Chapter 20
Panic gripped the room as Lady Lisbeth’s scream cascaded into gasping sobs. “I don’t—I don’t understand,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What happened? We were just playing cards and then—and—but—” Her gaze met the still body of her friend and she turned away, retching.
“What could have happened?” Lady Theresa cried, while beside her Lord Charborough stared numbly. “Doctor? Doctor! Do something!”
Dr. Fanshaw had already knelt at Lord Ricard’s side, the man still clutching his daughter as though if he kept holding her, she couldn’t slip away.
“If I may, my lord,” the doctor murmured.
“The tea.” The duke’s voice was quiet, yet it carried, cutting through every other sound with its sharp warning. “No one touch the tea!”
Nic looked at his own hand, though he knew it to be empty. Leaf, too, had no cup, but Dashiell’s sat balanced on his knee. Hardly thinking, or perhaps thinking too much, Nic grabbed it—hoping it looked full because it was—and poured the contents onto a nearby plant. Dashiell’s gaze snapped up.
“Did you drink any?” Nic asked.
At the gentle shake of Dashiell’s head, some of the tension binding Nic’s chest loosened.
Other cups were poured out, but just as many had been abandoned as the Serral family gathered around Millie.
Nic didn’t want to think of it as her body, the word too final an acceptance that the lifeless flesh owning her face was no longer her at all.
Tears were pouring down Leaf’s cheeks as she knelt within the circle of her father’s arm. Lord Ricard had bent his head to Millie’s, his shoulders shaking. And Lady Lisbeth sat trembling on her chair with her face buried in her hands. Only Lady Theresa stood a little apart, furiously blinking.
Nic had only known Millie since her arrival, yet the lump in his throat was too painful to swallow—a lump that swelled when he thought of how different the scene was to the discovery of Master Everel’s body.
How heartlessly they had all stood and stared and argued, not even the duke having shed a single tear.
The shame of it burned, and without thinking Nic reached for Dashiell’s shoulder—a steady support upon which he could lean as he let himself feel his own failings. In death as in life, he’d treated Master Everel as nothing.
Dashiell lifted his hand to Nic’s in a fleeting touch of acknowledgement, the way it lingered seeming to yearn toward providing more reassurance than so slight a gesture allowed. It ached Nic’s heart, and suddenly conscious of watching eyes, he pulled his hand away.
The duke had risen from his chair to give orders to a staring footman, and for a moment his dark glasses seemed to look Nic’s way, but if he’d seen anything amiss, it didn’t show on his face.
“Did anyone else drink the tea?” he asked the company at large as the footman sped out.
“I had a sip,” Lady Theresa whispered. “Oh.”
“I did too,” Lord Charborough admitted, his voice rough. He still had an arm around a sobbing Leaf, who had threaded her hand into Lady Lisbeth’s.
As pale as his shirt, Dr. Fanshaw rose from the group at Millie’s side. “As did I. And I’m afraid Lady Radlay is beyond any assistance I can render.”
It was a mere statement of fact no one could have doubted, yet the words still seemed to strike the company anew, sending out a ripple of silence.
The door opened, bringing Mrs. Podmarsh hesitantly into the room. There could be no doubt the footman sent to fetch her had described the scene in detail, for she looked immediately to Millie’s body, her eyes widening as she dropped into her customary curtsy. “Your Grace sent for me?”
“That I did, Mrs. Podmarsh,” the duke said. “Tell me, who makes the tea?”
“The tea, Your Grace?” The old housekeeper’s gaze darted about the room as she spoke, from the tea tray to the abandoned cups spread upon tables throughout the room. “The tea,” she repeated, voice constricted. “I believe the cook sometimes does so. Else it would be one of the maids.”
“Gather anyone who had access to the tea things. There has been an incident and no servant may leave the house until we have answers.”
“Yes, Your Grace. At once, Your Grace.” The housekeeper bobbed another curtsy, followed by a second. “Would Your Grace like the servants brought here, or…?”
“No. Gather them in the blue saloon and I will be along when I am able.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
With a lingering, horrified look at the weeping Serrals, Mrs. Podmarsh hurried out.
“You cannot think one of the servants responsible,” Leaf said, her tone one of deep disgust despite the sniff she gave as she wiped her eyes on her shawl. “What reason could they possibly have?”
“Are you suggesting that someone here had greater reason, Lady Leaf?” the duke said, as lightly as if he had been asking her the time of day.
