Chapter Twenty-Seven
Something was wrong.
Cora’s trained eye could tell by the sudden tensing of the guards at the front of the ballroom. The way they turned in unison, hands reaching for their guns.
Her stomach curled, and a sick dread filled her.
Something was happening in the main house.
“Ella?” It was Clementine. “Have you seen Truman?”
Clementine was sharper than the rest. She knew enough to register the different tone of the guards, that this was not normal. Her face paled a little. The rest of the party was too loud, too drunk. No one else had noticed the way a guard was standing at the door’s entrance, weapon subtly drawn.
Clementine’s hand skipped up to her throat. Cora looked urgently for Daisy, and that’s when she realized that she hadn’t seen her once since the start of the party.
“Come with me,” Clem said. She led Cora out the front door, ignoring the guards who tried to stop her. More and more lights were flickering on in the main house. The rain had settled into a fine mist, and the ground was drenched.
Cora thought back to the night that Jack had escaped. A night that had been so much like this one.
There were more guards gathered at the front door when Clementine tried to move past them. They stepped forward to bar her entrance.
Cora’s dread grew.
“You can’t go in there right now, miss,” they said.
“And why not?” Clem asked. Her voice shook a little. The guards exchanged a look and wouldn’t answer.
“We’ve been instructed to insist that all guests return to the party,” one of them said.
All traces of pleasantness melted from Clementine’s face. “I’m not a guest here,” she said.
There was a panicked shout from inside the house, and Clem let out a cry. She forced her way through the guards, with Cora on her heels.
Daisy had been in the Gothic Library, eyeing a crystal vase. It had been exquisitely crafted to look like a cascading splash, and she was trying to get up her courage to touch it when she suddenly turned in horror.
Were those the sounds of bullets?
She slipped on the marble floor and righted herself.
She tasted fear in her mouth, as though her blood had climbed into her throat, like when she had fallen from a tree and broken her arm.
Worse even when her sister Anette had fallen through the ice in the lake behind their house.
Disappearing, under the waves, almost without time to make a sound.
Just like she had done then, she ran toward danger.
By the time she reached the first floor, Daisy could already smell the iron tang of blood. Her dread deepened.
She followed the noises coming from the billiards room and came to a halt just inside the doorway.
“Truman!” Clementine rushed toward where Truman Byrd had collapsed. “Help! Call the police!” she cried.
“I already have,” Rutherford said. He returned a telephone to a hidden panel in the wall.
“Truman, what happened?” Clem asked, sinking down next to him.
Dallas Winston was on the floor with his knee pressed into a man’s back. The man was struggling as Dallas wrested his arms behind him.
“I was almost shot,” Truman said calmly. A gun lay on the floor near Dallas’s foot. Rutherford bent and picked it up. “The first bullet was aimed for me and missed. The second went off when Dallas here burst in and tackled the man.”
Daisy watched as Ella appeared just behind Clementine. She examined the room, her face ashen. Her gaze came to a stop on the would-be assassin.
Dallas rolled the man onto his back, and that’s when Daisy saw who it was.
Liam, she thought.
She froze, her breath sucked out of her chest. She remembered the softness of Liam’s lips on her neck. The feel of his ribs shuddering beneath his shirt when she said something that made him laugh.
“I’m fine,” Truman insisted gruffly to Clementine. “As fine as I can be, after almost being assassinated by one of my own bloody staff. Thankfully that man, Conner, fine old chap,” Truman said, “managed to stop him.”
“You’re bleeding,” Rutherford informed Conner.
Conner nodded, then slumped over in a chair.
“He needs help,” Cora said. Her face was pale.
“The police will be here any moment,” Rutherford said. “But I want a chance to talk to the butler first. Alone.”
Daisy’s breath caught in her throat as she, Clem, Florence, and Cora were ushered out.
“Close the door,” Dallas said in a low voice. “And don’t open it again until we’re done.”
Daisy forced herself not to look back as Liam let out a groan.
The police arrived without sirens, climbing the Hill stealthily.
Under Truman’s strict orders, the party went on undisturbed.
Cora gave Clem a draught to conceal her shaken nerves, and by the time she returned to the billiards room, Liam was gone.
There was a bloodstain on the floor, and Truman’s private physician attended to Jack in the corner.
Jack sat in a leather armchair, hunched forward, his coat and shirt stripped off and discarded.
