Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
William was blessedly alone in his study, and he meant to remain so for as long as possible.
He had endured enough that day without being subjected to Verity’s endless prattling, without being forced to sit through her complaints and corrections when he had neither the patience nor the inclination to tolerate them.
The brandy decanter before him bore silent witness to just how long he had avoided her, the level steadily lowered by his own hand, though it had done nothing to provide the relief he had sought.
It should have dulled him, should have taken the edge from his thoughts and softened the temper that had followed him from the dinner table, but instead it had done precisely the opposite, leaving him sharper, more aware, and far more conscious of the misery that pressed down upon him with each passing second.
With each passing second, the misery of the day became more keenly acute as it pressed down on him, and there was no escaping it, not in thought and not in body.
There was a heat in him that did not belong to drink, something that gathered and spread rather than fading as it ought to have done, leaving him restless and increasingly unable to sit still beneath it.
He could feel it in his limbs, in his chest, in the pounding of his pulse, which seemed louder than it should have been, more insistent, as though something within him had been set out of its proper course.
His thoughts returned, as they had all evening, to Caroline, and the certainty of it came without hesitation or restraint.
She should have been his. She had nagged him, certainly, pressing him for six years to do what he had already promised and make her his wife in truth, but even that had been preferable.
Her persistence had been directed, contained, and there had always come a point at which she would fall silent, which was more than could be said for Verity.
Caroline had been easier in every respect that mattered, easier to manage, easier to satisfy, and far easier to look upon, and he could have endured her expectations well enough if it meant avoiding the constant abrasion of the woman he had instead allowed himself to be saddled with.
In the end, he had traded something manageable for something intolerable, and the longer it went on, the less tolerable it became.
His grandfather had insisted, his mistress had interfered, and he had yielded when he should have resisted, and now he was left with the consequence of it.
Julien Harcourt had taken what he had left behind, and that fact refused to sit quietly in his mind but instead pressed forward until it sharpened into something more deliberate.
Harcourt had done nothing for years and yet now stood to claim what should have been William’s, and the injustice of it did not diminish the longer he considered it but grew more aggravating, until even now, even in his present state, he found himself turning it over, wondering what might yet be done to unsettle it, to disrupt it, to ensure that Harcourt did not walk away so easily with what had once been his.
He rose abruptly, driven more by the impossibility of remaining seated than by any clear intention, and the moment he did so the room shifted in a way that was not right, not the familiar tilt of drink but something more disorienting, more invasive.
His hand caught the edge of the desk, gripping hard as the sensation surged again, stronger this time, accompanied by that same heat that spread through him with increasing insistence, and he knew then that this was not how brandy worked, not how it had ever worked, no matter how much he had consumed in the past.
For a moment he tried to dismiss it as nothing more than excess, telling himself that he had drunk too much and that his body protested accordingly, but the explanation did not hold because the feeling did not match it.
It did not settle into dullness or heaviness but remained sharp and insistent, leaving him more aware rather than less, more uncomfortable rather than eased, and increasingly certain that something was not as it ought to be.
The thought that followed was not one he welcomed, and he resisted it at first because it required him to reconsider too much, to grant Verity a level of intent he had never believed her capable of possessing.
She irritated him, exhausted him, and had made his life immeasurably worse simply by being in it, but she had never struck him as dangerous, never as someone who might act with purpose beyond her own immediate grievances.
And yet the thought would not leave him.
He found himself going back over the evenings in his mind, not in broad strokes but in the small, specific moments that had passed without notice at the time, Verity at his side after dinner, placing a glass into his hand with an expectation that he would take it and drink, which he always had because it required nothing of him beyond compliance, and he had given that without question when he should not have done so.
The more he considered it, the less it resembled coincidence, because it had not been occasional or thoughtless but consistent, repeated often enough that he could no longer ignore it now that he saw it plainly, the way she had watched him take the glass, waited for him to drink, ensured that he did not refuse, all of it aligning in a way that left little room for doubt.
She had not been pressing drink upon him for the sake of it. She had been feeding him something.