“Certainly greater reason than someone who did not know her!”
“And at whom do you intend to point your finger?”
Having withdrawn his arm from about Leaf’s shoulders, Lord Charborough dropped his head into his hands. “Leaf, hold your tongue for once in your life, I beg of you,” he hissed, a man goaded beyond endurance.
“But, Papa—”
“No, enough! Have those ridiculous books of yours taught you nothing but to suspect your own family of such horrors?”
Leaf’s teeth gave an audible snap as she shut her mouth, anger flaring in her red-rimmed eyes.
If Lord Charborough noticed, he ignored these signs of fury and pulled himself to his feet with a weary sigh.
Having risen, he swayed a moment, forced to steady himself on the back of Lady Lisbeth’s chair.
The duke took a hasty step toward him only to halt like he’d pulled himself up short. “We will find out what happened, I can assure you,” he said, though whether he spoke to Lord Charborough or Leaf was impossible to say.
“What happened.” The murmur came from the floor, and every occupant of the room drew a sharp breath at the first sound, first movement, first sign of life Lord Ricard had shown.
The man looked up, his face a hideous mask, swollen around the eyes yet hollow-cheeked.
“What happened,” he repeated, slowly getting to his feet, “is that you have taken everything from me.”
He advanced on the duke, hands balled. Someone shouted.
Another screamed. And in that instant, Nic thought of the story Millie had told them.
He had felt the young Ricard’s pain in every word, but that hurt was a fierce, ugly rage now as he threw a fist toward the duke’s face.
To Nic’s shock, the usually so stoic Duke of Vale flinched back with a visceral cry, raising his hands. “Ric, no!”
The unexpected nickname acted like a pail of icy water thrown over the threatening lord, and for a pair of straining seconds he froze.
The duke, too, had stilled, chest heaving as he seemed to fight back both fresh panic and the old horrors that had produced it, until the tide of Lord Ricard’s anger surged twice as hot and he charged.
Dashiell leapt from his chair. Lord Charborough lunged for his brother’s arm, while Leaf cried out and threw herself in front of Millie’s body as trampling feet came all too close.
Nic dashed into the furore, grabbing for Lord Ricard’s other arm as Dashiell stepped between the two men. The duke flinched back again as Dashiell shoved in front of him, dodging Lord Ricard’s fist to press his palms flat against his employer’s chest and shove.
“Ricard!” Lord Charborough growled. “Stop this!”
Finally getting a good grip on the man’s arm, Nic hauled, and with a combined effort, space was forced between them.
Eventually the arm Nic held went slack, and with something like a mocking laugh, the fight went out of Ricard and he slumped back against the sideboard with an angry clatter of wineglasses.
“I’m done,” he said. “You can let go.”
Nic did so, retreating a few steps to brush his hands down his coat, as desirous of avoiding his father eye as of not glancing at Millie’s body.
“If you wish to leave, then we will leave,” Lord Charborough said, eyeing his younger brother as he stepped into the aftermath. “Be damned to the forfeit funds, but such behaviour—”
“No. I am not paying a fortune in forfeit to the family that killed my Millie.”
“Ricard! You can’t say that when—”
“Can’t I? I may not be able to prove it was by their hands, but by God it was in their interest and that is enough for me.”
“Oh, my lord,” Lady Theresa sobbed, dashing forward to clutch her husband’s sleeve. “Please let us go home. I do not know how it is possible to go on.”
He shook her off. “Be quiet, my lady. This is not your concern.”
“Not my concern?” She threw up her arms. “As nothing is allowed to be my concern be it never so important! Poor Millie is dead!”
“And you cannot lie that you are not happy for it, my lady, so be quiet.” Having cowed his wife, Lord Ricard spun back to his brother. “No, I will not forfeit. Invoke the Requisite Care Clause. This is far beyond anything and you cannot deny me now.”
All air was sucked from the room upon a chorus of indrawn breaths. Lord Charborough’s jaw slackened, his gaze shying toward the duke. “But, Ricard, think what you are asking.”
“I know what I am asking! Complete the contract in the days you’ll have left if you must, Charles, but let the king’s men crawl over this damned rotten pile in its aftermath.”
Nic felt like a spectator, forced to watch as events that had been set in motion before he’d been born burned toward a conclusion he could neither see nor understand.
The sense of being caught in an inevitable tide was overwhelming, yet so deeply familiar it held a terrible sort of comfort.
He knew nothing of control, his life having always belonged to another.