Evil Intent by Kate Charles

confounded them all.
    It was at Beatrice’s wedding, in fact, that she had first spotted Vincent Underwood. The wedding had been the grandest of the Season, held in considerable splendour at a church favoured by high society. Marigold had been a bridesmaid, and not for the first time – by then her wardrobe was stuffed with confections of satin and chiffon in all shades of the rainbow which she’d worn in the weddings of various friends.
    Vincent was the curate. His role in the wedding had been minimal, standing off to the side wearing a black cassock, lacy cotta, and a biretta. She’d had plenty of time to observe him during the lengthy nuptial ceremony, and Marigold liked what she saw. He was dark and rather mysterious looking, self-contained, somehow aloof from what was going on. He seemed to her like a man with secrets, with unplumbed depths.
    He had been at the reception, and she had contrived to speak to him. Her impression of aloofness was borne out, and it made her all the more determined to get to know him.
    It was only later that she discovered she was not alone in her fascination with the smoulderingly handsome curate: Vincent Underwood was sought after and pursued by any number of women in his parish. They wooed him with cakes and casseroles, with demonstrations of domestic skills, with signs of suitability for a future as his wife.
    But Marigold had triumphed.
    The marriage had evolved on its own terms, not like the marriages of any of her friends. While she was not the dim clergy wife of the type she so despised, nor was she the sort of complacent, worldly wife who viewed her husband’s affairs with detached amusement, as so many of them did. It was the one thing she felt she couldn’t have borne: for Vincent to be unfaithful to her, to favour another woman over her. To prove that her friends had been right to question her choice of husband.
    Not that Vincent gave her worries on that score. In spite of the women who continued to throw themselves at him, even after their marriage, she was certain that he wasn’t even tempted.
    Of course there had been that silly business all those years ago, but that hadn’t really counted. And no one had ever known about it. Not thepeople who mattered, anyway. As far as Marigold was concerned, it was ancient history.
    There were no children of the marriage. They hadn’t planned it that way; it just hadn’t happened. Marigold didn’t think she minded. She’d never known her own mother, and didn’t consider herself a particularly maternal person.
    And as for the physical side…
    If she’d been expecting grand passion from her husband, Marigold would have been disappointed. It had been years since they’d shared a bed. As far as Marigold could recall, Vincent was the one who had suggested separate rooms, and she had not objected. In her circle of friends, that sort of thing was commonplace.
    So, too, were affairs. Her friends had all had them, with men of varying suitability. It was always discreet. Sometimes their husbands didn’t know; often they did. But the husbands were all engaged in affairs of their own and weren’t generally bothered. Now her friends were at the stage of life where they all seemed to be involved with younger men. Beatrice, for instance, was having a wild fling with a young man who was some sort of minor functionary at Number Ten, and this connection provided Beatrice with enviable titbits of gossip as well as the thrill of illicit passion.
    Marigold, though, was not the sort of woman to have affairs. It wasn’t that she’d never had the chance; indeed, she’d had ample opportunity, not least with the husbands of most of her friends. They let her know in ways sometimes subtle and often forthright that they wanted her. She was flattered, especially now that she’d reached her mid-fifties, but she just wasn’t interested. She’d never even been tempted; she was too fastidious to find the idea of sharing her body with men she scarcely