Page 45 of The Traitor's Curse
I found my voice at last, although it rasped as if I’d been screaming after all.
“Of course, Tavius. It was a long journey. Tiring. Of course.” I waved at one of the footmen, and he approached and bowed. “Show Lord Tavius to his room. And—and see to anything else he or his party requires.”
“Brandy’s what I’ll want.” Tavius shot me a smile that approximated his usual brash arrogance, but on the haggard pallor of his face it just looked ghastly. “The best in the cellars.”
“The very best,” I said. My own smile probably looked even worse than his. “The duke’s own, if you please.”
Tavius barked out a harsh, ugly laugh. “That’s the stuff. Now are we going, or not?” he snarled at the footman.
He stomped off, almost knocking into Benedict’s chair as he did and not troubling to acknowledge him at all otherwise, not even with an insult. The footman all but danced out the door in Tavius’s wake, murmuring apologies.
A nervously cleared throat drew my attention to the butler. “The table’s ready, if it please you, Your Grace,” he said—tentatively, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Thank you,” I managed. The table. I might never have an appetite again. But I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse for Tavius’s behavior or for dismissing the butler and footmen before they’d served the remaining two of us lunch. Fuck it. Let them talk. After Benedict’s and my behavior at the ball last night, it hardly mattered. I simply said, “You can all go.”
The door shut behind them, and Benedict and I regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Dread sat so heavily on my chest that I could hardly draw a breath.
“By your reaction,” Benedict said at last, “you also don’t know of any good reason why your cousin ought to have been particularly attached to Fabian. Or why he might know or guessthat his death wasn’t an accident.”
A gust of wind pattered a few drops of rain against the glass of the terrace door, a chill draft sweeping past my feet from under it. I hardly felt it. I’d gone cold all over. Apparently the past week’s fine weather had come to an end, both outdoors and for me.
“I can’t even think of a reason why Tavius would have known Fabian’s name. Or that he existed, except in the sense that he’d assume I’d have a valet.” I closed my eyes for a moment, knowing I couldn’t deny it to either myself or to Benedict, letting the pain of it course through me. “He knew. That wasn’t a wild guess. I know him. And he didn’t have any doubt about it.”
Benedict pushed to his feet and put his empty cup on the sideboard, coming to stand by the fire with me.
“I may be inferring too much from that,” he said slowly. “Tell me if you agree with my reasoning. But Lucian—if he immediately jumped to the idea that Fabian was murdered. If he wasn’t guessing, then that means he knows why someone would want Fabian dead. Are you with me so far?”
That made sense. I nodded, throat too tight for speech.
“All right. But don’t you see? That suggests the poison wasn’t meant for you at all. We’ve been assuming the murderer meant to kill you, because it was your wine and you’re the obvious target. But what if Fabian was the intended victim all along? What if he always drank a portion of your wine before he gave it to you, and someone had seen him do it often enough to know? It’d be a damn clever way to kill him,” he added, sounding more admiring than condemnatory.
I might not be applauding the cleverness of the killer—after all, unlike Benedict, I had some slight grasp on morality. But I couldn’t argue with his logic. I’d had the same thought when I realized how Fabian had died, hadn’t I? Wondering howmany times Fabian had drunk from my cup and then possibly spit in it afterward. Every night, probably. Anyone in the kitchen could’ve seen him and made a note of his habit.
If that poison had really been for Fabian, if he’d been murdered on purpose…gods, no good and decent man would feel such a rush of relief, nearly enough to take me out at the knees. But knowing someone hated me enough to viscerally want me to suffer and die had been a constant, nagging, terrifying weight to bear. And more than that…hope struck me with sudden, breathtaking force.
“If it was Fabian the poisoner meant to kill, then whatever mystery this is about Tavius, it may have nothing at all to do with me. It might mean that—”
“Lucian, don’t waste your breath. Lord Tavius doesn’t seem like the sort to even notice the death of a servant. Tell me I’m wrong.” I wished I could, but I had to shake my head. “All right, so he certainly wouldn’t care why he’d died, unless he’d had some personal connection to him. Which he wouldn’t have had without your knowledge, particularly without wanting to admit to it now, unless he meant to—”
“No, I won’t believe it!” I couldn’t let him say it aloud. Not about the one person in the world I’d genuinely trusted until today. “He would never—”
“—betray you,” Benedict finished, his face and his tone equally grim. He took a step toward me, close enough that I could see the fine lines of tension at the corners of his eyes. “Lucian,” he said, gently but with no compromise at all, “the best thing I can say is that he didn’t kill Fabian himself. His surprise proves that. But he almost certainly knows who did. And that implies a plot that he’s part of, something that must have to do with you.”
A plot.Why the fuck didn’t he tell…Tavius hadn’t finished his sentence, and it’d almost passed me by in the moment, but itreoccurred to me now. Whoever had sent him word of my new understanding with Benedict? And who’d neglected to mention Fabian’s death, perhaps because he didn’t understand that it’d be important information for Tavius to know.
My hands shook so much that the cup of leftover wine I’d forgotten I held sloshed everywhere. Benedict took it from me and put it on the mantel, eyes never leaving my face.
I had to be as pale and wretched as Tavius had been a few minutes ago.
There must be some explanation, theremustbe, but if there was Tavius would already have given it, as Benedict had pointed out. And I couldn’t even imagine a convincing hypothetical. You might have secret dealings with a valet in order to blackmail him, buy information from him, or use him to manipulate his master. If Fabian had been younger, perhaps…but Tavius only took women to bed, anyway. And even if there could be some other explanation, no innocent reason for sneaking about with a duke’s servant resulted in death.
If Tavius had a co-conspirator, someone unconnected to Fabian, then that didn’t simply implicate Tavius in a plot. It made him the likely center of it.
“He’s my cousin,” I said, and my voice came out as broken as I felt. “I’ve always loved him like a brother. And I’d, gods. I’d have sworn on my own life he was the only person in the world who really loved me.”
I turned my head away and stared down at the fire, focusing on the jump and dance of the flames, hoping that I could pretend the stinging in my eyes came from keeping them open in the heat rather than something else.
Benedict didn’t make a sound. The hand hanging down by his side in the corner of my vision had balled into a fist.
