“Since then,” the older doctor spoke, “We have both been suspicious. In ways we should have been suspicious before.”
“Have you,” Wynchester asked, “discovered the poison’s source?”
The doctors exchanged a significant look.
The younger doctor explained. “Following a second event this week, we’ve come to suspect the Widow Norton.”
A creeping sense of dismay spidered up Wynchester’s spine. “Why?”
“The widow’s maid came to us with her papers.”
“Stolen from the widow’s home?”
“Stolen,” the older doctor said, “with good cause.”
The younger doctor cleared his throat. “My father is trying to say, we’d be obliged if you would read the contents and tell us how to proceed.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the doctor sat back. “I wish to have your council. The contents concern you…and your brother.”
“And Her Grace,” the younger doctor continued.
A distant ring sounded in Wynchester’s ears—the buzzing of a swarm of angry wasps. “Her Grace?”
“The loss of her babe, at least.” The older doctor picked up the packages and held them out. “Read the letters, Your Grace. And you will understand. You may be assured of our utmost discretion.”
Wynchester took the wrapped package from the doctor’s hands. A furious burning inside of his mind. He suspected—he would not yet give voice to his suspicions.
“Your son,” he said to the older doctor, “tells me Eustace was ill.”
The elder doctor pursed his lips. “Not of the body.”
“Why were you summoned to Wynterhill?”
“Sedation.” He cleared his throat. “There were problems. Dead animals. Frightened children.”
Wynchester templed his fingers against his mouth.
“Just as your father used to do,” the elder doctor said.
“Get out,” Wynchester said.
The elder Dr. Smith paled; the younger helped him to his feet.
“Read,” the younger doctor said, his eyes full of challenge. “Read and you will understand the service we have done.”
They hurried from the room and Wynchester suppressed the urge to call them back. He’d been boorish and uncivil, yes. But he knew. He knew what he would find when he read those papers. Instead of calling them back, he rang for Wheaton, who would no doubt meet the doctors in the hall and escort them to their carriage.
He placed the piles on the desk and spread out the papers. Records. Letters. Tickets for purchases. Translations. Hundreds of them all—spanning years. Some written in seeming gibberish, with translation filed behind.
His gaze ran across the table, picking out the coded ones with ease.
Not because he read quickly, but because he recognized the hand.
Piece by piece, the picture came together. Eustace had conspired to commit treason, and he’d done so using Wynchester’s name. Almost worse, however, when he had gone to India, he’d left the widow with instructions to do whatever she must to prevent the survival of an heir.
…
The afternoon had exhausted Thea body and mind. An affidavit. Wynchester had procured an affidavit. Anyone who learned that such a thing existed would be sure Wynchester believed her an adulteress…an adulteress who’d poison the Wynchester line with a bastard duke. The thought played over and over until her mind became so wretchedly weary, she drifted into a fitful slumber.
She awoke with a panicked start—to a gloomy, empty room.
She brushed her hand over her mouth and sat up in the bed. Madness, to let her mind run over the thought again and again. Wynchester had made her his, not just in a carnal sense. His mask had slipped; he’d shown her the imperfect man. The wicked man. The teasing man. The man she had always longed to know.
For that man’s sake she set aside thoughts of the affidavit and settled into an overstuffed chair with one of her favorite novels. By the time the moon had crept high in the sky, she was breathless with the heroine’s heartache—and had forgotten her own. So engrossed, Wynchester opened the connecting door, and she did not notice him until he stood at her feet.
She looked up
“Come to my chamber,” he said.
“A request?” She arched a brow. “Or an order?”
Weariness darkened his features. “Please.”
“I will come,” she held her ground, “when I finish—”
“Thea!”
No Marie. She set aside her book. “What is it?”
He did not answer, but strode back to the door and held it open.
Internal warning rang inside her ears. “I do not wish to do as you ask,” she said, sounding peevish even to her own ears. What she wished to do was run.
“Why not?” he asked.
I don’t want to. Her childish urge to stamp her foot brought color to her cheeks. She did not know what had happened, and she damn well did not want to know what happened. She made the fatal mistake of raising her gaze to his pained expression. Her heart overruled the warning bells.
She stood slowly. “I have never been inside the duke’s chamber.”
“I know,” he answered. “That is why you must come.”
She frowned. “I do not understand.”
“I—” he paused abruptly, his eyes oddly red. “I would honor such a simple request. I would do—I would have done—anything you asked.”
Would have? Past tense? Girding her courage, she stepped past him into the room.
Dark wood panels lined unadorned walls. Voluminous bedcovering and bed curtains, both in the same dark blue hue, gave the monstrous bed a midnight feel. In the far corner, a suit of armor—Sixteenth century, perhaps—stood sentinel. Probably worn by an ancestor duke. Blood had once stained that sword, and the visible nicks had likely been caused by—she shivered—bone.
He pointed to the bed. “Sit there,” he said, “In the middle.”
“Wynchester! This is hardly the time—”
“I am not about to ravish you,” he said coarsely. “Just…just please,” his voice cracked, “get onto my bed.”
