Anthony saw, was dressed all in black, her figure still slim, though she had reached middle age. She looked touchingly fragile. A heavy mourning veil was draped over her hat, but as she came up the steps, she reached up and turned it back, so that it fell down on either side of her face in a flattering manner. Honoria always wanted to make a statement, but not, of course, to the detriment of her looks.
Anthony repressed the cynical thought, reminding himself that his older sister had recently lost her only son and had every right to be in the depths of sorrow—even if she did mourn Sir Edmund to the utmost effect.
He strode out into the entryway to greet her, schooling the impatience out of his face and voice. “Honoria.”
“Oh, Anthony!” Tears filled her limpid blue eyes, and she held out both her hands to him, her body somehow bending a little in such a way as to hint that she might faint.
Anthony took her hands in his, and led her quickly into the drawing room and over to the sofa. He had had enough experience with his sister not to allow her to develop her scene to its fullest extent.
“What brings you here today?” he asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.
“Oh, Anthony,” the older woman repeated, one hand going to her heart. She looked up into his face. “That woman murdered my son!”
CHAPTER TWO
HIS SISTER’S WORDS LEFT Anthony speechless.
He did not have to ask what woman she meant. There was only one—at the moment—who earned the title of That Woman, always pronounced in the most scathing of accents. However, even for Honoria, the accusation of murder seemed excessive.
Anthony frowned. “What basis do you have for thinking that? You cannot go about accusing people without any reason.”
“She has written me. She is coming back here.”
“It would seem the natural thing to do, Honoria,” Anthony pointed out, wondering if this could possibly be all that had set his sister off.
“Natural? There is nothing natural about any of it,” Honoria snapped, in her annoyance casting aside the mantle of wilting sorrow. “She is bringing Edmund’s ashes. His ashes!”
“But, Honoria, isn’t this where you would want Edmund to—”
“Yes, of course, this is where I want my son.” She raised the handkerchief to her eyes again. “This is where I want him buried. But she has denied me even that solace. She burned him, Anthony!”
“Yes, Honoria, I know.”
“Do you understand the horror of that? There is not even the shell of him left to bury in the Scarbrough mausoleum. It was wicked of her. Wicked! First she took him to that awful country, so far from home. And she did it only to spite me. I know it. And now…now that he has been taken from me forever, she deprives me of even this comfort. It is outside the bounds of decency. It is sacrilegious!”
There was, Anthony knew, a good deal of religious feeling against the immolation of a body. However, it was the first time he had heard of his sister being in any way religious.
He said only, “Wouldn’t you rather have his ashes here than have his body buried in Naples?”
Honoria cast him an irritated look. “That is not the point. He should not have been there in the first place. He should have been here where I could look after him. That is why she took him to Italy—to keep him from me. She knew that if she separated him from me and his family, no one could protest anything that happened to him. If only he hadn’t gone to Italy, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t be dead now.”
She began to weep again. Anthony sighed.
“Edmund was a grown man, Honoria. She could not make him go. And we could not keep him here,” he pointed out.
“You could have made more of a push to stop him.”
“How was I to foresee that Edmund would be in a boating accident there?” he replied reasonably, his words as much for himself as for his sister. “I had never known him to show a preference for sailing.”
“That is just it!” Honoria said triumphantly, her eyes lighting now with fervor. “Edmund abhorred such activities. You know that. You remember how he was about riding. Or any sort of sport.”
“Yes.”
“Well? Don’t you see? How do we know that Edmund died in a sailing accident?” His sister went on. “All we have saying so is the letter that she wrote me!”
Anthony hesitated. His sister was often hysterical and given to dramatics, but he could not help but think that she had a point. It was very odd that Edmund would have taken up sailing. Edmund had found the desire for outdoor activities largely incomprehensible in others and absurd for himself. His lungs had always been too weak for him to engage in any strenuous physical activity, and the thought of perhaps injuring his hands and being unable to play his music had filled him with horror.
“Why else would she have had his body burned?” Honoria saw Anthony’s hesitation and pressed her advantage. “It is bizarre. Unnatural. Why would she do it—unless she had something to hide? A dead body can be dug up. Poison can be found in a person’s body even after they are dead. I have heard it.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“But if there is no body to exhume, no one could ever find the poison. Or a crack in his skull or some other injury. No one could prove that he did not die in a boating accident.”
“But why would she kill him?” Anthony found it hard to believe that Eleanor, however grasping she might be, was a murderer.
Honoria sent him a scathing look. “His money, of course.”
“She already had that. And I cannot imagine that Edmund was a demanding husband.”
“What reason does any woman have to do away with her husband?” his sister replied matter-of-factly. “Because she has found another? Because she no longer wants to have to ask him for money? Because he refuses to allow her to do exactly as she pleases? It would not surprise me that when she married him, she thought his weak lungs would carry him off within a few months, but then Edmund did not die. So she decided to help him along.”
“Honoria…”
“I am not being foolish, Anthony. Stop being a man, and look past her pretty face and elegant figure. Women are capable of killing to get what they want.”
“I am sure they are. But there is no reason to think that she did.”
“I believe Edmund had discovered what she was like. Anthony, he cut her out of his will. Why else would a man do that except that he knew she was a rapacious harpy who married him for his money? Or that she was having an affair with another man? Perhaps both.”
“Edmund cut her from the will?”
“Yes. He did not leave her a cent.”
Anthony scowled. It would take something very compelling to make a man like Edmund leave his wife nothing to live on. “Still, Honoria, that would argue against her killing him. She would get nothing.”
“Well, she may not have known that before she murdered him. She might not have realized he had changed his will. Besides, there is a way that she can get to his money. Edmund left everything to his sister—outside of his entailed estate, of course, which goes to Sir Malcolm. Why he would have done that, I do not know. I am his mother, after all, and—”
“He left you nothing?” Anthony asked skeptically.
“Oh, he left me a bit,” Honoria allowed, waving it away. “A mere pittance, really. However, that is a mother’s lot, I suppose.” She released the sigh of a martyr.
“But how does this help Lady Eleanor?” Anthony asked, dragging Honoria