“Except that the gossip had already spread too far! Too many people already knew about you and believed you to be legitimate!” Louise grew flushed with anger, and the hand holding the knife faltered. “Eland turned out to be a spineless fool, just like Stockton, and he could never keep a secret. Perhaps I should have gotten rid of him as I’d always planned, but then you would still have been in the way, and two deaths would have looked suspicious.”
“So the only reason you didn’t murder Eland is because you thought you’d rather murder me?” Brenna couldn’t quite comprehend such a cavalier attitude towards death.
“It had nothing to do with preference,” Louise insisted, as though Brenna were quite dim for suggesting it. “I had no clear path to disinherit you once the court knew you existed. Better to let them rid me of Eland legally, and then I could deal with you however I wished in my own time.”
Brenna heard a low, rumbling chuckle from just behind her shoulder.
“You got a poor bargain if you thought you could deal with Brenna however you wished,” Rom pointed out. “I’ve met Eland, and you’d have had far better luck with him.”
Brenna risked turning her head to look up at him and for a moment the emptiness of her heart seemed to ease. “Thank you,” she said, the corner of her mouth curving up.
“No more than the truth, my lady,” Rom replied with a courtly bow, but Brenna could see that his lightheartedness went no further than the surface. There was fear in his eyes, and anger in the set of his jaw, and she knew she could not expect him to remain a passive observer much longer.
She returned her attention to Louise, realizing that despite her many experiences with the criminal underbelly of Andar, she had never despised anyone quite so completely as she did the woman she’d once believed to be her mother. But there was one question that still needed an answer.
“You still haven’t explained why you didn’t simply tell the truth,” Brenna repeated once more. “If you’d gone to them and admitted that you faked your pregnancy—that I was never your child any more than Eland was—none of this would have needed to happen.”
Louise merely shrugged. “Even if they would have believed me, I could not allow them to know that I lied,” she said. “Every other deception could be blamed on Stockton. After all, everyone believed me when I claimed that he forced me to say that Eland was my child. That he forced me to remain silent about you. But there was no way to deny my part in faking my own pregnancy and claiming you as our heir. Had I admitted to either of those, my reputation would have been in ruins and all my other plans would have fallen to nothing.”
Shocked silence followed that announcement, and even Brenna could find nothing to say. Louise had committed murder to preserve her reputation?
“You’ve got a lot of nerve calling us the lower classes,” Sinna interjected scornfully. “You’d have it that we’re the ones who are going to encourage vulgarity? We might not dine on silver plate and wear satin every night, but at least we’d never dream of doing something so vile as murdering an innocent woman to protect a lie!” She threw up her hands. “You’re a monster! And I’ve no doubt you’d have killed all of us as well, just to get to her!”
“I would have killed anyone who got in my way!” Louise said fiercely. “I knew from the moment Kyril was born that I would do anything for my son. For the first time, I had a child who was the image of me, not Stockton, and whenever I saw his face I knew I would have done far worse than murder for his sake.”
This. This was the depth of feeling Brenna had long believed ought to define a mother’s relationship to her child, a feeling that had been missing in every one of her encounters with Louise. At least now she knew why. It had nothing to do with her own inadequacies, and it horrified Brenna to see what should have been a beautiful, protective love twisted beyond recognition into a foul and murderous compulsion.
She wished suddenly that she could somehow protect her brother from ever finding out what his mother had done in the name of her love for him. Because no matter what Louise said, no matter who Brenna’s real parents were, Kyril would always be her brother.
Louise turned her gaze back to Brenna and her voice broke a little. “Why couldn’t you just have died?” she pleaded. “Then everything would have been as it should. Even if Rom hadn’t married me, I’m still beautiful enough to attract a man in need of what I can offer. With a title, and a fool like Rom as a husband, I could have smoothed my son’s way at court when he took his rightful place. Rom would never have gotten in my way as Stockton did, and then when I didn’t need him any longer, I could have kept his title for myself!”
“Tell me,” Rom responded dryly. “Was there anyone you weren’t planning to murder?”
“Clearly she wouldn’t have hurt Kyril,” Brenna replied, noting that her voice sounded rather more normal than she would have expected, after all the shocks she’d had. The knife at her throat didn’t even seem to matter much at the moment. “Which is lucky for her. If she threatened my brother, I think I’d have tried to break her nose, which is probably a worse punishment than death for someone as vain as she is.”
“You act as though you’re so much better than I!” Louise said disdainfully. “You’ve done nothing but lie and pretend since the moment you arrived in Camber. You pretended to be a fool to humiliate me, and you pretended to be no better than a common barmaid to worm your way into this house. You don’t deserve their loyalty, or anyone else’s after the part you’ve played in this deception.”
“Deception?” Grita echoed. “She told us the truth, you stupid old hag. She told us exactly who she was, who sent that wretched reptile, and why. We knew she was a countess and we chose to let her stay. Because she’s no different than us. We all know what it’s like to have families we’d rather not admit to. Did you really think that just because we’re poor and uneducated, we’d stand back and let you kill her?”
