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“Her lifestyle. Her money and position. The things you lack.”
“The thingsshewould have lacked, too. She’d have lost it all if her idiot husband had gotten away with his nonsense.”
“You knew about his scheme. You knew he was stealing from her.”
“He confided in me.”
A terrible thought hits. “You were sleeping with him. That’s why you had the trophy room key. That’s why he wouldn’t have said anything if you snuck in after we left. You weren’t in the hallway with the rest of us. You went back inside to hurry his death along before he signed those papers to stop Annis from getting the business. A business she didn’t much care about… because she still thought her own funds were intact. You knew better. You knew everything because you were sleeping with—”
She slams my face into the floor. Blood fills my nose, and I wheeze, gasping.
“Your hour is wasting, Miss Mallory. Suffice to say that I saved Annis from that idiot and from bankruptcy, and if it had gone correctly, there’d have been no one to blackmail her or besmirch her name. That sniveling clerk would have gone to prison and—after I made a charitable visit to his prison cell—she’d have been free of him, too. I saved Annis’s fortune and her good name, and if I expected to share in that, it is because she owed me. You needn’t be concerned about Annis. I have always taken good care of her, and I will continue to—”
“Mallory!”
The voice booms from downstairs, and it is undeniably Gray.
Sarah and I both freeze.
“Seems the fascination runs both ways, doesn’t it?” she says.
I say nothing. I focus everything on Gray’s voice and the distant clomp of his boots. I suppose I should be holding my breath, praying he will come to my rescue. That’s the proper romantic fantasy, isn’t it? And it’s the last thing I want. He needs to leave before he gets hurt.
“Call to him, and I will kill you,” she whispers in my ear. “He will find you in a pool of your own vomit, clutching a vial of thallium powder. Perhaps you will even pen a quick note, confessing to the murders. Everyone will like this solution. The only thing better than a murderous woman isa murderous servant—it sends the nobility into such a delicious tizzy. You are an odd one, after all, and that is what Duncan and Isla get for taking you into their confidence.”
I only half hear her. I’m focused on Gray. He’s stopped calling, and his footsteps are receding.
Good. Keep going. Decide you are mistaken. I am not here after all.
A distant door clacks shut, and I relax.
“There,” Sarah says. “He has gone to seek his pretty little maid elsewhere. Now, as to the terms of my—”
Another door clacks, and I realize I wasn’t hearing the one leading outside; I was hearing the one in the stairwell. Gray left and has now returned.
The thump of boots on the stairs. Boots that climb past the second level, past the third…
Don’t come up, Duncan. Please. Decide I’m not here and—
I wince as I mentally curse. He’s not going to decide I’m not here. HeknowsI am. Because I left my damn boots at the back door.
I start to speak to Sarah, but she slaps a hand over my mouth.
“Have I not warned you?” she says. “If you wish to live, you’d best hope he leaves.”
I peel back her fingers. “Then let me get rid of him,” I whisper. “You no longer have time to kill me and escape.”
“Would you like to test that?”
“Mallory?” Gray calls.
“I am in my room, sir!” I call back before Sarah can stop me. “I am indisposed. I had to rush from the prison. It is my monthlies, and I feel very poorly.”
Do I expect Gray to buy that? Not really. If he does, great. But if he doesn’t, then he’s going to know something is wrong and won’t barge in.
Sarah might say she’ll kill me, but she reallycan’tescape that fast, meaning her only option would be to attack him. Even as I think that, her gaze goes to my knife, five feet from us.
“Please, sir,” I say, when silence comes from the hall. “This is most embarrassing, and I ought not to even mention it. Would you make my excuses to Mrs. Ballantyne?”
