Then Comes Murder

Rumor Has It (part one)

For it was Eleanor's middle-class father who inherited the title after the previous Lord Leighton died with a daughter instead of an heir. While the dying earl had severed his ancestral fortune from the entailed estate and tied it to the dowry of his beloved daughter, there was no writ to garner his child and her future children the family title. Thus being, it was distant and unknown cousin Edward Fane, an overworked physician in London, who assumed the role with much indignity. In fact, the ton whispered that the good doctor stated he'd rather drop dead than accept his place in the peerage.

As would have the late Lord Leighton.

However, for all Dr. Fane's muttered prejudice against an aristocracy that cared not for the common man, he assumed the position with the quiet grumbling of a man who was incapable of doing any job with less than his best effort. Doctor Fane became a begrudging Earl of Leighton and relocated his medical practice, and his own daughter, to the nearly impoverished Lowell Hall, near Newmarket. And just as the new Lord Leighton could not ignore the responsibilities of his new station, he was unable to ignore an orphaned daughter, and his family of two became one of three. So while the former early likely turned in his grave to know Lowell Hall had fallen into the calloused hands of a radical, his daughter was not so high in the instep, and Eleanor had gained the lovely Miss Caroline Howard as a surrogate sister and dearest friend.

It was that friendship that kept Nora from changing the conversation—or rather throwing herself headfirst from the carriage—as it was a mark of great affection that bought her patience in discussing husbands and weddings and the alternative threat (or was it the haunting escape?) of imminent spinsterhood.

Nora shook her head in mock disbelief. "And to think you've pulled this off without pushing a single competitor into innocent shrubbery."

Caroline snorted, and Nora marveled that she was capable of making even that sound elegant. "Men are not so complicated, Nora." She paused for a moment. Nora imagined that she'd realized that her father, and Caroline's guardian, would take offense to that statement. Caroline conceded. "Well, most men are not complicated. A few well-placed insinuations, a flash of a an ankle—"

"No choreographed fainting spell? He didn't have to rescue you from a dangerous rogue?" Nora couldn't help keep the cutting dryness from her words.

Her cousin laughed again. "Really, Nora, you've read too many novels."

"How else am I to understand how rakes are reformed?"

Caroline waved her hand dismissively and the engagement ring cast a faint sparkle of refracted sunlight through the carriage. If there was any woman to tame an infamous rake, it would be Caroline Howard.

"George is hardly a rake," she said. Nora might have argued that George Thornton-Spencer knew the interior of enough boudoirs to suggest otherwise, but Caroline continued with the only topic that could curdle her sharp humor. "And we will find someone for you yet, cousin."

Nora shook her head with a tight smile. She forced her voice towards factual nonchalance rather than the wry self-deprecation Caroline liked to interpret as a lack of confidence. The quickest death of feminine allure, Caroline would remind her with the former Countess of Leighton's stiff tone. So Nora kept her chin high and her manner even. "I am quite aware of what it said about me. That I have neither the right face, fortune, nor family to attract a husband."

There was some comfort in accepting what was true and what was fantasy. As it were, Eleanor Fanes was barely born and arrived late to aristocracy. The estate had been stripped to its skeleton with the former earl's success in creating Caroline's impressive dowry. Moreover, there was no title to inherit: the laws of primogeniture would leave Eleanor as bereft as her cousin had been. Combined with average looks, a politically radical physician for a father, and a dowry insufficient to compensate for those faults? Nora felt it was a wonder that potential suitors weren't actively fleeing her presence.

Caroline scoffed. "You know I disagree with that sentiment. Heartedly."

"Not all of us receive as many proposals as you do, cousin," Nora said, smoothing away a wrinkle in her skirt. She kept her eyes on her gloved hands and waited for her cousin to take the bait: a part of knowing Caroline meant knowing that she would never discard the opportunity to talk about herself.

Charmingly, Caroline smiled and did just that. "Oh, Charlie is too young for marriage and he knows it. And Mr. Alton knew I could never accept his offer." The carriage slowed. She paused to check her reflection in the window, as if she meant to find an invisible blemish to correct. "He's too business-minded to have expected I'd accept anything less than a title."

"Perhaps you shouldn't have been so bold with your ankles," Nora said.

Ignoring the comment, Caroline continued, "To think, a world where coin rules all." She forced a shudder. "Do you know they call him an absolute terrier at court? Constantly availing his loyalty to the crown and begging for the Queen's scraps."

"Yes, and I imagine he'll sniffing around your feet until your wedding day."

"As long as you're there to dissuade him."

"Then I shall bring mutton," Nora murmured. "And hope a different leg distracts him."

Their eyes met as they rolled to a stop.

The carriage door opened and sunlight flooded the upholstered interior, Caroline glowed in laughter. Any onlooker would see the delightful Miss Howard filled with the unparalleled happiness of a woman in new love. It was what the waiting Lord Thornton-Spencer saw. And the jealous mamas.

Only Nora knew that it was touched with a hint of wickedness.