Free They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer

profile: "Come on, my love, tell me what's the matter."
    She was silent for a moment. He possessed himself of her hand. "Let me remind you that the keynote to a successful marriage is Mutual Confidence."
    She smiled at that. "I dare say. I think I've probably exaggerated things in my mind. It—it just seems to me that people are behaving rather abnormally. There's a certain atmosphere in the house—well, you'll see for yourself."
    She refused to be more explicit, but there was much that she might have told her betrothed.
    There was the attitude adopted by Emily. Emily hated Clement, yet when he had proposed moving to Cliff House immediately, she had not demurred. She had acquiesced, and since his arrival she had ceased to snap at him. Patricia had no fault to find with this, but when she saw Emily looking at Clement she knew that the implacable old lady resented his presence and would always resent it. But after her first outburst she had not spoken again of her dislike, nor had she uttered one word in criticism of Clement's wife. Only she watched them both, her face wooden in its impassivity.
    Clement seemed to Miss Allison to be ill at ease, but she thought the new responsibilities resting on his shoulders might account for this. He was often irritable; he fidgeted, frowned, grew querulous over trifles, and looked more harassed than ever. He complained of his partners' stupidity once or twice; it was as though he invited Emily to comment on the firm's policy, perhaps to support him with her ruthless certainty.
    Miss Allison saw him as a weak man, mistrusting his own judgment, needing the approval of a stronger character before he could be brought to make a decision.
    It was plain that he could expect no help from Rosemary. Rosemary was passing through an emotional crisis. She told Patricia that she had reached a turning point in her life, and that it was tearing her in two. Patricia was uncharitable enough to suspect that she was revelling in the drama she had created, and received this piece of information with a marked lack of sympathy.
    What sympathy she felt was for Clement and for Trevor Dermott, both helpless in the snare of Rosemary's beauty, but her pity for them was charged with contempt. She thought them fools to be slaves to Rosemary.
    Yet in Trevor Dermott, whom she profoundly disliked, there was a quality which Rosemary might find disturbing if ever he awoke to a realisation of the part he was hereafter destined to play in her life. Miss Allison called him privately the Flamboyant Male but suspected that his flaunted masculinity was an integral part of him and no pose assumed to match his vigorous good looks and lusty body. Stupid he might be, but his hot brown eyes, lacking intelligence, held a spark of purpose. He was of the type that must snatch what it desires: it was too evident that he desired Rosemary, so delicately playing him on the end of her line.
    "You can't go on living with a fellow like Kane, a fellow who's only half alive!" he said.
    Rosemary looked at him thoughtfully. He supposed her to be comparing his splendid physique with Clement's thin, stooping frame. He did not preen himself, but he laughed, sure of his superiority. Actually no comparison was in her mind. He attracted her strongly; she was loath to let him go; but Clement, possessing his cousin's fortune, was beyond comparison.
    She said seriously: "Clement needs me, Trevor."
    It was true; she did not disguise from herself the fact that she needed Clement's money, but she began to feel rather holy. This was reflected in her face, uplifted to Dermott's. He said: "My God, and don't I need you? Are you going to sacrifice us both to a man who doesn't satisfy you, can't so much as start to understand you?"
    She sighed. She saw herself immolated upon the altar of wifely duty, the victim of a tragic love affair.
    That she saw herself gowned by Reville, wearing a long mournful rope of pearls, only made the vision more picturesque: it did not