Living bodies gathered around the dead one and grouped together about the room in quiet conversation.
Valingford waited to be noticed. He waited too long. Preposterous.
Finally, the old earl, Bennington, looked his way and left his coffin-side vigil. He shook Valingford’s hand warmly. Vulgar. Valingford snatched his hand back as soon as politely possible.
“Thank you for coming, Your Grace,” the old earl said. “Especially after the whole”—he gestured toward Valingford’s still-swollen, bruised nose—“misunderstanding.”
“Why am I here?”
“To pay your respects, of course!” Bennington looked like he wanted to put his fist in Valingford’s nose again.
Valingford took a careful step back.
The duchess offered the earl a conciliatory smile. “Of course. We’re so sorry for your loss.”
The earl nodded, then wagged his finger at Valingford. “You’re a tough nut, but you kept your word. I want you to know—no bad blood remains between us.”
From that fool’s point of view, but not from where Valingford stood. “You accused me last night of hiring thugs to attack your granddaughter.”
“A misunderstanding.”
“You accused my wife of gossiping when she gave her word, when I gave my word, she would not.”
Bennington shrugged. “I’m a man of hot-blooded passions. Less so now than in my youth, but they still boil to the surface now and again.”
“Try to control them, Lord Bennington. It’s unbecoming for a peer of the realm.”
Bennington shrugged again. “Never was very good at all that—being a peer and all.” He stepped aside and gestured to the coffin at the front of the room. “I assume you would like to pay your respects.”
Not particularly. “Yes.” He soon mastered the distance between the door and the coffin, the view inside of which proved unenlightening. The deep purple velvet cloth draped over the body obscured it entirely.
“How did she die?” his wife asked.
A figure on the other side of the coffin answered. “Stubly shot her. Not sure if he meant to, a stray bullet possibly, but a bloody well-placed one.”
Valingford cringed inwardly. The bullet must have hit her in the head, then, or some other place with disturbing results to a once-pretty girl. Thus, the velvet. An ugly death. Many were. No matter. “Come along,” he instructed his wife. “We’ve paid our respects.”
“Yes.” Her voice hitched. Emotion? Appalling.
“Wait a moment.” The figure on the other side of the coffin walked around, revealing his identity.
“Lord Rigsby, I am sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. It’s a loss on more than one level. I’ve lost the woman I love, but also my future duchess and heir. You understand, as a duke.”
“I do.”
Lord Rigsby put an arm around Valingford’s shoulders and guided him away from the coffin to the side of the room. “Much has changed,” he said in a low voice after looking across the room for eavesdroppers. “The events of the last twenty-four hours have shown me,” he hesitated, “I was wrong. I should have proposed to your daughter.” He shook his head, ran fingers through disarrayed hair, straightening it. “Love has no place in marriage, and …” He dropped his voice even lower. “I cannot help now but wonder if Miss Blake’s undesirable origins in trade directly caused her undesirable fate.”
Valingford nodded in agreement. Vulgar beginnings led to vulgar ends.
“Perhaps it would have been wiser,” Lord Rigsby continued, “for me to stay within my own class for marriage, as originally planned.”
The boy finally saw sense, then. It had taken a death, yes, but sense come late was still sense. Valingford nodded. “You’re correct.”
“Tell me, is it too late?”
“Do not speak in riddles, boy. Too late for what?”
