Chapter Twenty-three
Adelaide stared with wide eyes at the doorway of Marcus’s chambers as Lord Edwin appeared.
His lips were pressed into a grim line of solemn regret, but there was something in his eyes that filled her with a dread that rendered her motionless.
Behind him was a constable with a snarl on his face.
And his stern, judgmental eyes landed firmly on Adelaide.
He followed Lord Edwin into the room, stopping at the foot of Marcus’s bed. Lord Edwin moved to Marcus’s side with an expression Adelaide could now identify: one of practiced concern.
“What is the meaning of this?” Marcus said. Once upon a time, one might have heard a growl behind the words. However, he was weak, near the brink of death, and he sounded like little more than a child who had had the breath knocked out of him after a nasty fall.
Edwin gave his cousin a sympathetic, sad look as he held up some papers he held tightly in his hand.
“Marcus, it is Miss Barrett who has been making you ill,” he said. “She has been doing so since her very first day here.”
Marcus’s eyes flared, showing a ghost of their former fire and rage.
“Lies,” he hissed, straining with the effort of his strong speech. “You are a fool if you think I will believe such lunacy.”
Edwin nodded sadly, slowly moving closer to his cousin. He held up the pages so Marcus could see them, pointing to the very first one.
“I understand your disbelief,” he said. “In fact, it is that very disbelief that led me to investigate this notion in secret. I will ask your forgiveness for keeping this from you when this is over, but I need you to hear me now. These are letters written by Miss Barrett to a known poison merchant in London. She has been procuring arsenic from him for quite some time, according to the letters. And it seems that this is not the first time she has done such a thing, as I discovered that she is a notorious fortune hunter in London. She was forced to flee when she was caught in a scandalous situation.” Edwin paused to shuffle through the papers until he reached the newspaper column declaring Adelaide Barrett a ruined woman.
He watched with a solemn expression as Adelaide studied the letters, which appeared to have been penned in her own handwriting.
As realization and understanding dawned on her face, her eyes met his.
Her mouth moved wildly, but she could not make a sound.
And she could have sworn that she saw a brief but cold, smug smile flicker on his face.
“Lies,” Marcus said again, though he sounded far less certain.
Edwin shook his head, putting a gentle hand on his cousin’s shoulder.
“I wish I were lying, Cousin,” he said softly. “But I am not the only proof that this is very real.”
As Adelaide continued trying to find her voice to deny the allegations, Edwin stepped aside, allowing Miss Potter to approach. She gave her master a tearful glance before looking down at the floor as if in shame, avoiding Adelaide’s pleading eyes entirely.
“I saw her tampering with your drinks, Your Grace,” she said, choking back sobs.
“That is why I was always so tentative to your glass. I tried to ensure that you did not ingest any more poison. But my vigilance was not enough, I am afraid. When you began sending me away from you in your agitated states, she began increasing the amount of arsenic she gave you. I only wanted to protect you, Your Grace. I am truly remorseful that I failed.”
As Miss Potter dissolved into tears, the scene around Adelaide devolved into something from a nightmare. The constable gripped Adelaide’s arms with rough hands, deftly detaining her before she could flee to the safety of her aunt, who had entered at some point during Lord Edwin’s condemning speech.
“Please,” she begged, her cracking voice inaudible over everyone talking over one another in their collective shock. “This is a mistake.”
No one heard her, of course. With tears in her eyes, she turned her gaze onto Marcus, silently pleading with him to remember their night in the library, the tender words they whispered to each other between kisses, and the way he had held her as if she were precious.
Yet in the moment before he looked away from her, she saw the agony of betrayal, disbelief, and rage in his eyes.
She sobbed, her body giving up its fight to free itself from the grip of the constable as her heart gave up hope of salvation from her lover.
The man who had touched her with such gentleness now looked at her as if her perceived betrayal was like a dagger to his soul.
He would not be willing to listen to her.
Not when he was so convinced that she was the cause of his sickness.
“Stop,” Helena said, barging toward the constable with a frenzied expression on her face. Adelaide thought she meant to look stern, but her eyes were wild, and her mouth was trembling violently. “You have made a terrible mistake. My niece could never commit such crimes.”
The constable sneered at her, seemingly decided in Adelaide’s guilt.
“The letters alone are damning,” he said with matter-of-fact disgust. “With everything I was just presented, I doubt even a confession will be necessary to prove her guilt without a shadow of a doubt.”
Helena shook her head, looking at Adelaide with a desperation that shattered her heart.
“This is wrong,” she said, her voice weakening.
