A Suspicious Affair by Bárbara Metzger

the hallway after the butler, dripping raindrops onto the Turkey runner.
    Now Jeremiah Dimm would have given his eye-teeth to hear the conversation between these two folks what swore they never set their peepers on each other. He did the next best thing, giving some of his nibs’s silver to the footman on duty in the hall. In exchange he was led to the room adjoining Her Grace’s Chinese parlor. The connecting door wasn’t too thick, the keyhole wasn’t too low, and the bonbons in a little dish weren’t too filling.
    *
    One day her husband was murdered, almost in his lover’s arms. The next day her maid gave notice. What else could go wrong?
    “Carlinn, Lord Kimbrough, requests an audience, Your Grace. Pardon me for disturbing your rest, Your Grace, but he insists it is—”
    “He insists it is a matter of life and death,” an angry voice bellowed from directly behind the very upper servant.
    The stately butler’s face took on a pained expression, to be caught so derelict in his duty as to permit an unwanted guest to intrude on his mistress’s privacy. Then he noted again the height and breadth of his lordship’s imposing physique and the thunderous scowl on his dark visage. The butler beat a hasty, not-so-dignified retreat. His mistress’s privacy be damned. She was leaving for the country tomorrow anyway. She’d find plenty of privacy among the cabbages and turnips.
    Marisol looked up from her reclining position, and up some more. So this was Kimbrough. Indeed he was larger than life, just like the tales of his heroics. She thought he might have been attractive, had his thick brows not been furrowed and his mouth not been turned down in a frown of disapproval. He did not have Arvid’s classic features or Boynton’s elegance, of course, and certainly not Foster’s boyish good looks, but, yes, he was handsome. Marisol was sure many a young girl would be sighing over that cleft chin, those intense brown eyes and weathered cheeks, did he show his phiz in Town. No wonder they called him the Elusive Earl. Debutantes and their mamas would be falling all over themselves to get to him if he participated in the Season.
    Of course, Marisol herself did not appreciate such rugged features, such oversized virility. Nor did she appreciate mud on her Oriental carpet, nor being stared at so rudely. She struggled to a sitting position and cleared her throat.
    Kimbrough jerked back to attention. Gads, for the first time in his life he wished he carried one of those foppish quizzing glasses to give the jade a set-down for her inspection of his person. He hadn’t missed the curled lip at his muddied boots or the haughty lift to her eyebrow at his buckskins. Then she’d raised her nose—not the dainty little turned-up affair he admired in a female—as if he’d brought the smell of the stable in with him. Even if he had, she was an arrogant piece of goods with the bold look of a strumpet. Why, she was not the Diamond he’d been expecting at all. Her dress was less than elegant, and her blonde hair was loose like a wanton’s. Of course, circumstances were such that lapses could be excused, and those sky blue eyes, he noted objectively, were undoubtedly her best feature.
    What Carlinn couldn’t tear his eyes from, however, what Marisol caught him guiltily absorbed in, was the sheer bulk of the duchess. Zounds, he’d seen dead cows in the hot Spanish sun less bloated. He hadn’t realized she was this close to term or he might have reconsidered his approach. As it was, he was forced to apologize. “Forgive me for staring, Your Grace. I, ah…”
    “Yes,” she interrupted with a slight lift to the corners of her mouth. “I have never understood why they call it a delicate condition myself. As you can see, there is nothing whatsoever delicate about it.”
    Instead of smiling in return, Kimbrough frowned even more. He took a step closer, and Marisol reached for the bell on the table at her side. At his step, however, Max