Louise’s smile sharpened. “I don’t see how you can do anything about it now. I have the upper hand here, and even Rom wouldn’t dare risk any heroics with my blade at her throat. The lot of you can do nothing but watch whenever I decide to take her life.”
Brenna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Eventually she would have to relieve the woman of that particular delusion, but not yet. Not until this was truly finished. “Well, before you murder me, then, since you’ve been so kind as to tell me the truth about your actions, I feel it’s only fair to tell you the truth in exchange.”
Her gaze hardened and she leaned forward, ever closer to the hand that grasped her shirt and the knife that lay coldly against her neck. She saw Louise’s eyes widen, but pressed on until she sensed the other woman’s weight shift backward in confusion and saw her nostrils flare in alarm. Brenna felt the sting as the skin of her neck parted beneath the edge of the dagger, but in that moment the pain mattered less than the need to throw Louise off-balance. To force her to listen.
“You’ve gone to all this trouble,” Brenna said. “Invited me here, pretended to like me, hired assassins, imported poisonous snakes and revealed your hand in front of a Crown agent… when you could have just asked me.”
“Asked you what?”
“Asked me to step down,” Brenna said simply. “I would have handed Kyril the earldom without question or argument. Stepped aside gladly, whether my birth was legitimate or not, because I love him far more than I love being a countess.” She held Louise’s cold blue gaze and let the other woman see the full measure of her scorn. “You could have had it all, Louise, but you threw it away out of misguided hatred. You assumed that everyone else values power as much as you. Fears exposure as much as you. But all I ever wanted was a family—not the title, not the lands, but someone who would love me. Someone to belong to. You saw only what you wanted to see, and it’s that blindness that has destroyed all your plans and brought you to the end of this road.”
Her blindness, and Brenna’s too. If Brenna hadn’t been so desperate for someone to tell her who s
he was, she never would have responded to that invitation and none of this would have happened…
But then again, she couldn’t regret all of it. She wouldn’t want to have missed meeting Rom, or Grita, or Sinna, or any of the other women she’d so briefly shared a home with. And she didn’t regret finally coming face to face with her own prejudices.
Much like Louise, she’d been guilty of judging the world by her experiences. But the nobility as a whole did not deserve her disdain, any more than the working class deserved her wholesale approbation. For every nobleman who had offered her a backhanded proposal, there was a Rom, a Caspar, or a Kyril, who respected and listened to the women in their lives.
And it was no different amongst the members of any other class. She’d been assaulted in hatred by the men at The Bad Apple for no better reason than her title. A complete stranger had been willing to kill her in exchange for money. And yet, the women she shared a house with had chosen to side with her, even after her secrets endangered them.
People were far too complex to be merely one thing or another. A man could be a courtier without being pretentious, and a woman could be a flower-seller with the heart of a lion. Whatever had made Brenna think she had to be either a countess or a spy?
Louise seemed frozen in the wake of Brenna’s statement, until Grita finally broke the silence with an ultimatum.
“I have better things to do than listen to more of this. Would one of you decide what’s going to happen next so we can all get back to work?”
The hand holding the dagger shook, by now with strain as much as emotion. Louise had been holding it at Brenna’s throat for several minutes, and her arm was no doubt growing tired. When the older woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, Brenna seized the opportunity.
Without a sound she jerked backwards and dropped to the floor. Tilted her head away and fell, letting her weight tear her out of Louise’s grasp and carry her out of range of the deadly blade.
Rom let out a hoarse cry. “Watch the knife,” she heard him say. “It may be poisoned.”
He probably thought her injured, but she rolled away too quickly to be taken for a corpse.
It might still have gone badly had they been facing a woman with experience in physical confrontations. Brenna’s skirts were too sodden for her to sweep her adversary’s ankles, and they likewise prevented her from regaining her feet as quickly as she preferred. Fortunately, Louise was a creature of drawing rooms and polite fencing matches, and she reacted to Brenna’s fall far too slowly to do any good. Brenna was already on the floor before the former countess screamed in frustration and launched herself forward, at exactly the same moment that Batrice threw herself into the midst of the scene. The acrobat flipped across the room, striking Louise’s wrist with her heel and sending the jeweled knife spinning across the floor into a corner.
“No!” Louise darted towards the weapon, but Rom moved far more quickly than one would expect from a man of his bulk. He caught her around the waist, lifted her off the floor and deposited her none too gently on a chair.
“Louise Seagrave, you are hereby charged with the murder of Stockton Seagrave, the murder of Mrs. Orrin, and the attempted murder of Breanne Seagrave. In my capacity as an agent of the Crown of Andar, I order you to appear before a royal court and answer to the king’s justice.”
Louise did not react quite as Brenna would have expected. Her face was pale and set, but she didn’t even seem flustered by Rom’s announcement. She merely smiled, while her eyes remained fixed on her husband’s daughter.
“It’s too late,” she said softly. “You should have known better than to believe that I could fail in the one great purpose of my life. After twenty-seven years of waiting and planning I have finally succeeded. Before tomorrow dawns, Brenna will be dead, my son will be the earl, and I… I will have won.”
