Wicked Wyckerly by Patricia Rice

perhaps his heir helped him depart this mortal coil. If memory serves me, his cousin Geoffrey has been courting a duke’s daughter. Even a bankrupt title would sway the tide in his favor.”
    Like Lord Quentin, Geoffrey Wyckerly was also in trade. Without a title, he did not stand a chance as a prospect for any heiress among the ton .
    Her guest possessed a refined air of intelligence and accomplishment as he considered her words. Isabell sat back and enjoyed the view. Now that she was wealthy and independent, perhaps she could start collecting cicisbei, as women did in her mother’s time. She would have to take a good look at herself in the mirror one of these days, but she feared what little beauty she’d once possessed had faded with age and disillusionment.
    “If Fitz was murdered, then we must discover the murderer,” Quentin declared with a flash of outrage that was more pleasant to look upon than his earlier gloom.
    “A blessing he wasn’t married, or I’d suspect the wife.”
    Wrong thing to say. Quentin returned to his dismals. “I should have steered him toward the marriage mart, but he was doing fine on his own. I never anticipated that he’d inherit his family’s mistakes so soon. Or at all.”
    Isabell rolled her eyes heavenward. “For pity’s sake, do you hate women so much that you are determined to snare some poor innocent in your Machiavellian coils? Can you think of anyone who would be happy married to a feckless gambler? As you are well aware, I know whereof I speak. He’d run through her dowry and leave her barefoot and pregnant. It would take the wealth of a duke to save the Danecroft estate. I will miss Fitz’s smile, but I would have shot him myself if he’d tried marrying for money.”
    Quentin set down his glass, and his lovely brandy-colored eyes flashed again. “Fitz was a good man burdened by circumstance. Someone needs to come to the aid of the younger sons who have been raised to live as idle nobility but left with no means of support.”
    Amused, Isabell sipped her brandy. “And you will find them all wealthy women to drag down with them?”
    “If they are good women, they will provide a steadying effect, while their dowries would offer opportunities for advancement that young men need.”
    Isabell enjoyed his outrage, so she politely refrained from snorting. “If they are good women, I would rather see them keep their fortunes to make lives of their own choosing. Why do they need irresponsible, impoverished husbands?”
    “So they won’t become selfish harridans?” Snapping his hat back on his lovely curls, Lord Quentin stalked toward the door. “Instead of wasting time here, I shall look further into Fitz’s death.”
    Oh, the man had a temper. She liked that. Showed spark, unlike Edward, who merely growled and closed the door when she expressed an opinion. “I don’t think it at all selfish for women to look after themselves and their families as men look after their own!” she threw after him. “The misfortune is that we are even more limited than younger sons in the ways society will allow us to do it.”
    He halted in the doorway to glower at her. “Which is why women need men to take care of them! If Fitz had married well, he’d be doubling his wife’s fortune by now, whereas a female would fritter it away on fripperies.”
    “I am female and I have no intention of frittering away my fortune on fripperies,” Isabell exclaimed, feeling the excitement of a challenge for the first time in a very long while. “I will show you that women can manage their wealth wisely.”
    “How?” he asked cynically. “You have enough for ten lifetimes, so there is small chance you could squander it all.”
    Happily remembering the letter she’d just read, Isabell smiled. Saving innocent young women from Quentin’s would-be predators suddenly seemed an excellent place to start. “I will give dowries to deserving young women so they may have the freedom to choose their