Away from home, the valet waited on [his master]
at table and loaded his shotguns.

—Upstairs and Downstairs, Life in an English Country House

Chapter 30

He has come to finish what he started, Margaret thought, standing frozen in the shadowy sickroom, unable to move or cry out as a man tried to force Lewis Upchurch to swallow some poisonous weed. But Lewis was asleep and could not chew. The weed wouldn’t go down Lewis’s throat, no matter how the man stuffed it in his mouth.

The man looked over at her, and with a start she realized it was Sterling Benton.

“You can’t marry Lewis if he’s dead,” Sterling said, his face a grimace of effort as he jammed his fingers into Lewis’s slack mouth. “Now you shall have to marry Marcus. . . .”

Margaret’s eyes flew open, startled awake. The disturbing images lingered along the edges of her mind, and she shuddered. How relieved she was to realize it was only a dream. An unsettling dream. Lewis is all right, she told herself. No one—not Sterling, nor masked man, nor pirate—had come to finish him off.

Still, an eerie sense of fear prickled through her limbs and needled her stomach. There would be no falling back asleep now. Giving up, she threw back her covers and climbed from bed. She pulled on her wrapper, slid her feet into slippers, and let herself from her room. The attic was perfectly quiet. Yet the eerie feeling did not diminish; if anything, it coiled and grew.

She crept down the first set of stairs and paused to listen. Had she heard something? She wasn’t certain. She padded down the back stairs to the ground floor. How still and museum-like the soaring hall felt in mottled moonlight, filtering through the high half-circle transoms. Nothing but the ticking of a tall case clock to disturb the silence, mark time, match her stride and heartbeat.

Her feet took her past the main stairway and Hudson’s office and across the marble floor to the library. There should be only two people inside at this time of night. Lewis and his nurse. Why did she feel they were not alone? Why this sense of imminent danger?

———

Nathaniel sat on a bench outside, leaning his back against a low-bending willow. From where he sat, he had a clear view of the moonlit arcade and gardens beyond. He hoped Margaret might venture out tonight and join him.

Unfortunately, thoughts of Lewis, and of Preston’s threat to come calling, kept impinging on more pleasant thoughts of Miss Macy. Even if the scoundrel had robbed the navy in Portsmouth five days ago, he could easily have returned to Kent by now. At the thought, he idly ran his finger over the hilt of the sword at his side. Ever since Lewis had been shot, he’d kept it near at hand.

Footsteps sounded on the flagstones of the arcade. He swiveled his head, but it was not Margaret emerging from the house. It was a man emerging from the shadows, wearing a long, many-caped coat.

And a tricorn hat.

Nathaniel rose and crept to the arcade. Though his blood boiled, he managed a cool façade. “Good evening.”

Abel Preston started. Surprise widened his eyes and slackened his mouth. But just that quickly, his eyes hardened, his lip curled. “Hello, Nate. Are you the welcome party?”

Nathaniel drew his sword. “If this is the welcome you had in mind.”

The man sighed. “I had hoped to find the rest of that money first. I know there’s more.”

Nathaniel glanced beyond the man, alert to the possibility of accomplices. “Where are your partners in crime?”

“Oh, they don’t like to venture so far from the sea. Besides, I assured them I could handle this small errand myself. I don’t suppose you would give me leave to do so, if I promise to return afterward and die like a gentleman?”

“You are no gentleman, sir.”

“There’s no call to be rude, Nate. I didn’t take your life when I had the chance, did I? But I will kill you now if you dare stand in my way.”

“I dare.” Nathaniel raised his sword.

Again the man sighed in a longsuffering manner and drew his own sword. The blade suddenly flashed and Nathaniel barely dodged in time. Thunder and turf, the man was fast. Again and again Preston advanced. Nathaniel parried, losing ground, barely keeping out of range of the man’s flashing blade.

He soon realized the former army major was still the better swordsman, regardless of his hours of practice with Hudson. He would not be able to withstand him much longer. Gracious God, your will be done. . . .

