A picture of Cedric lying there with that knife in his back floated before my eyes. I wanted to warn Belinda that she might be wasting her time on someone who would inherit neither the title nor the money and might end up on the end of a rope—a silken cord, of course, now that he was a duke, but a cord nonetheless. I hoped the police would discover the clue that led to another likely candidate because I liked Jack. I didn’t want to find that he was the one who plunged his knife into Cedric’s back.

Belinda put the finishing touches to an already perfect face and smoothed down her dress over her perfect figure. I found myself watching her as if I was noticing a stranger for the first time and not someone I’d known for many years.

“Belinda, I’m amazed you’re not married yet. You really are quite stunning,” I blurted out.

She smiled at me, still looking past her own image in the mirror. “Thanks, old bean. But I can now tell you why I’m not married—to the right sort of chap, I mean: damaged goods. Nobody is going to let their son marry a girl who isn’t a virgin, and I’m afraid the word is out that I do enjoy a good roll in the hay.” She snapped her purse shut. “I fear I am doomed to be the perpetual mistress rather than the wife, like your mother.”

“Mummy married several of hers,” I pointed out. “She still is married to a Texas oil millionaire, so I believe.”

“Not that I mind being the mistress rather than the wife, as long as the chap has the means to keep me in the style to which I’d like to be accustomed.”

“But don’t you want the security of your own home and family?” I thought of myself and Darcy, and a brood of adorable, little, dark-haired babies.

“Heavens, no. Can’t abide children. Don’t know how to talk to them the way you do. You’re a natural, which is lucky if you marry Darcy.”

“Why if I marry Darcy?”

“Catholic, my dear. No birth control allowed. You’ll be popping them out like rabbits.” She laughed at my blank face. “Goodness, you are an innocent, aren’t you? How do you think the rest of us manage not to get pregnant all the time? Come on, let’s go down to Auntie Duchess and see how the investigation is progressing.”

“It was lucky that you were related to them, wasn’t it?” I said as we walked to my door. “Otherwise Edwina would have bid you a polite good-bye, given the circumstances.”

Belinda looked back and smiled. “It’s quite possible that we are related, I suppose, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t actually have a great-aunt Primrose.”

With that, she swept out of the room ahead of me.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20