Page 87 of His Runaway Duchess

She turned, heading towards the bell pull, but she did not reach out to touch it. Instead, she stared at the velvet rope, her heart thudding. The baby squalled louder.

What am I doing? What am I doing?

She whirled around. “Emma, don’t…”

The words died on her lips.

Emma drained the last drop of the tea with a sigh of satisfaction.

“I’m exhausted,” she yawned, sliding lower against the pillows. “It’s so warm in here. Come sit by me, Clarissa.”

Clarissa moved across the room in a daze and perched on the edge of the bed. She sat there, talking about nothing, until Emma’s eyes fluttered shut and stayed shut. She stayed until Emma’s chest ceased to rise and fall and the color began to drain from her face.

Then, she picked up the cup and slipped it into her pocket, alongside the bottle. Both items would need to be thrown away, destroyed. She considered ringing the bell but then decided against it.

Clarissa got up carefully from the bed, straightening the sheets and tucking them around her dead friend. Then, she picked up Edward carefully, so carefully, and cradled him against her shoulder. Then, she went out to the hallway and began to scream for help.

There was silence at the end of Clarissa’s story. Edward’s legs were like jelly, threatening to deposit him unceremoniously on the ground.

“You murdered her,” he whispered. “You murdered my mother.”

Clarissa was weeping, quiet, open-mouthed sobs. Tears ran hotly down her face, dripping unchecked from her chin.

“It wasn’t meant to happen that way,” she whispered. “Why should she keep her baby and get to be Duchess of Thornbridge, when I had lost everything?”

“It wasn’t her you should have resented! It was my father! And… and you married him? After all of this?”

Clarissa shrugged limply. “He never knew. And I suppose he felt some guilt about me and the baby. And Edward, you needed a mother. You neededme.”

Edward shook his head violently, backing away. “My… my wife. Jane. You didn’t…”

“I did nothing to Jane. She was small and frail, and her health was never good. It was unfortunate. I swear, Edward, I never…”

She reached out to touch him, but he threw himself away, knocking into the table that held the whiskey decanter. It toppled off, almost slowly, and crashed to the floor. A dark stain spread across the carpet, filling the air with the stink of alcohol. Edward gagged.

“How could you?” he gasped. “Your friend. She was your friend!”

“You must forgive me, Edward!” Clarissa begged. “It was for you, all for you!”

He shook his head. “I can never forgive you.”

Clarissa flinched back as if he’d struck her. More tears rolled down her cheeks.

“If you won’t forgive me,” she said numbly, “then I will have lost everything. If I have lost everything, why should I go on living?”

She raised the sharp edge of the letter opener to the side of her neck, where an artery thrummed just under the surface.

Edward leaped forward with a cry. “Clarissa, no! No, you cannot do this to me! Not after everything! You cannot do this toAlex.”

Clarissa paused, opening her eyes. The edge of the blade rested against her skin, and a bead of red blood welled up.

“Do you have any idea how my conscience has tortured me?” she whispered. “Do you think I don’t know what I have done? I promised her that I would care for you, and I tried to convince myself that she would understand. Most of the time, I can live with it. But sometimes, when I’m alone, it all comes rushing back. The enormity of it. It’s too much. I… I can never undo it. I never did another bad thing in my life, you know that, but this… this is too big. I can never atone, can I?”

Edward rubbed a hand over his face.

Murdered.My mother was murdered. By her oldest friend, by the woman who raised me. The woman who was the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had.

Then, he looked at Clarissa’s wide, pleading eyes, bulging out of a bone-white face. He saw the bead of blood and the way her hand shook around the handle of the knife.

---