Chapter 31 #3
His stomach lurched and he could hardly tell if he was glad or sorry to be right.
“This is why,” Nic said. “Because it’s already too late, because it’s been too late for a long time.
Pulling off this contract would have allowed us to keep treading water, but an audit would prove we’d already sunk below the threshold.
And that you’d defied the king’s law. Did Master Everel find out?
Is that why you killed him? And Louis sa Ellis, too?
No wonder you stopped taking on apprentices after that. ”
“I gave my father my word that I would uphold our name, just as you gave me yours,” the duke said, advancing toward him. “Only you chose to be selfish and think only of your heart, while I gave up everything I loved.”
A final realisation bloomed sour in Nic’s mouth. “This is why you broke off your contract with Lord Charborough.”
“Val?” The marquess’s voice trembled. “Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true,” the duke bit back. “I could not leave my life to be with you, but nor could I bring you into my world. Make you take on this.”
Lord Charborough said nothing, a lump in his throat seeming to have grown too large for words. Lord Ricard was not similarly afflicted.
“You lying shit, Val,” he said with a hollow laugh. “I wondered time and again how you kept floating, but I never would have suspected you of this.” Drawing close, he added, “It would have been against the guild charter to change that, huh? And I was only asking to keep my wife.”
“And I only wanted to have my husband!” the duke cried. “But you stole that future from me when you ruined me, as you stole your own chance at the title you wanted so very much.”
No laugh now, Lord Ricard’s hand clenched into a fist. It was more threat than intent, but the duke flinched away from him as he had after Millie’s death, his own hands reaching protectively to his eyes.
You think I don’t remember you every time I look in my mirror.
Had that very fist once swung for the duke’s face, shattering his glasses into the soft skin around his eyes? Scars left by the man he had once called friend.
The memory must have been in Lord Ricard’s mind even as he shook out his fist and turned away. “Castor? Castor!” he called, striding for the door. “I know you’re still hovering around somewhere. Now that this bloody lock-in is over, get the magistrate over here at once.”
His sudden movement left a void in which the question of what would happen next hung heavy.
Leaf stepped into it. “Before we have to deal with magistrates or His Majesty’s men, I have something that needs signing too, Papa.
And no, it cannot wait. I present you my certificate of sasinage, for the twenty-fifth time. ”
Lord Charborough stared at the paper she withdrew from her reticule, its edges worn and dog-eared. “No.” He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Papa.” Her words were measured. “You used me. You knew in what bad shape the Monterris family was and chose to gift me and my dowry to them as an apology, and now if you wish me to remain silent about your hand in all of this, you will sign.”
“I will not. It was bad enough that you would have let Monterris choose a mere vowsmith over you. You cannot now—”
“It was you!” Dashiell’s jaw dropped. “I’d been wondering what His Grace could have had to gain, but it wasn’t him. You threatened to kill me if Nic didn’t break things off.”
Lord Charborough’s eyes widened, and for a few guilty seconds he said nothing, before barking out a laugh. “What foolishness is this? I—”
“Papa! That is enough.” Leaf dipped a quill into the ink and held it out, her hand steady.
“Sign it. Now. Whatever you may have hoped to achieve with your threats, I am not going to marry Nic. He is dead now after all, and no one else will want me when I am plagued by such ill luck. This is the best way, even if you don’t see it yet. ”
He stared at the quill. “People will talk.”
“Most likely,” she agreed. “But of all that will come out after this, you signing my sasinage will be the least of it.”
A shattered man, Lord Charborough took the quill and closed his eyes in a moment of silent agony. Then he at last bent over the certificate she’d carried with her since her eighth birthday, and signed. Task done, he slid it away as though he could not bear to look at it.
“What a mess we have made,” he said, the bitter words spoken as though at the universe. “What a mess I have made.” He passed a hand over his eyes and paused there while the world spun on heedless of his grief.
“Yes, and it’s a mess we must stay a few days to help clear up,” Leaf said, a commanding note in her voice as she tucked the folded certificate back into her reticule.
