Page 45 of What Cannot Be Said

“Amanda? Resign herself to something she considers both an outrage and a personal affront to her dignity? Surely you know her better than that.”

“True.”

She nodded to the cluster of decanters and glasses on a nearby table. “Pour yourself a glass of wine and have a seat. Or there’s brandy if you’d prefer.”

He settled in a nearby chair. “Thank you, but I don’t want to keep you too long.”

The Duchess fixed him with a hard stare. “Why do I get the distinct impression you’re here because of something to do with these ghastly murders?”

“Because you’re a very clever woman,” he said with a smile. “What can you tell me about Lady McInnis?”

“Laura?” Henrietta looked thoughtful for a moment. “Nothing to her discredit—at least, nothing beyond a somewhat lamentable tendency to prose on endlessly about the horrid treatment given the poor wretches in the city’s workhouses or some such thing.”

“Any chance she was having an affair?”

“Laura McInnis? I wouldn’t have said so, no. If she was, she must have been extraordinarily discreet, for I’ve heard nothing of it.”

“I’m told her marriage to Sir Ivo was no love match.”

“No, not at all. My understanding is she married McInnis largely because he was her brother’s best friend and her father pushed the match. Her father—the previous Viscount Salinger—was a hopeless gamester, you know. All done in. At one point Laura was set to marry a young cavalry lieutenant. He was the younger son of a younger son, but her portion was so small, Salinger was initially relieved to have someone take her off his hands. Then the old goat managed to catch a rich cit’s daughter for his heir, Miles.” The Duchess wrinkled her nose. “Septimus Bain was his name. Horrid, grasping little man. Bain balked at the idea of his daughter’s sister-in-law becoming the wife of a mere army officer and following the drum, so old Salinger forbade the match.”

“And Laura acquiesced?”

“She was underage at the time, so short of bolting for the border she didn’t exactly have a choice, did she? The lieutenant went off to war while Laura promised to be faithful to him until she turned twenty-one and would be free to marry without her father’s consent. Except the lieutenant hadn’t been gone more than a few months when word came that he’d been killed.”

“So she married Sir Ivo?”

“Not right away, but something like two or three years later.”

“Do you recall the name of this lieutenant?”

“As it happens, I do. He’s a major now—Major Zacchary Finch. I noticed he was mentioned in the dispatches from Waterloo.”

“I thought you said he was dead?”

“No, only that Laura heard he was dead. As it turned out, he’d been wounded and captured. But that wasn’t discovered until several months after she’d married McInnis.”

“Tragic.”

“It was, rather.”

“I assume he’s currently with the Army in France?”

“That I can’t tell you. I believe he was wounded, so he may have been shipped home.”

“Where is ‘home’?”

“It was Leicestershire—his grandfather was the Earl of Arnesby, and I believe Finch’s father was the vicar in a village not far from Priestly Priory. But if the father’s dead, then the living will have gone to some other relative by now. The family has always bred prodigiously, and they have a tendency to run to boys.”

“Good God. Where do you get all these details?”

She gave an elegant sniff and pushed to her feet. “People talk and I listen. And now you must excuse me; I’m having dinner with Hendon tonight.” She watched him carefully stand up and said, “I see your leg is still bothering you.”

“A bit.”

“Somehow I suspect chasing a murderer halfway across London last month didn’t help it.”

He stared at her. “How did you hear about that?”

---