Chapter Fourteen #3
Addax hadn’t taken his side in anything since the day he married Emmeline.
Perhaps in little things he did, but never in anything that really mattered.
Maximilian couldn’t honestly say that he thought Addax was in love with Emmeline, because he truly didn’t think so.
The man was simply being chivalrous. The Addax he knew liked women but wasn’t a womanizer.
He had respect for the fairer sex, which was something Maximilian had never had.
There wasn’t anything that had come between them in the years they’d known one another, but the introduction of Emmeline was the start of the great divide.
Maximilian felt as if he’d lost a brother.
And that was why he needed Addax in the great hall, away from the keep, so Maximilian could do what he needed to do. Emmeline was the beginning of all the trouble, and with her, it would end. Maximilian had to take the initiative.
And it would be tonight.
So he busied himself in the solar. He pawed through Emmeline’s carefully organized boxes of vellum.
She was a meticulous record keeper, and Maximilian looked over a few of them to see how prosperous Alston really was.
He’d never paid any attention to it because he didn’t care.
As long as he had his money, he didn’t care how it was earned, but he could see that Emmeline controlled a very detailed operation.
She was helped by the two de Mora knights, men that Maximilian hadn’t bothered to get to know, and maybe the truth was that he felt like an outsider in his own empire.
He refused to admit that that was his own doing, so it was just easier to blame Emmeline for everything.
That helped him justify what he needed to do.
When Emmeline’s maid came back down the mural stairs, he called to the woman as she walked past the door and asked where Lady de Grey was.
The old maid told him that she was in her chamber and that the maid was going to fetch her supper, so Maximilian told her to bring him some food also.
When the old woman scurried away, that gave him time to think about how he needed to accomplish his task.
That old woman was always around his wife, so it was quite possible she would be caught up in what he intended should happen. He couldn’t have a witness.
And that gave him an idea.
When the old maid returned about twenty minutes later, she brought food into him, but he told her that he was going to eat his meal with his wife.
That brought a look of horror from the old maid, but she didn’t say anything.
She simply picked up the food and headed for the stairs with Maximilian behind her.
That was to be her fatal mistake.
The mural stairs of Alston were made of stone, wide but steep.
They led up to a landing on the level above that branched into two different directions.
The old maid was carrying a heavy tray at this point, with food for both her mistress and her mistress’s husband, and she was focused on not spilling anything as she came to the top of the stairs.
She wasn’t paying attention to Maximilian as he came up behind her, and just as she reached the top, he yanked on her hair.
Then he simply stood aside as she went tumbling back down the stairs, breaking her neck about halfway down.
She was dead before she hit the bottom.
There was no one in that part of the keep to hear or see anything at that time of night because even the house servants were helping in the kitchens, so Maximilian slipped into the entry to the visitors’ section of the keep, just enough so that Emmeline wouldn’t see him.
Then he started to shout.
“Help! My lady, hurry! There has been an accident!”
He called out several times until he heard movement up the flight of stairs to the family apartments. He heard a door open, and possibly hit the wall, and then he heard footsteps.
“What happened?” Emmeline called down the stairwell. “What is it?”
Maximilian didn’t want her to recognize his voice, so he screamed a high-pitched sort of wail.
Not enough for her to distinguish him. He heard her footsteps as she came down the stairs, and he sank back into the shadows, watching her as she came to the top of the mural stairs.
She’d only been puzzled until she looked at the bottom of those steeps stairs and saw her maid there, twisted oddly from the fall, with food scattered everywhere.
She screamed.
“My God!” she gasped. “Aline!”
She started to take the first step, heading down to help her maid, and that was when Maximilian came out of the shadows.
Emmeline caught movement out of the corner of her eye, turning to see him bearing down on her.
Unfortunately, she was two steps down already, with nothing to grab on to as he lashed out a boot and caught her in the hip.
“You have vexed me for the last time, you bitch,” he growled. “Die, and good riddance!”
Unable to stop her fall, Emmeline went down, face-first, screaming as she hit the stairs and began to tumble. But by the time she hit the bottom step, she wasn’t screaming anymore.
There was only silence.
Maximilian ran out of the keep through the servants’ entrance near the kitchen yard, out to the stable, and never looked back.