He’d gone mad. No question. Bedlam mad. She climbed onto the bed. He stared at her for an interminable moment. Blotchy red spots covered his neck.
“Wyn,” she said softly, “you are frightening me.”
“Would you stay?” he asked in a whisper. “If I were reduced to nothing…if I lost,” again a crack, “Wynterhill?”
“You could never—”
“Would you stay,” he spoke over her words, “if the Worthington name were disgraced?”
True fear entered her heart—as she watched what had hours ago been green marsh transforming back to ice and crag and rock.
“The Worthington name is my name,” she answered, just as quietly. “Our name.”
His expression did not soften.
“I love you,” she added, feeling the impossibility all-at-once.
Love, this afternoon, had been an all-powerful, conquering centurion. In this large, dark room, alone at the center of a lonely bed, love seemed little more than the shell of armor standing uselessly in the corner.
“The question is rhetorical, anyway. I will not ask you to stay.” His gaze shuttered. “Even if I would, you’ve run before…when I’ve most needed you.”
Oh, but that was not fair. One did not run from a remote landmass of ice. One drifted in the cold and the dark until swallowed by frigid waves.
“That was deliberately cruel.”
“Cruel.” He choked on his breath. “Yes.”
Helpless, she repeated, “I love you.”
He walked backwards until he hit the wall.
Come back. Come back. Come back. “What has happened, Wyn?”
He slid down to his haunches and caught his head within his hands. “The worst.” His shoulders shook—laughter without mirth. “I would have put it together long ago, if it weren’t for my dammed pride.”
“Whatever it is,” sh
e prayed she spoke true, “we will find a way through, together.”
“A way through, she says.” He shook his head. “Treason has no recompense.”
“Treason?”
He remained silent.
“Does this have something to do with Eustace?”
More silence. The bed squeaked as she moved toward the edge.
“Stay,” he pointed without looking, “on my bed.”
“You aren’t making sense,” she said. “Why am I on the bed?”
He looked up. His gaze was beyond anger and loss. His gaze was complete defeat.
“I needed to see you there.” His eyes glistened. “Just once, I needed to see my wife on my bed. Is that too dammed much to ask?”
“What madness has overcome you?” Her voice wobbled. “I will always be wherever you are.”
…
All he had wanted was to see Thea Marie in his bed—just once—and he could not even do that properly. She was a blur of oak, blue linens, and woman.
He was devastated, and they would soon be ruined and his duchess was calm as “if you please.” Calm. Thea Marie. The woman who spattered ink in a missive of hatred, ruled an underworld with an icy glare, and had once asked him to find her bit and her bridle because he clearly thought her a horse not a wife.
The truth dawned on him like a battle-scarred morning.
“You knew,” he accused. “You knew this was coming.”
“I knew nothing,” she said, with a regal lift of her chin. “I only suspected Eustace of crime.”
“Crime?”
He steadied himself with a hand to the wall, and rose. Everything he was—the manor, the robes and the signet, the leadership in Lords, the neat ledger lines, the stewardship of tenants and livestock and land—all of it would be stripped. Not just his life, but his honor…a fate infinitely more horrid. Then there was Eustace’s most vile crime. Harm had come to Thea Marie—and their child. He would kill Eustace. He must.
“Tell me what you’ve learned.” Her voice was suspiciously soothing.
He’d grown accustomed to her low, throaty tone, it ran like a stream through his heart’s ache. Tempting to take some comfort in the familiar sound, but she did not know what was coming. No matter what she suspected, it could not be as bad as the whole.
“Come,” she urged. “Sit with me.”
She swung her legs off the bed, but did not rise. He could not resist moving toward her—one small conciliation to take with him to his grim fate.
His knees brushed hers. She took him by the hand and drew him up onto the bed. Lying back against the headboard, she gathered him against her chest and her arm closed around him like straps. The pressure of her breasts against his back was warming and her breath drifted across his ear. They were entwined together—breathing and beating as one. He let her hold him…hold him as if the feel of her heartbeat could possibly be of consequence, as if her embrace could possibly change what must come.
He pulled one of her hands from his chest and examined her fingers. Her perfect fingers. Though she did not know it, she had held his heart in those hands. He had relinquished it back when he was Haddon, and had been moving about without one ever since. He foolishly hoped she’d know and remember after he was gone.
“What’s happened, Wyn?”
“I told you—treason.”
“Yes, but who? How? Why?”
“The Doctors’ Smith brought me records, their own and letters taken from the home of Widow Norton.”
“Widow Norton, Eustace’s nurse?”
“Yes. She and Eustace have corresponded.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Not so,” Wynchester said. “They corresponded when he was in London. They continued to correspond when he was in India. Among other things, they shared an interest in poisons.”
Thea gasped.
“My father’s diaries filled in missing pieces.” Pride had cost him most in this. “If I had read them after his death, I would have known he was deeply concerned about Eustace’s ambitions.” He closed his eyes. “Between the doctor’s records and my father’s notes, there would have been enough for any chancery judge to declare Eustace mad—before he stole the sapphires.”