“Although for now, I think while we wait for the magistrate, someone should send for Dr. Fanshaw. Nic had a chandelier almost fall on him after all.”
Nic hadn’t forgotten, and with the first inklings of hope that it might finally all be over, the cuts and bruises he had been ignoring were making themselves known.
He knew he ought to stay and be present when the magistrate arrived, but he shied away from the responsibility, knowing all too well who the man would be coming for.
Perhaps there was something worse than having two absent fathers. Both of them being murderers.
Seeming to understand without him needing to speak, Leaf squeezed his hand. “Go. You do not need to be here.” She looked to Dashiell. “Master sa Vare, do help Nic up to his rooms. And… take good care of him, won’t you?”
“On that, you have my word, Miss sa Serral.”
Her smile stretched, real and warm and content. “Hearing that name is never going to get old. Now go, both of you. There will be time enough to deal with the repercussions of all this tomorrow.”
Nic found he had no stomach to argue, and nodded. “All right. Thank you.”
Dashiell’s arm slid around Nic’s waist, and though at first he thought he needed no such support, his legs soon proved him wrong, weakening beneath him as they started their escape.
Despite the bruises it would leave, the falling chandelier felt like it belonged to a whole other life. And in the most important way, it did.
Lord Charborough had moved to the foot of the table, something of a final sentinel watching over the destruction they had all wrought.
Dashiell brought them to a halt before him.
“If I am no longer required here, sir,” he said.
“I will help Lord—” The vowsmith stopped, smiled, and went on, “I will help Nic up to his rooms to be tended by the doctor.”
Lord Charborough’s forced smile was all sorrow.
“Yes, yes, you may go. And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.
That threat was me, or rather it was my valet.
He overheard yours talking about the pair of you and after everything that had happened, I couldn’t let—” He bit off the words and heaved a heavy sigh, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t matter now. I will stay here with Val. Until the magistrate comes.”
Nic glanced at the loaded pistol still held tightly in the man’s hand.
Beside the table, the duke stood stone-faced, like something inside him had broken, so completely had everything torn apart around him.
Perhaps for the first time, Lord Charborough would give him the kindness of choice.
Nic found he hoped so, and as Dashiell helped him on toward the door, his gaze lingered a moment on the man he’d always called Father—a silent farewell more grim than sorrowful.
Before they reached the door, Lord Francis stepped into their path, forcing Dashiell to halt once more, Nic supported within the circle of his arm.
“I’m sorry, Nicholas,” the man said, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Truly, I am. I ought to have told you the truth when you came to see me.”
“Yes, you should have,” Nic agreed. “Goodbye, Lord Francis.”
Coldly polite, Dashiell nodded to the man, before he and Nic continued toward the door.
“I hope you won’t live to regret this night’s work,” Lord Francis called after them, but for all the retorts that leapt to Nic’s lips, he would not give the man the satisfaction of a reply.
With Dashiell holding much of his weight, Nic half walked and was half carried up the seemingly endless stairs to his rooms. The door opened upon a strange familiarity, everything exactly as he had left it despite how much had changed.
They found Ambrose wringing his hands and soon put the fretting valet to work fetching the doctor and taking word to Silla.
Later, once Nic’s fresh cuts had been tended, he climbed into his bed.
Within a few minutes, Dashiell slipped in beside him, pressing his bare chest to Nic’s back and holding him close.
There they lay in the darkness, safe and together and but unable to find sleep.
Nic was exhausted, yet for a long time his mind would not rest. He kept hearing the chandelier crash, seeing the gun point at Dashiell’s head, and feeling the magic caught on the king’s vellum. He wanted none of it.
Dashiell breathed evenly, but Nic was sure he was awake, the pair of them lying in silence at the beginning of their new lives.
Everything had changed and yet nothing had and there was comfort in that.
Comfort, too, that no matter how awful the days to come might be, Dashiell would be with him.
That whatever uncertainties lay ahead, Dashiell wasn’t one of them.
They had time now, not just moments snatched from a future that could never be, but forever in which to build a life.