Page 157 of The King's Man
Lucy smiled down at Morton. ‘Monkshood. I keep a small supply with me, just waiting for the right occasion. I simply added it to the soup. I don’t advise anyone else to drink it.’
The realisation that Lucy had poisoned him flickered across Morton’s face.
‘Bitch! Why?’ He spat saliva and vomit as he spoke.
‘You don’t deserve to live,’ Lucy said. ‘You’re a monster.’ She laid a hand on her belly and looked down at where Thamsine still knelt with Annie Morton’s head in her lap. ‘This is his child, but no child deserves a father like Ambrose Morton.’ She looked at Thamsine. ‘Did you think that Lovell was the father? Kit waslong gone before this one was conceived. It was fun watching your face though when you thought it was his.’
Kit couldn’t bring himself to look at Thamsine … not yet.
Morton turned desperate eyes to Kit.
‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘Better to die at the end of your sword than this … ’ He doubled up, screaming in agony again.
Lucy placed a hand on Kit’s sword arm.
‘Don’t kill him, Kit. I want to stand here and watch him suffer for every act of depravation, degradation and murder he has committed.’
Kit glanced at Roger.
‘Take the children out of here.’
Roger nodded. Carrying his youngest daughter, and with an arm around the older girl’s shoulders, he left the room.
Kit shook off Lucy’s hand and stepped forward. He stood for a moment looking down at his adversary. Whatever his feelings for Ambrose Morton, it gave him no pleasure to watch this man writhing on the floor in vomit and faeces. He raised his sword and drove it down into Ambrose’s throat. The blood spurted high into the air. Ambrose gurgled and lay still.
Overcoming rising nausea, Kit crouched down and closed the desperate, agonised eyes.
He looked up at the sound of boots in the hallway and Jem burst into the room, a pistol brandished in each hand.
Jem looked down at Morton’s body and swore. ‘There’ll be none to mourn him, I wager, just that baggage – ’ He waved a pistol in Lucy’s direction.
Kit rose wearily to his feet. ‘I have a job for you, Jem. Take that baggage to the nearest port and see she boards a boat.’
‘Now?’ Jem asked uncertainly.
‘Now! I want her out of this house.’
Lucy smiled. She walked over to Kit and laid a hand on his cheek.
‘Goodbye, Lovell. We had some fun, which I will always remember fondly.’
‘The coin, Lucy,’ Kit said.
Her eyes flashed momentarily but she saw no quarter in Kit’s face. She turned and dropped the coin bags on the table and swept from the room like a queen.
‘Kit?’
At the sound of Thamsine’s voice, Kit turned, at last, to look at her. For a moment a hundred unvoiced questions and answers flowed between them. There would be time for that later. He walked over to her and looked down at the girl.
‘This is his sister?’
Thamsine nodded. ‘There’s no hope, is there?’ she asked.
Kit looked at Annie’s grey face and blood-flecked lips. He watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest and shook his head.
‘It’s only a matter of time. All we can do is make her comfortable.’
He stooped down and picked Annie up. She moaned. ‘It’s all right, Annie,’ he whispered. ‘There will be no more pain soon.’
