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your
brother, Your Grace, what about the duke’s?”
    “What, Boynton Pendenning? The man is a fribble. An expensive fribble, granted, who was constantly arguing with Arvid over money, but to murder his own brother? I cannot believe it.”
    “Neither could Adam and Eve, most likely, but it happens. Jealousy, greed, ambition. One brother has the world on a string; the other brother has a rope necklace.”
    “But if Boynton was so eager to step into his brother’s titles and vaults, why wait to murder Arvid now, when I could be carrying the heir?”
    “That’s just what he said. A’ course, babies has been known to die in infancy.”
    Dimm almost bit his own tongue off when the duchess clutched her stomach. “My baby! Do you think my baby could be in danger? Please, I pray you, tell me no.”
    Dimm prayed he could, too, but no use lying to the poor thing. “Well, a girl will be safe enough,” he reassured her, “and a boy will be, too, if you can think of anyone else besides the heir presumptive what might of ventilated the duke. Sorry, Your Grace,” he said yet again when she turned a bit green at his choice of words. Lud, his nibs’d have Dimm’s liver and lights for this day’s work. “Anyone at all.”
    “Why couldn’t it just have been a passing thief seeing easy pickings in an empty coach until he saw Arvid still inside? Or someone he cheated at cards? He did, you know, even when we played piquet. He couldn’t stand to lose. I just want it to be a stranger, someone I don’t know and won’t have to fear is hiding behind every bush. Not a neighbor or an in-law.”
    “Speaking of neighbors, how well do you know the Earl of Kimbrough?”
    “The Elusive Earl? Not at all. Goodness, never say he is a suspect? When I said a stranger, I meant a nameless footpad, a faceless cardsharp, not someone whose name is a byword both here and in Berkshire.”
    “He had an argument at White’s with the duke the night before the murder. A real loud brouhaha, they say.”
    “All of Arvid’s arguments were loud. I daresay it was over that piece of property again?” At Dimm’s grunted assent, Marisol explained: “I knew there was some bone of contention over the land, but Arvid never consulted me about business matters or anything of that nature. He simply forbade me to invite the earl to any of our parties the few times we were in Berkshire, so I never even got to meet the man. But the people in Berkshire think highly of him, and he was some kind of hero, wasn’t he? And I understand he only comes to London to speak in Parliament on reform issues. That doesn’t sound like a murderer to me.”
    “You never can tell. If there’s one thing I’ve found in my years on the force, it’s that every criminal is somebody’s son or lover or mother or brother. There’s a berserker in every one of us. One time or another.”

Chapter Four
    Berserker? Boynton Pendenning? Arvid’s brother certainly did not look like some blood-crazed fiend, not in his cheek-high shirt collars, nipped-in waist, and padded-out shoulders. He looked like a middle-aged dandy, laughable or ludicrous—not dangerous. Then Marisol looked more closely, at the lines of dissipation around her brother-in-law’s thin mouth, the pouchy gathers under his deep-set eyes, the unhealthy pallor to his indoor skin. Suddenly Boynton wasn’t just an amusing rattle. He was also a hardened gamester, always a short jump ahead of his creditors, like his friend the Prince, a man who lived—or died—by his wits. He could have been desperate enough for fratricide, gambling on not being caught, gambling on coming into Arvid’s legacy by hook or by crook.
    Marisol’s hand shook when Boynton brought it to his mouth in greeting. She’d had to permit him to call, of course, since she had been unable to receive him last night. They had to discuss arrangements for the funeral, the makeup of a cortege to transport Arvid back to Berkshire, the provisions that might