Page 27 of A Wicked Duke's Arranged Marriage
Damn the memory of his body standing so close to her own and the way it still made her feel all this time later.
“What do you know of the duke, Caroline?” Josephine asked, her voice dropping. She knew she had no fear of being overheard in her own home, but she still felt the need to speak softer.
Caroline gave her a shrewd, half-amused look as if Josephine had just betrayed some secret by asking.
Lord help her, but Caroline probably assumed her doing so was an admission of interest.
And wasn’t it, in a way?
“Only what anyone knows, I’m sure,” Caroline sighed, looking somewhat disappointed in herself to have to admit as much. “He’s very rich, very private, and purportedly very lonely up there in that great large estate of his. Although, rumour has it that before his wife was murdered, that wasn’t the case.”
Josephine was nodding blindly along, already half-checked out to try and think who might know more when Caroline’s words fully registered.
“Murdered?” Her voice rose an octave, her wandering eyes jerking back to Caroline as she felt the pit of her stomach drop somewhere near her feet.
Caroline’s prettily manicured brows rose on her forehead, her lips pursing in an entirely different manner as she leant forward, dropping her voice as Josephine had before. “Yes, murdered! Don’t tell me you didn’t know?”
“Of course, I didn’t know! I didn’t pay any mind to any of the news. I knew she had died, obviously, but I assumed it had been some ill-timed sickness that had consumed her or some fatal accident on the grounds. I never imagined …” Josephine trailed off, those butterflies in her stomach churning in a far more sickly manner as she grasped the full meaning behind Caroline’s choice of words.
“Well, of course, no one imagined it,” Caroline said with a snort. “That was the scandal of it all; she was so beloved. No one would have ever considered such a thing befalling her, but the evidence was all there. The servants came down from the estate whispering about it. And I heard from Mr Bruckshire that the authorities were investigating it for ages.”
“If she was so beloved, who could have killed her?” Josephine winced at how callous her question sounded, but the words had left her lips before she could think better of them.
“That’s the rub, isn’t it?” Caroline fluttered her hands as if she couldn’t decide which gesture to use. “Everyone loved the late duchess. There were rumours for a good while that it was the Duke himself–”
Josephine shot her a look that had Caroline quickly cut off mid-sentence. She hadn’t meant to. It was just such a preposterous notion to her that he could have killed a woman he so greatly loved.
Although … How did she know that he had actually loved her? And was it really so preposterous after all? She hardly knew the man. She couldn’t actually speak to his character with any real authority.
But the thought of such a monster inspiring what he had in her…
“He was cleared of all such charges,” Caroline continued carefully after a brief moment of hesitation. “The authorities were sure he had no part in the foul deed. It’s only the gossip and those with an obsession with the macabre that still say any differently.”
Josephine looked away from her friend, trying to gather her thoughts and compose herself in the same breath. Her world felt like it was teetering on the edge of something, some sick see-saw that she fluctuated on. “But no one was ever arrested for her murder?”
Caroline sighed, shaking her head – a movement Josephine had to catch in her peripheral as her frown deepened, and she stared out the window across from her.
“I don’t even have any theories on who could have done it.” Caroline’s nose scrunched with the admission. “And I’ve given it quite a bit of thought already, though I’m happy to give it more now. There’s just so little to go on.”
Josephine nodded, her heart caught in her throat as her eyebrows furrowed.
“Josephine? You look a little … pale. You aren’t worried that the authorities got it wrong, and the duke did it, are you?”
Josephine jolted at Caroline’s question, her eyes jerking back to her friend as she instinctively shook her head. Despite how much that very likely should have been her main concern, it hadn’t been.
“I was just wondering what could have driven a person to do such a thing,” she admitted after a brief pause. “Because if she was so well-liked, then clearly it wasn’t on account of who she was that such a fate befell her. Which only leaves so many other motives.” Motives Josephine didn’t want to consider despite how her brain kept forcing them to the forefront of her thoughts.
“You’re worried that you might be in danger what with you being the next duchess,” Caroline gasped, her eyes going wide.
Josephine nodded, that sick feeling filling her once more.
“It’s a silly fear.” Josephine laughed, though the sound fell just short of being genuine. “There’s nothing to say that there’s anything behind such a concern at all.”
Caroline fidgeted, her lips thinning out as she shrugged. “There’s nothing to say there isn’t either, though,” she muttered.
Josephine had never despised her friend’s honesty more than she did at that moment.
The words hung heavily between them, souring the air.
