Free Rules of Attraction by Christina Dodd Page B

said.
    "No, it's not." Aunt Spring didn't hesitate to contradict her formidable friend. "He is with me always, I'm sure. I just can't see him. Isn't it amazing and wonderful to think that love can last forever?"
    Hannah looked up at Dougald. Hard satisfaction bracketed his mouth as he watched her with Aunt Spring. "Some love lasts forever," Hannah corrected. "Some love gets bruised and neglected and spoils like an apple."
    "You're too young to be so cynical," Aunt Isabel drew near. "How'd you develop such a trait?"
    "She's probably been married," Aunt Ethel said. "Women get cynical when they've been married."
    "Men get cynical when they've been married, too." Dougald replied.
    "What have you got to be cynical about?" Aunt Isabel asked. "You murdered your wife."
    Shock rippled through Hannah. For the first time she heard the charges spoken— and she had never expected to hear that from such an inoffensive source. She looked at Dougald, but he appeared impassive. Had he been accused so many times he no longer cared? Did his stoicism hide a need to defend himself?
    Had he threatened her because he had so many times been threatened?
    "You have disconcerted Miss Setterington," Miss Minnie said.
    "Besides, Isabel, dear, you know we decided it made a marvelous tale, but that he didn't do it." Aunt Spring patted Hannah on the arm. "You don't have to worry that you'll be murdered in your bed. It's really quite safe here with Dougald at the helm. All the killings happened before he came."
    "The killings?" Hannah replied faintly.
    "She's referring to the deaths of the previous lords," Dougald informed her.
    With a Latin relish for the dramatic, Aunt Isabel ignored them. "You ladies are the ones who decided Dougald was innocent, not me. I think it's wonderfully mysterious that he killed his wife. It lends him an air of foreboding. Things are dull around here without a bit of danger." Her tone changed from ominous to matter-of-fact. "Anyway, he probably had reason. Heaven knows I wanted to slay the old dragon I married often enough." She turned to Hannah. "Never marry a man who will take you away from your family, for then he can do whatever he wishes to you and there is no one to stop him."
    "I can safely promise I will not do that," Hannah said.
    "My old dragon divorced me." Aunt Ethel's eyes swamped with tears. "Do you know how much trouble and money it takes to get a divorce? It's an act of Parliament you know."
    "So I've heard," Hannah murmured.
    "But he wanted to get rid of me so much that he gladly paid." The tears dried, and her eyes snapped. "Now he's living with that little miss who used to be my chambermaid. He'll probably die in bed, and the undertaker will never get the smile off his face."
    Miss Minnie nodded and proclaimed, "No fool like an old fool, I always say."
    "You ladies may rest assured I have never yet given in to murderous tendencies"— Dougald bent a glare on Hannah— "no matter how much the person I am dealing with deserves it."
    "There you go, dear," Aunt Spring said comfortably. "He didn't do it."
    "He wouldn't admit to murder, now, would he?" Aunt Isabel demanded.
    Aunt Ethel viewed him thoughtfully. "He's never denied it before, and he really looks like a murderer."
    The other ladies cried a denial.
    Hannah remembered the amused cast to his features when he had suggested he could kill her and solve his problems.
    "Yes, he does," Aunt Ethel said stubbornly. "Just look at him brood. He's been brooding since the day he got here. Not that I'm complaining, of course, Dougald dear."
    Dougald just nodded as if he'd heard it before.
    The ladies talked in front of Dougald and Hannah as if they weren't there. It was as if the aunts had been fixtures in the castles for so long the usual graces and manners no longer applied to them. Or perhaps they considered the others nothing but short-lived interruptions in the long stretches of their lives. Certainly Dougald acted as if nothing were out of order; he seemed used to