Page 71 of The Icy Duke Claims a Bride

“He’s going to give everything he has to the magistrates, Edwin. Please, you must confess before it’s too late. Without the support of Redbridge, Andrew will have no fortune, no place in Society, and no future. If you admit everything now, I could salvage something…”

As Lady Georgina tried to approach her husband, he pushed her away and continued to stand alone in the hallway, contemptuous of her apparent lack of faith. “If Hugh has the evidence, then he must produce it,” he insisted. “That’s how the law works, and that’s how the world works, isn’t it, Hugh? So, prove what you’re saying.”

“Gladly, Uncle,” Hugh said, pulling the letters out of his pocket and handing them to his uncle.

Even before reading the letters, Hugh saw the expression on his uncle’s face change, as though swept by a tidal wave. Merely seeing the handwriting on the paper was enough. Edwin saw immediately what it had taken Hugh some hours to work out.

It was, of course, the handwriting of the woman Edwin had been married to for over twenty years, and the mother of his only son.

“Georgina!” he exclaimed in horror, backing away from her. “What have you done?!”

For a few moments, Lady Georgina looked desperately between her husband and her nephew as though trying to gauge which way was best to jump. Or which of them would be easier to dupe…

Then, she took a deep breath, and Hugh saw a her eyes harden. All the cloying sentimentality had fallen off her features and was replaced by cold calculation.

“Promise me that whatever happens, you will both take care of Andrew,” she said steadily.

“What have you done?!” Edwin thundered again, having read the letters and his hand shaking as his world crumbled around him.

“I promise I will take care of Andrew, as long as Catherine survives,” Hugh stated. “What was the poison?”

Finally trapped and with no way out, Lady Georgina nodded her head, but Hugh could not let down his guard. Trapped animals were often the most dangerous. They had nothing left to lose.

“It was a very concentrated essence of poppies from the East,” Lady Georgina revealed, a strange flicker of a smile playing on her lips. “Whether Catherine lives depends on how much she consumed. Still, at least it is said to give a very peaceful death.”

“Is that meant to be a comfort?” Hugh laughed humorlessly, putting away his pistol and instructing Elmore to ready their horses again.

“It’s a more peaceful death than fire. But you’d know that better than me, wouldn’t you, Hugh? Poor, cursed Hugh who should have died with the rest of his family twenty years ago!”

“What?!”

Now it was Hugh’s turn to feel his whole world crumbling around him.

Lady Georgina continued to talk, her voice dripping with malice, enjoying his distress. Perhaps she had always enjoyed it.

“It was easy to arrange for the roof of the hunting lodge to be soaked with pitch. There are plenty of men willing to do such peculiar little jobs for ready money with no questions asked. I paid someone else to throw a torch at the place. Neither of them knew he would be killing a whole family, and neither of them talked afterwards. How could they? They would have hung.”

“You killed them! You killed my family…” Hugh gasped painfully.

“Yes, and you should have died, too—all five of you burned to ashes together. But no. Poor, scarred, little Hugh had to ruin everything by surviving, by growing up out of my reach, by marrying that Wright woman and getting her with child… Edwin has done a thousand times more for the estate than you ever have, and Redbridge was destined for Andrew!”

Suddenly, she lunged at Hugh with her hands raised as though to scratch his eyes out, but Edwin finally broke out of his stupor and swung into action. He caught her arm, twisted it behind her back, and dragged her down the corridor kicking and screaming. Then, he threw her into what looked like a cloakroom, took the key, and locked her inside, leaving her hammering at the door, shouting profanities and screaming to be released.

Leaning against the wall outside, he trembled, shaken by his wife’s madness and evildoing.

“I had no idea, Hugh. No idea. Can it really be true? I’m so sorry… Dear God! Dear God!”

“You never once questioned how all your rivals met such bad ends, Uncle?” Hugh asked, believing that his uncle was likely telling the truth but still suspecting him of some kind of willful ignorance.

“Things do happen in the City, Hugh. Bad things. Men fall apart… But not usually so often as they have in this case… I really thought I was naturally lucky, especially with Georgina by my side. I really thought people like Fitzroy were unlucky.”

“When actually, in the guise of assisting you for all these years, your wife was working behind the scenes to bribe, blackmail, and murder her way to your success,” Hugh said bluntly. “Including yourownbrother,mybrother, my sister—even our old butler…”

“You have to believe me, Hugh. I never would have hurt Jonathan or any of his children. I would never have poisoned Catherine, even if I did think she was trying to turn you against me. Sure, I’ll take the money of any grown man not smart enough to hold onto it, but not… not this… This is some sort of nightmare…”

Edwin’s face was pale, damp, and clammy, his voice a broken whisper as he held out an arm towards Hugh, like a blind man groping for something to hold onto.

“What am I going to do? What am I going to tell Andrew?!”

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