“Anyone who saw my niece and His Grace together would know the depth of her feelings for him. The two of them have a fragile but genuine bond, and this is…” she trailed off in the middle of Adelaide’s defense.
The color drained from her face, and she began to sway, her eyes rolling backward.
Adelaide screamed just as Lord Thomas rushed forward and caught Helena an instant before she fell onto the floor.
Edith rushed to assist Lord Thomas, struggling to help him support Helena’s limp form as she teetered toward unconsciousness.
Adelaide’s sobs increased; her spirit destroyed to see the two people she loved most in such a state.
She did not dare look back at Marcus, knowing that she could not bear to see that look of betrayal and hurt.
She had done nothing to hurt the man she loved, but seeing the pain in his eyes that he perceived her guilty of causing all this was equally agonizing to her.
The dowager duchess sank heavily into a chair on the other side of Marcus’s bed.
She pressed her trembling fingers to her lips, her expression that of numb shock and horror.
She did not look at Adelaide, so there was no way to know if the dowager duchess believed Lord Edwin’s claims or if she was merely distressed by the madness surrounding her.
Adelaide realized it did not matter. Marcus did not believe in her innocence.
Why should anyone else, including his own mother?
“Why, Adelaide?” Marcus shouted, struggling to rise from his sickbed. “Why? How could you do this?”
Lord Edwin and Mr. Fletcher reached to try to restrain him. Despite their grips, however, Marcus was straining against them, his body trembling with both fever and emotion.
“Cousin, you must not do this,” Lord Edwin said, sounding so calm and reassuring despite the severity of the situation he created with the accusations aimed at Adelaide and his cousin’s failing health that Adelaide wanted to scream at him.
She did not know what it was about his behavior and demeanor that bothered her, but she knew something was amiss.
She wanted someone else to notice it, as well, before it was too late.
Yet all she could do was watch Marcus writhe in agony and glare at her as though she was the cause of all his suffering.
Because he now believes that I am, she thought, another heartbroken sob escaping her.
“Why?” Marcus shrieked again, his voice breaking. “Why did you pretend to care? Why would you make me believe we were in love, only to destroy me like this?”
Adelaide lost her breath as she cried, her sobs falling silent but just as agonized as Marcus’s words.
The raw pain in his words revealed how deeply he felt for her.
His fevered murmurs had been genuine confessions.
Now, instead of reveling in the revelation, she could do nothing but stare in horror as the eyes which were once so loving and tender now looked at her with vile hatred.
“Marcus, please, you must listen to me,” she pleaded. “I did not do this to you, I swear it. I would never. I was not here when you first…”
“Take her away, Constable, please?” Lord Edwin said, sharply enough to silence the entire room. “She is clearly upsetting my cousin, and his condition is too delicate for such a display.”
Adelaide looked at the gentleman with stunned horror. He was the one who had brought this situation down upon his cousin, and on everyone in the room. Yet he spoke with complete dissociation, as though he found the room in such a state of chaos and merely stepped in to calm down everything.
Charlotte was right, Adelaide thought far too late with tremendous horror. It was Edwin all along. Edwin likely also murdered her before she could tell anyone what she knew. This proves it. But I am too late to prove it to anyone else.
As the constable lead her away, Adelaide caught a final glimpse through the doorway.
Lord Edwin’s satisfied smirk was the final confirmation that she had figured out what was happening.
Whether directly or indirectly, he was responsible for making Marcus sick, seemingly by poisoning, which is why he had her accused of such a crime.
No one else saw his expression before he hid behind a pretense of concern as he leaned over Marcus’s bed.
His hand rested possessively on the extravagant headboard, where Adelaide had just stood comforting her lover only moments before.
She tried once more to plead silently with Marcus, but the door closed firmly on Marcus and their loved ones.
The last expressions she saw were ones of confusion, betrayal, and anger, no one seeming to believe her innocence.
Adelaide was truly alone in the darkness she faced ahead of her.
Yet the worst thing of all was the memory of Marcus’s betrayed expression.
It burned her heart like the poison which surely filled Marcus’s veins burned through him, seeking to slowly kill him.
She did not know why Lord Edwin would want his cousin dead, but she could no longer deny that it had to be him.
What she did know with certainty was that the love she and Marcus had found in each other’s arms had now been contorted into something ugly and profane by Lord Edwin’s cruel manipulation.
She now understood why she had never truly trusted him, why he always made her uncomfortable, and why Charlotte ever suspected him of criminal things in the first place.
Who would listen to her now, though? Would Lord Edwin be discovered as the true criminal?
Or would he get away with yet another murder?