Chapter 11
Dear Lady Norelle,
Please find enclosed my completed report on the Seagrave matter, including what I believe will prove to be sufficient evidence to pursue two of the charges under investigation. There has been some delay as we have sought to define the full extent and nature of the accused’s most recent crimes. Given the lack of clarity in both the intent and outcome of her actions, I have chosen to enclose a list of possible future charges for your consideration, which I will be pleased to discuss with you upon my return.
At that time, I will also be pleased to discuss the numerous omissions and roundaboutations which have led to a great deal of unnecessary hazard and misunderstanding on the part of myself and other participants in these recent events. Allow me to express my utmost certainty that should you at any point in the future require an agent to be responsible for the wellbeing of yet another adventurous countess, you may consider me entirely unwilling to serve.
The prisoner and her escort are en route, and I encourage any and all possible efforts towards making their stay in Evenleigh as uncomfortable as possible.
- Rommel Griffin
A chorus of gasps surrounded Brenna as she rose shakily to her feet.
“Stop being melodramatic,” she said firmly. “I’m not returned from the dead—the blade cut me, but there’s barely a scratch.”
“Unless she’s poisoned you.” Sinna, the apothecary’s assistant, moved to Brenna’s side as the other women gathered around. Batrice went to the corner to retrieve the dagger.
When Brenna pressed her fingers to the stinging line on her neck where the dagger’s edge had left its mark on her skin, they came away covered in blood.
Rom looked down at her over Dora’s head, his brows drawn together with worry. “How deep is the cut? Do you feel dizzy? Any pain?”
“I feel fine.” Brenna shrugged as she eyed the dagger in Batrice’s hand. There was definitely something coating the edge of the blade, so she took it and sniffed at it before handing the weapon to Sinna.
The red-haired woman examined the knife, careful to avoid contact with her own skin, and then smelled it as Brenna had done. She also examined Brenna’s neck with careful fingers as the rest of the room held its breath.
“You were right,” she announced, smiling in a way that indicated vast relief. “It is poisoned.”
Rom growled harshly and shoved his way to Brenna’s side, putting an arm around her shoulders as though he was afraid she might faint. “Then what do we do? Is there an antidote? Can we find a doctor nearby?”
“Probably.” Sinna shrugged. “But I don’t think she’ll be needing one.” The grin on her face grew a little.
“I won’t accept that!” Rom argued desperately, turning to grab both of Brenna’s shoulders in his large hands. He searched her face, his mouth set, eyes a little wild. “There has to be something we can do. I’m not just going to let you die, Brenna, I swear it. If anyone knows where the doctor is, I’ll take you there myself! Just tell me how to fix this!”
“Well,” Sinna rubbed her chin thoughtfully, “I’ve heard that some maladies can be cured by a good kiss, but I suppose we wouldn’t know unless you tried it.”
Rom turned his head to glare at her. “How can you joke about this?”
Brenna burst out laughing and tugged at his sleeve. “Rom, I’m not dying. Sinna, tell him what it is.”
“Oh, the poison? It’s oleander,” Sinna said, her eyes twinkling. “At least I’m fairly sure of it.”
Rom’s eyes shut and his shoulders slumped as he let out a low growl that probably would have turned to violence had he not been surrounded by women. “I think you just took five years off my life,” he muttered, finishing by rubbing one hand through his already rumpled hair. “Do you think His Majesty would let us charge Louise with causing you a violently annoying rash?”
Brenna chuckled at his expression. “Well, she thought she was going to kill me. Surely we could call it something more official sounding. Like ‘poisoning without adequate information.’”
“I’ll be sure to put that in my official report.”
“Then
, you’re going to be all right?” Dora whispered, her freckles standing out more than usual against her pale skin.
“Most definitely,” Brenna assured her. “Louise should have done her research a little more carefully. Oleander is poisonous, but it has to be ingested to be very effective. I suppose if she’d managed to stab me with the blade, it might have hastened my death, but it would have taken considerably more than a scratch.”
She turned towards the window, expecting to see her mother either quivering with rage or stunned in defeat, and saw only an empty chair.
Brenna rolled her eyes and sighed. “Rom, where is Louise?”
“Out the door, while you lot were fussing about poison,” Grita informed them, her mouth twisted in distaste.
Rom swore and started towards the door, turning back to Brenna just before he got there. “I’m going after her. Will you be all right?”
“What do you mean will I be all right?” Brenna snapped in irritation, wiping her bloodied fingers on her already ruined skirt. “I’m coming with you, you ridiculous oaf.”
Their eyes met and held.
“Are you sure?” Rom asked carefully. “She’s finished now, and she knows it. She won’t go quietly or easily.”
“I don’t care,” Brenna told him fiercely. “She’s tried three times now to kill me and I think I’ve earned a part of this.”
Rom nodded and his eyes warmed as he held out a hand. “We’ll do this together, then?”
Brenna’s breath caught in her chest. Whatever he meant, the look in his eyes suggested it might be more than simple camaraderie. “Yes?” she said, and placed her hand in his without hesitation.
Rom closed his fingers around hers and led Brenna out the door into the darkened street. He didn’t let go as they walked first one direction, then the other, searching without much urgency, knowing that wherever Louise had gone, she could no longer escape justice.
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