Page 93 of A Deal with the Broken Duke
Lady Annie laughed. “You’ll never prove that. You must think I’m a fool to confess the truth to you, but it was all so long ago, and you don’t exactly have a reputation for sanity. So go ahead, tell someone what I said here tonight. I don’t think anyone will believe you. You’ve been out of your mind about Susan’s death for years.”
Harry hadn’t even thought about trying to inform the authorities of what she had done. He was still coming to grips with the fact that she had done it at all. It was too horrible to imagine, Lady Annie sneaking into his house each day to poison Susan, and all that time, Harry had been upstairs trying to help Susan through what he thought was an illness, never guessing that the answer was so close at hand.
I could have stopped it. If I had just gone downstairs into the kitchen, if I had taken her tea away and given her something else to drink… there are so many points at which I could have put a stop to the whole thing. I could have saved her.
He knew there was no way he could have known what was happening. He knew he shouldn’t blame himself. But what a missed opportunity. It was painful to think that if he had just made a few different choices here and there, she would still be alive.
He couldn’t stay out here on the balcony with Lady Annie. If he did, he would hit her, or worse. He had to get away from her before he did something he would regret. He pushed past her, heading for the door.
“You’re just lucky you got rid of Lady Juliet on your own, that’s all,” she called after him.
He froze, then turned slowly to look at her.
“Did you do something to Juliet?” he demanded.
“You’ll never marry anyone if you don’t marry me, Your Grace. All you ever had to do was give me a chance to show you how happy I could make you.”
“Did you do something to Juliet?”
She laughed haughtily. “You’ll have to find out for yourself,” she drawled. “But if I were you, I’d stay well away from her. You don’t want another lady dying because of you, do you?”
Harry stepped inside and slammed the balcony door behind him hard, hoping to burn away some of the rage that felt as if it was going to consume him from within.
It didn’t help very much.
He couldn’t go back downstairs into that crowd of people. Anyone would be able to tell that something was wrong with him. And Lady Annie was right, he had no way of proving to anyone that she had actually done the things she’d just confessed to doing. If he tried to accuse her, the best-case scenario was probably that everyone would think he was maddened by grief.
He fisted his hands in his hair. Hefelta bit mad, but what could he do?
He couldn’t leave.
He couldn’t go home. Not without seeing Juliet. He had to know that she was all right. He had to warn her about Lady Annie, because Lady Annie had been right about one thing—he couldn’t allow anyone else to get hurt because of him. And especially not her. After all, hadn’t he ended their courtship to protect her from…
My curse.
His breath caught.
If Susan had been murdered, that meant the curse wasn’t real. She hadn’t died simply because everyone Harry got close to died. She had died because someone had killed her.
It changed everything.
But he couldn’t think about that now. He couldn’t think about the implications it might have for the rest of his life. He had to find a way to warn Juliet, and then he had to leave this party without being stopped by anyone else.
But how was he going to do any of that? It seemed impossible.
Suddenly, Daniel appeared at the top of the stairs.
Harry had never been so glad to see anyone in all his life.
He hurried over, grabbed his friend by the arm and pulled him down the hall to one of the spare bedrooms.
“What is this?” Daniel demanded. “What’s going on, Harry? You look like you’re about to commit murder.”
Harry couldn’t even begin to process the irony in that. He dragged Daniel into the spare room and closed the door behind them. Then, in a hushed voice, he repeated everything Lady Annie had just confessed to him.
Daniel’s eyes grew wide as he spoke. “You’re kidding,” he breathed.
“Do you believe me?”
