Death at Blenheim Palace by Robin Paige Read Free Book Online Page B

drab rooms of state, and replace the books, tapestries, and paintings auctioned off by Sunny’s father and grandfather. Winston, whose strong family pride had been wounded by Blenheim’s seedy appearance, could only applaud the uses to which the Duke had put the Duchess’s money.
    “Ah, Winston,” Sunny said, in his almost inaudible drawl. “Hard at the writing still, are you?”
    “Just stopping for tea,” Winston said. He paused, then added, in a guardedly neutral tone, “I trust that you enjoyed your walk with Miss Deacon?”
    Winston disapproved strongly of his cousin’s relationship with the young American woman. Gladys Deacon might have the gamine winsomeness of an innocently mischievous child, but in Winston’s opinion, she was dangerous. She was duplicitous, deliberately provocative, and entirely out for Gladys. And what was worse, in Winston’s opinion, both Sunny and Consuelo seemed blind to her true nature—a fact which made Gladys even more dangerous.
    Even so, Winston was ambivalent, for he could not deny that Gladys was dazzling—even more attractive than Pamela Plowden, whom he had hoped to marry someday. But his political ambitions had quite naturally occupied all his time and attention for the past several years, and the impatient Pamela had given up and flounced off to marry Bulwer-Lytton. And of course, no rational man who aimed at higher office (Winston himself had some exceedingly high aspirations) could afford to be involved with someone like Gladys. She was lovely, yes, indeed, but she was unwise and undisciplined and could never be trusted to avoid the pitfalls that frequently opened at the feet of political wives.
    So it was with some smugness that Winston congratulated himself on having the wisdom and foresight not to fall in love with Miss Deacon. He also congratulated himself on being able to see through her, which was more than the Duke could do, or Botsy. Botsy—Lord Henry Northcote—was making a monkey of himself over the girl. Winston had even heard that Botsy had asked her some weeks ago to marry him, when they were both guests at a houseparty weekend. Of course, one couldn’t trust rumor, but it was also said that he’d given her a valuable diamond necklace that had belonged to his paternal grandmother. Winston doubted if the Duke knew this, and he did not mean to be the one to tell him.
    Sunny shifted uncomfortably, but when he replied to Winston’s question, his voice as carefully neutral as his cousin’s. “Yes, thank you. Gladys and I had a most pleasant walk. The gardens are coming along nicely. Still a great deal of work to be done, of course.” His tone warmed. “I’ve commissioned Waldo Story to do a Venus fountain, which is to stand in the exact center of the Italian Garden. Miss Deacon has generously agreed to allow the sculptor to use her likeness.”
    Winston regarded his cousin. Having refurbished the interior of the palace, the Duke had turned his attention to the vast Blenheim landscape. He lined the Great Avenue with elm trees, replaced the grass in the three-acre Great Court with stone pavings, and built a parapet, a stone wall, and iron gates along the north front to keep out the curious. Now he was working on the gardens outside the east wing, where he had laid out an intricate arabesque in dwarf box hedge, with orange trees in tubs and flowers in jars. Consuelo did not appreciate this fastidious formality, but it intimately revealed, Winston thought, the Duke’s turn of mind. The perfect palace was to be displayed within the perfect setting, and Marlborough, both the owner of this incredible jewel and its jeweler, could never stop polishing and perfecting it. And now this statue of Venus.
    The idea of Gladys Deacon’s stone likeness planted in the center of the Duke’s garden brought Winston a deep disquiet. For Sunny, Blenheim was much more than a family obligation, it was an obsession—and, like his obsession with Gladys, dangerous, for in his