia stared at her, her eyes wide. “You are not a person to him.”

“I never was. And I’m not alone. Children are currency in my world, investments to be spent wisely. I am the only guinea my father has in his pocket, and he will not want to see me perish, in case I prove useful in the future. I have to use that to make him pay my bills and leave me alone.”

Amelia turned away, her hand resting on the table. In the mirror hanging on the wall, Juliana caught a glance of her new friend’s expression. Tears gleamed in her eyes, and one trickled down her cheek. Juliana wished she could comfort her in some way. Amelia’s concern touched her deeply.

Nobody had cared enough about her to weep for her before.

“You have a strong, loving family,” she said. “Be aware of your good fortune and cherish it, nurture it.”

Amelia turned back to her, skirts swishing. “We were not always so. Our mother was strict, but after she had William, she got worse. By then Ash had left home to go to university. When Matthew—” She bit off whatever she was about to say.

Amelia stared at the stack of cartoons. Reaching out,