He pushed himself away from the desk and crossed the room, wrenching the door open without care and stepping into the corridor with a purpose that did not falter, even as the floor seemed to shift beneath him and the distance to her chamber stretched longer than it ought to have been.
When he reached her door, he did not knock but forced it open with enough force that it struck the wall behind it.
Verity stirred at once, the illusion of sleep dissolving as she pushed herself upright and regarded him with irritation rather than alarm. “What are you doing?”
He did not answer her. He moved through the room, opening drawers, overturning whatever lay in his path, scattering her belongings without care as he searched.
“What are you doing?” she demanded again.
He turned on her with a focus that had replaced the earlier disorientation. “Where is it?”
She watched him for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. “Where is what? If you tell me what you seek, William, I shall be happy to help you find it. That is what wives do, is it not? They take care of their husbands.”
There was no sincerity in it.
“The poison, Verity,” he snapped. “Where is the bloody poison you’ve been feeding me, likely since the day we wed?”
She held his gaze, and then something shifted, not fear, not denial, but a quiet, unmistakable satisfaction. “You will not find it.”
The certainty of it settled something in him even as it stripped the last of his doubt. “What have you done?”
“What was necessary,” she replied, rising from the bed with the same composure she brought to everything else. “I decided not to continue as we were.”
His pulse hammered. “You poisoned me.”
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation, no defense. She offered no justification for her actions, and that, more than anything, unsettled him.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to be a bride, and I was one. I find I never truly wished to be a wife, though. Widowhood is a much preferable state. All the freedom and none of the demands… not that you demanded often. Another benefit of poison.”
“You planned this all along,” he accused.
“I did. Though I must say, you have grown exceptionally tiresome this past week, obsessing about Miss Ashworth as though she were some paragon and not simply a fool you strung along for more than half a decade with little more than empty promises. Like all men who are little more than spoiled boys, she is only desirable to you now because she is desirable to someone else. Wanting what you cannot have, William, has never ended well for you.”
He crossed the distance between them without thinking and closed his hands around her throat.
There was force in it, enough to stop her breath and bring her hands up at once to his wrists.
He squeezed, his fingers sinking into her flesh, but he could not sustain it.
His balance shifted with a wave of dizziness, and his grip faltered almost at once.
The strength he meant to bring to it was not there, the poison having already taken its toll.
She felt the weakness and seized upon it, her nails gouging his skin as she twisted against him.
Space opened between them before he could rally, and she wrenched herself free.
He reached for her again, meaning to finish it, but his body refused to obey.
He swayed unsteadily on his feet, appearing to be the drunkard everyone thought him.
When he shoved her back it was abrupt and uncontrolled, and she staggered before catching herself just enough to break free entirely.
Drawing in a harsh breath, one hand pressed to her throat, she fixed her eyes on him for a single, measuring moment.
The nearness of it was not lost on her. Then she turned and ran.
He did not follow, remaining where he stood as the room swayed around him with increasing force.
All the while his pulse pounded through him , reverberating inside his skull, in a relentless rhythm.
Finally overcome, he simply sank to his knees with one hand braced against the floor, struggling to steady himself against the worsening dizziness and the heat that pressed in on him from all sides.
A crash broke through the quiet of the house, followed by voices and the hurried rush of feet as servants descended in alarm, the disturbance spreading quickly through the household, and he remained where he was when the door opened again and the butler entered in visible disarray.
“Forgive me, sir,” the man said, struggling for composure. “It is Mrs. Sutton. She has fallen down the stairs.”
“Is she dead?” William asked coldly.
If the butler was taken aback by the response, he was well trained enough to conceal it. “Indeed, sir. I fear she is well beyond any aid now.”
William did not respond at once. “Prepare her for burial,” he said at last, his voice steady and without grief. “As quickly as possible.”
He did not rise. The certainty had already taken hold within him. Whatever she had done would not be undone. The poison was even then winding its way through his body, taking his balance, taking his breath. There was only one consolation. She would be rotting in the dirt before him.