Page 70 of An Arranged Marriage with a Mad Marquess
The side door was clearly a servants’ corridor, a dark, thin hallway designed for servants to slip in and out of the dining room unseen. A cold draught swirled around Patrina’s ankles, and there was something of an echo, bouncing off the stone walls.
The echo was Thomasin’s voice.
“It’s gone entirely too far,” she was saying, her voice tight with worry.
Patrina spotted the two of them about halfway up the hallway, huddled in an alcove, deep in conversation. She shuffled a little closer, not daring to get close enough to be seen. There was nowhere to hide in this bare hallway.
“And where exactly did you think this business was going to end?” Clayton responded angrily. “Don’t be a fool, Mother.”
“Watch your tongue, Clayton. May I remind you thatIam the one who originally came up with this plan?”
“Perhaps so,” Clayton shot back, undeterred, “but I am the one who finished it off. You only wanted rid of old Lord Morendale because he was going to cut off our allowance. My plans are a little loftier than that.”
Patrina pressed a hand over her mouth, hardly daring to breathe.
Thomasin sighed impatiently. “I know, Iknow, but really, itisdifferent. Old Lord Morendale, my wretched brother-in-law, was a terrible bore, and I never much liked him. Neil is my nephew, and I am… well, I amfondof him, Clayton. It hurts to see him suffer. We ought not to have come here.”
“I ought not to have letyoucome here,” Clayton snapped. “You are far too soft. Do you want the Dower House, or not? Since Neil was too foolish to sign it over to his mother altogether, it’ll become mine once I am Lord Morendale.”
There was a pause, and Patrina imagined Thomasin shifting mulishly from foot to foot.
“I suppose we’ve come far enough,” Thomasin sighed, after a while. “Oh, Clayton, I just want all of this to be over. That wretched wife of his hates us. I’m sure she suspects something.”
“Well, Mother, if you had done your job and stayed close to Aunt Emma and the family, you might have been able to deter him from the marriage in the first place.”
Patrina clenched her jaw, swallowing back rage. Clayton’s tone was contemptuous and disrespectful, and she longed to come running out of her hiding place and throw herself at him.
She heard Thomasin sigh. “Perhaps so, but it’s too late now. What shall we do now?”
“Well, I overheard Neil talking with that wretch of a steward. He plans to turn us out tomorrow, and I doubt we’ll be invited here again.”
Thomasin gave a gasp of outrage. “What? Why? What grounds would he have to turn outfamily?”
“It’s that steward, complaining. And the wretched woman complained, too. My point, Mother, is that we do not have much time left. We have to act. We have to actnow.”
“Very well. What must I do?”
“We’ll contact Mr. Blackburn and let him know that it’s time for the final dose. It may look suspicious for Neil to die so suddenly. He isn’t even properly mad yet. But needs must, and I don’t think that the physician will have influence over the family for much longer. It has to happen today, do you understand?”
There was a long silence after that, and Patrina strained her ears to hear what came next.
Her head was spinning. There was a stark difference betweensuspectingthat one’s family was trying to poison one’s husband andknowingit for a fact.
They’ve been poisoning him for months,Patrina realized with a shiver.Those drops and infusions of Mr. Blackburn’s were poisoned. What fools we were! And they must have done the same with poor Lord Morendale.
All to make Clayton a Marquess.
“Yes, I understand,” Thomasin answered at last, voice sad. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
“What did you think would happen?” Clayton scoffed. “Now come on, Mother. We have work to do.”
Suddenly terrified of being caught – they’d made it clear they were happy to murder to get what they wanted, and alreadyhadkilled one Marquess – Patrina hurried silently back along the hallway, and out into the comparatively bright lights of the dining room. She paused, squinting around.
The dining room was a mess. The tablecloth had been half pulled off the table when Neil collapsed, and the table was a mess of dishes and cutlery, mixed in with spilled food and wine. A single candelabra stood tall amongst the mess, and the other candles flickered silently around the room.
The room was deserted. Silence hung heavily over Patrina, making her skin prickle. Some chairs were pushed back, knives and forks poised over abandoned plates, as if the diners had been mysteriously spirited away in the middle of dinner.
Well, in a way, they had.
