Page 73 of Murder at the Seven Dials
“You would have ended things yourself. To protect the truth,” Hugh guessed.
The duke gave a slight nod.
“Do you recall when Miss Lovejoy arrived?”
He sat back, less rigid than before. “I remember a knock on the door, and her asking what I wanted.”
Hugh frowned. “How do you mean?”
“She seemed to want to know whatIwanted her there for, but…I hadn’t invited her.”
“Are you certain St. John didn’t?”
He glared. “I’ve already told you—he wouldn’t have.”
Hugh got up, restless to move. Now that he had the duke talking, he was less worried about another lapse of stubborn silence.
“Someone sent her to Jewell House. Or invited her,” Hugh said. “Do you remember anyone else arriving? Anything of the attack?”
Audrey’s vision of the attacker had lacked any defining details. Male. Tall. Broad. But her mention of Lady Wimbly’s new footman, straight from a workhouse, strummed a connective thread inside Hugh.
Exhaustion paled the duke’s face, the puffy skin under his eyes dark. “No. Nothing. I’ve been trying to remember, I truly have, but…but thelaudanum. I don’t understand why it affected me as it did that night. I couldn’t see, couldn’t stand. It felt like my head was on a whirligig, spinning, spinning.” He closed his eyes and buried his face into his palms. After a few moments, when he lifted his face again, his eyes shone as he held Hugh’s stare. “I was right there, in the same room with her, when she was attacked. I did nothing. I didn’t stop it. I couldn’t. I might not have killed her, but I may as well have.”
Fournier stood and pushed back the chair roughly, then paced away from the table. Hugh let him go. He wasn’t worried about the duke making a run for it—it was more than evident that he was intent on blaming himself, even though he was innocent.
“Where did you get the laudanum?” he asked when the duke looked to be calming.
He crossed his arms and started back for the table. “Why?”
“It sounds as if it was tampered with. Something could have been added to it.”
He shook his head fervently. “The bottle was in my coat pocket all evening. No one could have touched it.”
“Not even St. John?”
The duke lashed him with another glare. Hugh took note of his blue eyes, his handsome looks. He attempted to envision the duchess on this man’s arm and could not deny the odd satisfaction he felt in knowing that their marriage was not traditional.
“Are you suggesting he drugged me?”
“I think someone did,” Hugh answered. “As for the timing of its effects, you must have consumed it while you and St. John were together, or immediately after.”
The duke pulled out his chair again and sat, his gaze distant. His brow creased. “We each had a scotch.”
“Poured from your own decanter?”
Hollowing disbelief spread over the duke’s face. He rasped, “Auggie brought the bottle. It was from his uncle’s distillery, up north.”
“You are sure he drank from it as well?”
When the duke nodded, Hugh stood, restless to move.
“If he knew the scotch was laced, he wouldn’t have consumed it,” Fournier insisted.
“Or he might have and made sure to leave before the effects could strike him down.”
The duke shook his head, resisting. He didn’t want to consider the possibility that his lover had betrayed him.
“Someone sent Miss Lovejoy to your rooms, and I’m willing to bet it’s the same person who wanted to be sure you were inebriated.” Hugh took no comfort in what he was now realizing. “Your Grace, you were framed for this murder, and it looks like the Wimbly marquessate had a hand in it.”
