Chapter 27 #2
Algernon had not merely suspected that Edmund was preparing William to replace him. Somewhere along the way, suspicion had hardened into certainty. Every conversation between William and Edmund had become evidence.
Every attempt at friendship concealed an ambition William had never possessed. Even now, with William standing before him in tears and swearing that he had never wanted the dukedom, Algernon seemed incapable of believing him.
William had no idea how to prove the truth to someone who had already decided what the truth must be.
Algernon was silent for so long that William wondered whether he had heard him at all.
Then his brother laughed.
There was no humor in the sound. “What did he expect?”
William watched him carefully. “Who?”
“Father.” Algernon lifted his eyes to him. “What did the old man expect I would become after treating me like a dog?”
Something in his voice had changed.
Until now, anger had driven nearly every word from him. Even his bitterness had carried heat. Now there was none. Algernon stood several feet away, blood still marking the corner of his mouth, and regarded William with an eerie calm that made the back of his neck prickle.
“What do you mean?”
“I spent years trying to become the son he wanted. I learned to speak and behave the way he wanted. I endured every punishment he thought might beat the weakness out of me.” Algernon’s mouth curved faintly. “And after all of that, he decided I was the mistake.”
William felt the first stirrings of dread.
“Algernon.”
“What did he think would happen?”
His brother’s voice remained quiet.
“He treated me like an animal for most of my life.” Algernon paused, and something almost peaceful settled over his expression. “So in the end, I treated him in kind.”
The dread sharpened as William stared at him, trying to understand what he was saying and already knowing that he did not want to.
Behind him came the faint scrape of Edmund moving closer to the bars.
“Algernon,” the earl said.
Algernon did not even look at him.
William’s mouth had gone dry. “What did you do?”
For the first time, his brother hesitated.
Then he said, “I poisoned him.”
The words seemed to drain every sound from the cellar. William could hear his own breathing. Somewhere behind him, Rosalind made a small sound, but it seemed to come from impossibly far away.
He had misunderstood. He must have.
Their father had been ill. William remembered the physicians coming and going, the gradual weakening of a man he had once believed indestructible.
He remembered standing beside Algernon at the funeral, remembered his brother accepting condolences with that same solemn composure he brought to every duty.
All that time, Algernon had known.
“You poisoned Father?”
“He took years from me,” Algernon said. “I took what remained of his.”
William recoiled before he could stop himself. “No.”
“He deserved it.”
“You killed him.”
“He would have destroyed me.”
“So you murdered him?”
Algernon’s jaw tightened. “I gave him the death he deserved.”
The words struck harder than any blow Algernon had landed during their fight.
William had spent the past hour learning things about his father that sickened him.
He no longer knew what to do with the memories of the man who had raised him with affection while tormenting another little boy beneath the same roof.
There were cruelties William might never be able to forgive now that he knew of them.
But Algernon had looked at that cruelty and chosen more of it.
William had stood before him only moments ago, crying and begging him to let it end. Instead, his brother had already carried the violence further than William could have imagined.
“You are a monster.”
The words were out before he could stop them.
Algernon flinched.
William saw it and hated that some part of him still wanted to take the words back. This was his brother. The boy who had grown up beside him. The man William had loved all his life without ever understanding how much pain he carried.
But he could not reconcile that brother with the man who had just calmly admitted to murdering their father.
“I do not know you,” William whispered.
Something moved near the stairs.
William’s attention shifted instinctively, and his heart nearly stopped for a second time.
Isabella.
She stood half concealed by the darkness, very much alive.
Relief surged through him, but Isabella immediately pressed a finger to her lips. Her other hand pointed toward the floor behind Algernon, where something glinted faintly in the candlelight.
Keys.
They must have fallen from Algernon’s coat during the fight.
William dragged his gaze back to his brother before Algernon could notice where his attention had gone.
“You do not know me?” Algernon repeated bitterly. “No. You never did.”
William kept his attention on him while Isabella slipped away from the stairs at the edge of his vision. She moved with extraordinary care, watching Algernon as she crossed the cellar toward the keys.
“I wanted to know you,” William said, hoping the words would keep his brother focused upon him. “I tried.”
“You pitied me.”
“No. I loved you.”
Isabella reached the keys and bent to retrieve them. The faint scrape of metal against stone seemed impossibly loud to William, though Algernon gave no indication that he had heard it.
“You all pitied me.”
William hardly dared breathe as Isabella straightened and began moving toward the cell. Only a few yards separated her from Edmund now. If he could keep Algernon talking for another few seconds, she might reach the door before he realized what was happening.
“You were my brother,” William said. “You still are.”
Algernon’s expression twisted. “Even now?”
The question caught William painfully off guard.
Then Rosalind drew a breath.
It was barely more than a whisper of sound, but William saw her gaze shift past Algernon and the sudden relief that crossed her face.
Algernon saw it too.
He turned, following her gaze, and everything that had been held so precariously in place shattered at once.
Isabella abandoned stealth and rushed toward the cell, but Algernon’s hand was already plunging beneath his coat.
William saw the pistol emerge.
“Algernon, no!”
The barrel swung toward the bars.
William threw himself at his brother just as the pistol fired, the deafening crack of the shot exploding through the cellar.