Page 108 of The Mistletoe Countess
The dowager turned those piercing eyes on Grace. “What did you say?”
“The reason your son Edward is dead.”
The woman wilted back into the chair, every year of her life suddenly reflected in the lines around her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your response would suggest otherwise.” Frederick placed the dried hemlock and note on the table beside his mother. “Were you involved in Celia’s plot all along?”
“How dare you charge me with a desire to see Edward dead.” She pushed up from her chair, garnering her strength, her teeth barred. “He was my son.”
Frederick’s body gave the slightest twitch from the sting in her words. “The police will be here within the hour. If you don’t wish for me to name you along with Celia in this crime, you need to speak of what you know.”
Her hand trembled as she pushed a strand of hair from her forehead and looked away. Her breaths shivered into the silence. “I…I didn’t know she was killing him until I saw the signs.” She walked toward the window, body quaking against her cane. “It wasn’t the slow way, like she’d used with your father, but I recognized her desperation.”
“Like Father?” Frederick’s voice faltered.
“You wanted all the truth.” The dowager speared him with a glare, her words frigid. “Your father had recently discovered Edward was not his legitimate son.”
Frederick’s chest deflated with a release of air. “Rupert.”
Grace pieced together the news. The letters Frederick had found. The change in his father’s disposition toward Frederick just before his death.
“Yes.” She ground out the word, bracing her hand against the window frame. “A common man untouched by the weight and responsibility of Havensbrooke’s burden.” She sneered and turned away. “I thought no one knew, but Celia discovered it.”
“So she threatened to make your past public?” The history began to unfold in Grace’s mind.
“Unless I gave her something she wanted.” She turned her attention back to the window.
“A title,” Grace whispered.
What money-hungry temptress would do less?
“You helped her kill Father? To protect your reputation?” Frederick’s voice broke, and Grace wrapped her arm around his for support.
“She didn’t plan to kill him at first. She only wanted the social status.” This time when Lady Moriah turned to face them, her red-rimmed eyes held all the remorse of her confession. Gone was the impenetrable matriarch. “I agreed to encourage Edward’s relationship with Celia to secure her future in exchange for her silence about my past.”
“He trusted your opinion above everyone’s,” Frederick whispered at her side.
“I only wanted to keep my past quiet and protect Edward’s future because, don’t you see, he had no one, if not for me.” Her voice wavered. “Then your father somehow discovered that Edward wasn’t his son. I can only imagine the witch told him. He threatened to remove the earldom from Edward and give it to you instead. But Celia would not be outdone.” She tapped the floor with her cane and turned those dark eyes back to them. “It wasn’t until your father’s health had failed that I learned of the arsenic she’d used to weaken him.”
Frederick slipped down into a nearby chair. “She killed Father to secure the title.”
“She planned it from the start. I was trapped then, don’t you see? She held all the cards.” Lady Moriah dropped down onto her window seat. “When she became discontented with Edward and her poorly executed plans for the funds of Havensbrooke began to limit her access, I couldn’t do anything, because every time I tried—”
“She would remind you of what she knew about you and that you let her kill your husband,” Grace breathed.
“She could have pinned the death on me, and I would have been defenseless against her accusations. Don’t you see?” Blame beat the woman’s shoulders into a slumped posture. “I never thought she’d kill Edward. Leave him penniless, perhaps. And yes, I watched her convince him to pour money into the most useless of schemes. Then I heard of her dalliances, and I feared the worst.”
“Yet you did nothing.” Frederick shot to his feet with startling fury. “You knew what she was capable of, and you let her kill him. Both of them.”
The darkness in his eyes, the rage, almost took Grace’s breath. She’d never felt the flames from his anger. But what a glorious fury!
“Do you have any proof of what Celia did, Lady Astley?” Grace soothed the question into the conflict. “Anything we can take with us to the authorities?”
The woman blinked her bleary eyes, her lips trembling. Despite everything Grace had learned, something softened toward her mother-in-law, who lived as a recluse so tortured by her guilt it haunted her sleep. “N–nothing specific, only innuendos and warnings.”
Grace sighed and slid her hand down Frederick’s arm to link with his fingers, his breaths pumping a galloping rhythm. He needed to come back from whatever dangerous brink his brooding thoughts had taken him. “Keep your head, Frederick. We must think. Plan.”
“I have lost my father and my brother because ofher.” His dark gaze met hers, almost pushing her back a step. “My entire life I’ve felt worth-less because ofher.”