He winced as a doctor wrapped a piece of gauze around his upper arm.
He was alive. Cora felt her throat close.
She remembered the feel of his hot, furtive breath on her neck.
How his eyes had lit like embers in the darkness when he looked at her.
And she hadn’t failed to notice that when he’d deviated from the plan, Jack had happened to lead Truman straight to where an assassin was waiting for him.
Cora found Florence sitting outside the kitchens. She fetched her a glass of water.
“I told him those hidden passageways were a ridiculous idea,” Florence said, taking the glass. She was shaking, and Cora brought her another cupcake.
She snorted. “Thank you, love,” she said. She closed her eyes. Cora crouched next to her until the shaking had passed, then helped to call her a car.
“Have you seen Daisy?” she asked Matias.
He shook his head. “Is it true?” Matias said, rubbing his temples in disbelief. “Liam, really?”
She could hardly believe it either. The four of them had laughed together in the bell tower, smoking cigars and playing cards as Liam imitated Macready with pitch-perfect inflection.
She remembered the urgent whispering between Daisy and Liam the other night, right under her nose.
How nervous and jittery Daisy had been before the party started.
Cora’s heart sank. This was why she couldn’t afford to trust anyone.
Multiple betrayals in one night, and she hadn’t seen any of them coming.
Cora opened the door to her bedroom without making a sound. She stepped inside, careful not to draw Daisy’s attention. She simply watched.
Daisy was throwing things haphazardly in a satchel. Panicked.
Cora drew her own conclusions about that.
She cleared her throat.
Daisy jumped and whirled around.
She let out a forced laugh and looked toward the door. “You scared me.”
Cora closed it behind her with a soft click.
“Why are you packing?” Cora asked.
She took a step forward. Toward this girl who, she realized with a pang, she had never really known at all.
“I have to leave,” Daisy said.
“Why? What’s going on tonight, Daisy?” Cora asked. “Is that even your real name?”
“Of course it is,” Daisy snapped. She clutched a faded dress to her chest. “At least since I was five years old and my mother changed it from El?bieta.”
Cora stole a glance toward the place where she had hidden her gun.
“I have to leave because of what it looks like,” Daisy said. “You know I was involved with Liam. What are you going to tell them about me, when they come asking?”
“I wasn’t planning to say anything yet,” Cora said carefully.
She took another step forward. “But only if you tell me what’s going on.
You were nervous earlier, when I showed you the stone.
I could tell.” She remembered the unsettling finality she had sensed in Daisy’s words.
“Because you already knew something was going to happen tonight, didn’t you? ”
Daisy’s eyes flashed defiantly. “And what about you, Ella? You’re up to your neck in something here too. I’ve seen the way you sneak around with Mr. Conner. There’s more to why you’re here than what you’ve said.”
They glared at each other across the expanse of the room.
Cora caught the faintest hint of Daisy’s perfume. Over the months, she had come to like falling asleep with the scent of it.
“Why did you want to shoot Truman?” Cora asked. “How could that possibly help anything? How does that help Anette?”
Daisy’s eyes spilled over with angry tears. “I didn’t want to shoot him! I swear, I had no idea Liam was planning that.”
“Right,” Cora said flatly. “Then why were you so anxious tonight? You all but told me goodbye.”
Daisy wiped her tear-streaked face with her arm and turned to look at Cora. “What Liam did wasn’t the plan. We … we were going to steal something tonight.”
“Steal what?”
“A vase from the library. We were going to sell it for the money and send it to his brother and my baby niece to survive. So yes, I was nervous—I was supposed to do it tonight when Truman was distracted with the party. I didn’t even think Truman would notice it was gone.
But then—Liam—” she said. Her eyes reddened and filled with tears again.
“We’d talked a lot about the injustice of it all, but I never thought Liam would hurt him. ”
Cora was silent. Thinking about how so often, in trying to correct wrongdoing, it was possible to become complicit in something even worse.
“And what about you, Ella?” Daisy asked. She threw the dress angrily on the bed. “What were you up to tonight? Trying so hard to get Clementine away from Truman. Was that so that he would be alone?”
“No—”
“I know you and Mr. Conner were working together. And he was with Truman when he was shot.”
“That wasn’t part of the plan, I can assure you,” Cora bit back. She took a deep breath, calming her nerves. The night could not have gone worse. “But I can promise you that no part of me wishes Truman dead.”