Chapter 27 #3
Nic snorted. “Likely he needed money and went to tell Lord Ricard himself in the hope of selling family secrets.”
They slowed as they reached the stairs up to the style wing proper, Leaf chewing on her lip.
“Though I guess we have some answers now at least. It sounds like Uncle Ricard probably pushed your valet down the stairs, and perhaps he really did kill Gillingham, too, in his first attempt to get Papa to invoke the clause. Then I suppose because the opportunity was there, your mama killed Master Everel and tried to kill His Grace.”
Lord Francis had sounded sure, had seen her do it, yet Nic found himself shaking his head. “I cannot believe it. Your aunt had as much reason to kill Millie. And Everel was last seen alive by Millie and the doctor, not Mama and Lord Charborough.”
Leaf squeezed his arm. “I know you don’t want to believe it’s possible, Nic.
I’m sure Lord Francis didn’t either, but it is the most sensible of all explanations.
” When Nic didn’t answer, she added, “I can’t say I much like the idea of it being true either, given that once we’re married, I’ll be living here with her. But who else could it have been?”
“But then who tried to kill me?” he said, needing to shift the topic—his refusal to believe his mother a murderer based all too much upon a feeling. “How many murderers do we have?”
“I don’t know. There is a Mary Mallowan book where everyone was the murderer.”
The idea that every member of their lock-in party had blood on their hands was not comforting, nor did it feel right. It was the contract that had brought them all together, and whoever might have dirtied their hands since, the contract was surely the reason why.
Nic and Leaf spent the afternoon together in his rooms, alternately pacing and sitting in gloomy abstraction as they tried and failed to make sense of all the pieces.
Meeting Lord Francis had answered a lot of questions, yet somehow there seemed just as many left.
Lord Ricard had paid the man to sneak in and run amok while he sought to get the Requisite Care Clause invoked, which explained why the hauntings had stopped with Millie’s death.
That the duchess had killed Master Everel and accidentally killed Millie made an awful sort of sense, yet then why had anyone attacked Nic?
The longer they tried to fit the pieces together the more questions they had, and again and again they’d fallen back on the same old problem—no one but Lord Ricard had reason to want the contract broken.
Nic had planned on another evening of lonesome inebriation, but partway through the afternoon Ambrose brought the news that the contract was all but complete.
It would be signed the following afternoon, and to mark the occasion, the duke had suggested they all gather one last time for dinner—a suggestion that, in Nic’s case, he took to be the order that it was.
And so, both tense and heartbroken, Nic gathered the shattered shards of his armour and dressed for one final dinner.
When Ambrose delivered him to the drawing room that evening, Nic found neither Leaf nor Dashiell already present, the only occupants of the room the three men of Lord Francis’s story.
The duke and Lord Charborough stood ensconced together by the fire, while as far away as it was possible to get, Lord Ricard sat idly moving pieces at the chess table.
Nic couldn’t but think of Ricard’s part of that story, about a friendship lost. How long and how utterly the man had held on to that hurt.
Nic made his way across the room to the chess table’s second chair. “May I join you?”
Lord Ricard looked up, a flash of surprise hastily crushed with a sneer. “If you must, Monterris.”
“I think I must.” Nic sat, unable to swallow a wince as the movement tweaked his still-healing wound. “You see, I found something of yours today.”
Nic took hold of a black rook and moved it forward.
“Something of mine?” Lord Ricard asked, countering with a move of his own like they’d picked up halfway through an already-begun game.
“Yes. A piece of paper, to be precise.” Nic moved his rook again, paying the game little heed. “It seems to have been torn from one of your ledgers.”
Holding Nic’s gaze without a flicker of expression, Lord Ricard made another move—a pawn pushed forward with a small shove.
At the other end of the room, the door opened and Leaf and Lady Lisbeth walked in arm in arm.
Leaf’s brows rose at sight of him sitting with her uncle, and to be sure she did not approach, Nic gave an infinitesimal shake of his head.
Returning to the game, he pushed forward one of his own pawns, mirroring his opponent’s move.
“You do not appear interested in the loss of one of your papers, Lord Ricard,” he said as he did so.
“But it bears a striking resemblance to the one I saw in Rowerre’s hand the night he died.
Something you want to tell me, perhaps?”
“That your valet shouldn’t have been rummaging around in my room?”
“A crime worth murdering for?” Nic asked, trying to hide his surprise at so easy an admission.
Lord Ricard gave a dismissive shrug, shifting his bishop.
“He wasn’t meant to die. My man spied him hunting around and came to find me at the party, but when I went to confront him, he ran.
I caught up with him at the top of the stairs and we fought over the page…
the rest you can imagine. I didn’t push him, though, if that’s what you think. ”
Rowerre’s last moments presented with little more than a shrug, like he had hardly been a person at all. Lord Francis had spoken in the same callous tone and Nic found himself swallowing anger for the second time that day.
Once again, the drawing room door opened, this time spilling Lady Theresa and Dr. Fanshaw into the room. That left only Dashiell unaccounted for. Nic tried to swallow his worry to chase the anger down.
He pushed forward another pawn. “Ten thousand pounds to Lord Francis Monterris,” he said. “How long have you known he was still alive?”
Lord Ricard’s smile was all too amused, like the smile of the not-so-dead man himself as he sat nursing his coffee. He took the pawn Nic had moved, sweeping it off the board. “How long have you?”
“You really didn’t want this contract to go ahead, did you. Ten thousand pounds is a lot of money to pay someone to play ghost and frighten everyone off.”
For a long time, Lord Ricard stared at the pieces before him, a faint smile turning his lips. Eventually, he jumped a knight—an unexpected move that brought it close to Nic’s king. “Ah, but you see, no amount is ever too much where Val is concerned.”
How strong the friendship must have been to have soured so viciously. Unbidden, Nic found his gaze shying toward his father and Lord Charborough, who had been joined now by others yet still stood side by side as though no one else existed.
The drawing room door opened once more, and Nic’s heart leapt at the sight of Dashiell. The vowsmith’s gaze made a quick circuit of the room and came to rest on Nic, reflecting back his relief for a beautiful moment—a moment soon eclipsed when hurt and anger turned Dashiell away.
Trying to ease the pained flutter of his heart, Nic drew a deep breath and moved his king out of danger. “And the blackmail?”
“No amount is too much,” Lord Ricard repeated, countering by once more putting Nic’s king in check. “But why keep paying when you can get what you want for free?”
Nic moved his king again. “And what is it that you want? Enough information to ruin my father? Or is this all just about the contract?”
“Cute of you to think I have any interest in confiding in you or anyone,” Lord Ricard said, malice sparkling in his eyes. “I don’t owe you anything.”
He reached across the board, carrying his queen to once again threaten Nic’s king, the movement enough of a stretch that it pulled back the man’s sleeve, exposing his wrist. A wrist upon which the tips of scratches were just visible, where fingernails had dug into his flesh.
And for a sickening moment Nic was back lying on the floor, trying to suck air through dark velvet while he clawed at the hands squeezing his throat.
Nic’s breath caught, panic searing through him as he stared at the cuts, at Lord Ricard, at the slowly dawning smile on the man’s face.
As though from somewhere very far away, the dinner bell rang.
“It was you.” Nic’s words were a whisper. “You tried to kill me.”
The smile broadened as Lord Ricard tugged his sleeve back into place. “And I was so close too. But what are you going to do about it now, break your precious contract?” He gestured to Nic’s checked king, his expression a hateful grin. “Your move, Monterris.”