Page 57 of Carbon

That bitch. That nasty, nasty bitch. “Howdidyou get him to leave?”

“So easily—I simply told him you were engaged. It was going to happen sooner or later. The stupid boy actually thought he had a hope of changing your mind until I told him you didn’t want to see him.”

That knife in my heart? She’d just twisted it, and I couldn’t hold my anger in any longer. “How could you? How could you interfere in my life like that? You knew I was waiting for Ben to come back the way he promised, and you let me think he’d forgotten.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, darling.” She began to giggle, and I wanted to slap the smile off her face. “It all worked out in the end.”

“I hate you.” The emotion had gone from my voice—after the devastation of the last few days, she’d tipped me over the edge. The only way I could cope was not to think about it at all. “I hate what you did.”

She tried to top up her drink and knocked the pitcher over, shrieking as the sticky juice ran all over her black wool dress.

“Dorothy! I need another drink.”

* * *

When Dorothy found me curled up in the corner of the library, she fetched Bernie, and he carried me up to my old bedroom.

“Please, don’t make me stay here,” I begged.

“Do you want to go back to the annex?”

“Not there either.”

After some deliberation, they tucked me into the single bed in the box room next to Dorothy’s, a plain but functional space reserved for the occasional guest the staff invited to stay over. Dorothy fetched me some clothes and my laptop, and for the next two weeks, I refused to come out. Father came to see me every day, but Mother was conspicuous only by her absence.

“She’s not doing well,” he said. “Worse than usual.”

“I don’t care.”

“You can’t stay up here for the rest of your life.”

“Want to bet?”

He stroked my knuckles the way he used to when I was a little girl. “I’m worried about you, Gussie.” A nickname he hadn’t used in years. “And I need to go away on business for a few days.”

“Do you have to?”

“Afraid so. We’ve been working on this deal for the last year, and it’s worth millions.”

Money. It was always money. “Fine.”

“And I hate to say it, but you’ll have to talk to the police again at some point. Sidney’s been keeping them at bay, but they’re getting impatient.”

“There’s no point. They just keep asking the same questions, and they don’t listen to anything I have to say.”

“Could you try? For me?”

“Have they got anywhere at all?”

“Not yet, it seems. That Beau fellow has vanished from the face of the earth. Detective Sergeant Robinson assures me the DNA results should come back sometime this week, though.”

About bloody time. Because I couldn’t believe Ben had done that to my sister, which meant the DNA would give a lead to the killer. If I could just hold out until then, maybe the police would stop pestering me and search for the real culprit.

“Good, but I still have no faith in Robinson and Bell.”

Father sank onto the edge of the bed. “In all honesty, neither do I, Gussie. I’ve hired a private firm to investigate. The Earl of Northbury’s son works for them.”

“Will they be any better?”

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