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best outcome possible. Anything might be useful.”
    “I can’t really think of anyone who wishes me ill.” Angelina rubbed her temple. “And I’ve tried. Believe me.”
    She had. She’d sat through hundreds of lonely, miserable nights now, wanting the slightest hint of why.
    “A man? He wanted you,” Lady Heathton suggested. “But you refused him?”
    It
was
freeing to talk about it all so openly. “If so, I can’t imagine who he is.” Angelina shook her head. “Both my marriages were arranged. Your husband asked the same thing. I’ve had no clandestine lovers.”
    Well, until now, but Christopher was still her special secret.
    “Are there any ardent suitors you perhaps didn’t realize were more serious than it appeared? I mean, we all receive sonnets and flowers, but some men are shy of rejection, and I, for one, can’t blame them, though most don’t murder their rivals.” Alicia Wallace pursed her mouth in open contemplation. “One must admit that hidden passion has accounted for more than one drama in the history of mankind.”
    That was astute, and probably true.
    “There were other suitors, of course.” It was difficult now for Angelina to recall the warm glow of how society embraced her when she first made her bow, and even her second entry into the exalted ranks of the
ton
. “Before both engagements, men called frequently, but, flowery declarations of love aside, none was truly serious except Thomas, and that was why I married him. I thought it would be different. William wanted a beautiful wife. Thomas wanted
me
.”
    Looking back, she wished she could have willed herself to love him in the same way, but she’d been fond of him and a dutiful wife. Now that she was truly in love, she was grateful her feelings had not run deeper than affection and a comfortable friendship. The horror of his death would have destroyed her life.
    That was why she approached Heathton in the first place. If the murderer struck again, she knew she could not bear another loss—and this time of a man she deeply loved. Passionately loved.
    “Maybe it is a woman.
She
wanted
him
,” Lady Heathton responded, her head tilted slightly to the side in contemplation. “And you took him. Both the men you married were titled and rich.”
    “It could be,” Angelina said, pondering, her voice low. “I have no idea if they had mistresses before, or even during our marriage, but you’d think she would kill me, not them, and certainly not
both
of them. It is too much of a stretch to my mind to believe they had the same mistress.”
    Her visitor seemed to mull that over. “True. But poison is much more a woman’s method of killing. Men tend to be physical and use force of some kind, be it blade or bullet. Look at the famous cases in history of women who used lethal means to eliminate their enemies. Most of them used poison. The Borgias . . . Catherine de Medici, just for example.”
    That was probably accurate, though Angelina was hardly an expert on the subject. “I’ve thought about the kitchen staff, of course. None of them were in both households. William was older and his servants had been in place for years, or at least most of them, and they stayed when the estate went to his cousin. When I married Thomas, we let the housekeeper hire the kitchen help. William died at our country estate. Thomas was in London.”
    No connection.
    “Very astute,” Lady Heathton said in evident admiration.
    Angelina might not be well versed in the murderous habits of historical women; but she did have a brain and was capable of using it, and this was her
life
. She added quietly, “It isn’t as if I haven’t thought about it.”
    “I believe I understand.”
    “I’ve been tormented for quite some time, as you can imagine, just wondering who and why. I swear to you, Lady Heathton, I have absolutely no idea.”
    “But it has to be there. The thread tying it all together exists. We just have to discover it.”
    They looked at