Page 123 of Miss Prim and the Duke of Wylde
One second, he was there, and then he was gone.
Meg gasped. She clutched Drago’s jacket and pressed her face to his chest.
Drago watched Thomas’s body twist and turn, flung like a rag doll, multiple times before landing on the rubble far below. Then dust rose and obscured the sight, and Drago closed his eyes and buried his face in Meg’s hair.
On the opposite cliff, held silent by shock, the other men stared at where Thomas had been.
Still held in Tisdale’s arms, Ridley whimpered.
The sound of rocks smashing and dirt raining down continued for a full minute, then the dust cloud, denser now, rose even higher, and an eerie silence descended.
Slowly, the other men stepped out of the trees, but wisely didn’t go any farther. They peered, but couldn’t see down as Drago and those with him could.
As the dust settled and the cloud thinned, they could see Thomas’s body sprawled, facedown, on the quarry floor.
Drago stared at the sight, then sighed, gently squeezed Meg, then released her and took her hand. “We need to go down.”
He led their group back into the trees and around and down to the mouth of the quarry.
On the quarry’s other side, Denton did the same, leading the other pursuers to the quarry’s entrance. When Drago and Meg reached the quarry mouth, the others were waiting, silent and still.
Impassively, Drago nodded to them all, then led the way into the quarry.
He glanced at Meg questioningly, and she met his eyes and tightened her grip on his hand. She wasn’t about to leave him to endure this on his own.
George and Harry fell in behind them, and the others brought up the rear.
When they reached Thomas, Drago crouched by his head and lightly touched his shoulder, and to everyone’s surprise, Thomas softly groaned.
A single glance at his broken and twisted limbs, at the angle of his spine, assured them all that he wasn’t long for this world.
Drago leaned close. “Why, Thomas? Why did you do this?”
Standing beside Drago, Meg waited, wondering.
George and Harry crouched on Thomas’s other side, straining to hear anything he managed to say.
Thomas made a hacking sound—a hoarse laugh. “Because”—his voice was thready, but in the prevailing silence, they all heard it—“you were so rich. So unthinkingly wealthy. All three of you. While I… Courtesy of my father, I had nothing. You got to enjoy the lives you’d always been destined to have, while I…I had to scrimp and save and work. Work!” Disgust etched his tone. “Work with that doddery fool Crawthorne just to be able to dress well enough to move in the same circles as you.”
The outburst had drained him, but there was nothing any of them could say to that that wouldn’t sound trite.
Thomas breathed in, clearly a painful act. His head was angled toward Drago. Thomas hadn’t opened his eyes, and Meg saw that his lips were now white. After a second, he murmured, so low the others shifted closer to hear, “I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t see any way forward, and I was almost at the point of simply vanishing into London’s hordes—maybe taking ship somewhere and starting a new life far from England—when Crawthorne asked me to review your father’s will. I read that clause—the one stipulating that you had to be married on your thirty-fifth birthday—and the entire plan simply came to me. Point by point, it just spooled out in my mind. The perfect plan, one no one would ever suspect given how long it would take to come to fruition. But in order to get my hands on the coffers of the dukedom, I was more than willing to play a long game.”
He seemed to relax, and his voice took on a dreamy note. “I started years ago. I became acquainted with the Melwins and became their solicitor. I cultivated Hubert. He was so easy to manipulate that was no challenge at all. And when the time was ripe, I casually dropped a hint in Edith’s ear, steering her to Alison as a suitable duchess. My plan was progressing perfectly. Everything was on track. Until you got drunk and fell into the arms of a Cynster and proposed to her instead.”
Thomas seemed to be failing. When, frowning, Drago said, “I still don’t understand,” Meg was about to step in and explain the rest of Thomas’s plan, but apparently spurred by Drago’s confusion, Thomas rallied.
His graying lips curved. “It was so ridiculously simple. You were to marry Alison, and once you’d fathered an heir and the boy proved healthy—I was willing to wait years to make sure of that—then you, old son, would have met with a fatal accident, leaving the boy to succeed you as duke, but he would be a minor. Denton would have been one guardian, and I was in a position to ensure that Hubert would be named as guardian, too.”
Thomas made another hacking sound—a dying man’s cackle. “Just think. By then, I would have been solicitor to both sides. I would have ensured I was the one holding the financial reins, and then, finally, I would have systematically drained the dukedom dry.”
Drago stared at the man he’d thought a lifelong friend. “So your friendship was all about money?”
His eyes still closed, Thomas smiled. “From the first day at Eton. I picked you three. Don’t you remember? It was me who brought us together. You were all wealthy and destined to become even more so once you came into your inheritances. I reasoned that, at some point in the future, one of you would provide me with an opportunity to better my financial standing. And you, Drago—or rather, your father—did.”
Thomas’s face clouded, pain etching his features. He coughed, then his voice barely there, breathed, “But then you met Meg, and no matter what I tried, she simply wouldn’t die. But my plan couldn’t work with her as your duchess. Can you imagine it? If she bore your heir, even if you died, her family as well as yours would have closed ranks, and there was no way I would have been allowed to get my hands on the Helmsford coffers. There would have been Cynsters watching. That would never have worked.”
He tried to shake his head, but that was one movement too far. His body spasmed once, twice, then his features fell slack, his shoulders slumped, and all tension drained from his limbs.