Thea’s arms tightened briefly at the mention of sapphires, but he continued before she had time to interrupt.
“The widow’s letters, however, reveal a much darker plot.”
“Eustace is not mad,” she said. “But he is without conscience.”
After piecing the puzzle together, Wynchester was inclined to believe both.
“Eustace experienced what the doctor referred to as episodes. My father resorted to sedation—and to the payment of annuities for the injured. He’d promised Eustace a commission, but withdrew when Eustace was caught beating a child in the village. In the end, my father was pondering chancery, but was concerned,” Wynchester paused for a mirthless chuckle, “how I would take the blow to the family name.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “If the dowager had not been with my father the night he died, I’d wonder if Eustace and the widow had hastened his death in addition to all the other crimes.”
Thea was silent.
He turned in her arms. “Tell me I am mad to suggest such a thing.”
She stared at him with those silent, searching eyes.
“Tell me,” he said, this time louder.
“I cannot,” she whispered.
He snorted. “What’s patricide to treason, hum?”
“You keep saying treason—just what was in that correspondence?”
“Eustace, in league with key East India proprietors, plotted to obtain control of Company resources through Parliament.”
“Through Parliament? But how—and why?”
“Because Parliament alone can revoke the Company’s charter. Those in league with Eustace intended to take over control, kill the King, and use the East India Company armies, and Eustace’s contacts in France, to begin a revolution.”
“My God!?” Thea’s hand moved—presumably to her mouth. “They never would have succeeded.”
“They came exceptionally close. Although unaware of the plot, Burke and Fox wrote a bill that would have given Parliament the power to seize Company resources. The bill passed Commons, and would have passed Lords, but for the influence of Company directors and of Pitt and the King himself.”
“The reason behind the recent elections,” Thea breathed. “They failed, you say?”
“Yes. But it does not matter. Eustace has made it appear as if I was in league with the conspirators.”
“You? But how?”
“Eustace acted in my name. He convinced his conspirators that in working with them, they were working with me.”
Her brow furrowed. “But surely you can prove you were not aware!”
“Don’t you understand? A bill giving Parliament control of the Company led to the recall of the King’s ministers and the elections this past March. And against the King’s warning, I voted in favor of the bill. A protest vote against the misuse of the Kings power—but in retrospect, a nail in my coffin.”
“Do not talk that way,” she cried. “Eustace and his conspirators have been outwitted—the bill did not pass.”
“Which is part of the reason Eustace returned,” Wynchester sighed. “He lost his supporters in France, the larger conspiracy failed, and so he came back to work mischief from within. His original intent was to gain Company stock by a marriage. But that plan was thwarted.”
“Sophia,” she said.
“Yes,” Wynchester said. “When that failed, he resorted to a final plan, much simpler plan. My death—and if so convenient—yours. Eustace brought the dogs that frightened the horses to the Widow. Not that he knew exactly when or how they could be used, but the widow had already proven herself a loyal ally.”
He turned to her, pressing his mouth into a somber line. He could not tell her what the widow had done—he could not. Wasn’t it enough that he’d be haunted to the end
of his days? His days numbered few; he would not leave her with the burden of the truth.
“I may be about to be ruined,” he changed the subject, “but, if you leave I can still keep you safe.”
“I will not leave you.” Her lip quivered. “I love you.”
Sharp pain stabbed, anger followed. “How is love supposed to help?”
She blinked. Sparkling wetness seeped between her lashes. “It’s not.”
“Treason,” he said through his teeth, hating himself all-the-while. “Treason and murder.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “I love you and it does not make things better. It is, however, the reason I have acted as I have.”
“The reason”—he put distance between them—“for what?”
“Eustace is our problem.” Her voice trembled. “Our, do you understand, Wynchester? You are not without help nor without friends.”
“No. Eustace is my problem.”
“Please do not push me away. Eustace—Kasai—whatever his crimes, we’ll survive them.”
Ice slithered down through his veins. “I made no mention of Kasai.”
“You’ve uncovered what Lord Randolph and Mr. Harrison have been trying to piece together for months.”
“Harrison? And Randolph?” He reeled as if he’d been hit. “What part have they played in this? What have you done?”
“Don’t look at me that way!” She grabbed his arm. “You cannot think me part of Eustace’s deception. Harrison came to me seeking my help.”
He tore out of her clutch. “When?! When did he come to you?”
Her words rushed out. “Soon after you and he brought the militia to Lavinia’s. Sophia had run away that morning. He had seen and recognized Eustace. He did not understand how Eustace had survived when he had seen Eustace murdered. He suspected Eustace was involved in a larger plot and would seek your protection. He and Randolph only recently realized Eustace could have been playing the part of Kasai.”
“Why did he go to you?”
She blinked. “No one else could get close enough to protect you.”
Individual chunks of ice joined together within his veins. What had she told him the night of the wager? I was drilled in duty, history, and practice until my greater loyalty belonged to the Worthington name.
Duchess Decadence Page 19