———

It was only a feeling, Margaret told herself. Not strong enough nor certain enough to justify rousing Mr. Hudson or some other ally to accompany her. Was she foolish to venture into the library on her own? A chill crept up her spine at the thought. She remembered what Hudson and Nathaniel had said about the pirate with a grudge. What if he had shot Lewis and returned tonight to finish him off? Or what if Sterling was in there, as in her dream? Lying in wait for her after that runner reported she was hiding in Fairbourne Hall as a housemaid. Would Sterling kill a man to keep her from marrying anyone other than Marcus? She shivered. Margaret detested the man, but she did not believe him that evil.

She gingerly lifted the latch and inched open the door.

Dim lamplight and stillness. As the arc of the door widened, she saw first the nurse, Mrs. Welch, slumped in the settee in the corner, mouth ajar, snore noticeably absent. She opened the door farther, revealing the bed, Lewis’s still form, and a man bent over him, pressing a pillow to his face. . . .

———

Hoping to distract his foe, Nathaniel panted, “What, no poetry tonight?”

They circled each other, catching their breaths.

“I didn’t think you appreciated my poetry.”

“True.”

“Still, I might try, if you insist. . . .”

For a fleeting second Preston’s focus shifted, and Nathaniel kicked, catching his opponent off guard and knocking his feet out from under him. Preston oofed to the ground, but still managed to raise his sword to block Nathaniel’s attack.

A voice rang out, “Lay down your weapon.”

Nathaniel whirled. Robert Hudson trained a pistol on the man on the ground.

Glancing from Hudson’s resolute expression to his steady pistol, Preston laid down his sword and slowly got to his feet, arms raised in apparent surrender. “Well, well. If it isn’t Robbie Hudson, my former clerk. Surely you wouldn’t shoot your old master.”

“If I have to.”

“Thou shalt not kill, remember.”

“You have killed plenty. How many slaves died at your hands?”

Preston flinched. “I left that life behind.”

Hudson’s lip curled. “And your wife and children in the bargain.”

Keeping his eyes on Preston, Hudson said to Nathaniel, “Should we send the coachman for the sheriff?”

Suddenly, Preston leapt and in one continuous blur of motion, shoved Hudson and yanked a small pistol from his boot. Hudson’s arms windmilled as he careened back, fighting to keep his balance, barely managing to keep to his feet.

“No prison for me, thank you,” Preston said, pointing his pistol at Hudson’s chest.

Nathaniel cried out, “Nooooo!”

A shot rang out, and a man fell.

Icy terror sliced through Nathaniel’s veins. If Hudson had been killed, he would never forgive himself. He blinked. Looked about him.

Hudson still stood, expression dazed. The Poet Pirate lay sprawled on his back, coat spread wide, blood blossoming from his shirt.

Nathaniel whirled about. If Hudson had not shot him, who had?

There stood his answer.

In the steely form of bald Mr. Tompkins, arm stretched before him, pistol still smoking.

———

Margaret blinked and the scene before her changed. Perhaps it was due to her nightmare, or the fact that she’d read too many gothic novels, but for a moment she’d thought she’d seen a man bent over the bed, pressing a pillow to Lewis’s face. In reality, the man sat on the bed. He was neither masked man, pirate, nor Sterling Benton. By the light of the lamp burning on the side table, she recognized the familiar figure of Connor. The young valet sat, stoop-shouldered, on the edge of his master’s bed, head bowed, pillow on his lap. Defeated. Had she only imagined him trying to suffocate Lewis?

She darted a look back to Lewis’s face, then to his chest. Was there any rise and fall there? Was she too late?

“Nora?” Connor looked up at her, face bleak, eyes bleary. Had he gotten drunk for courage?

“Connor.” She licked suddenly dry lips. “What are you doing with that pillow?”

He looked down at it as if only then realizing he held it in his arms. “Nothing, as it turns out,” he whispered, more to the pillow—to himself—than to her.

“Is Mr. Upchurch . . . ?”

“Alive and well,” he muttered darkly.

Relief filled her. She amended, “Not exactly well.”

“He will be. Dr. Drummond said as much.”

Margaret felt her brow pucker. “Said what?”

“That Mr. Lewis would recover. Was quite sure of it. And you heard him talking. Coming around. It is only a matter of time.”

Realization prickled through her. “Is that why you are here?”

As if in a stupor, he nodded. “But in the end I couldn’t do it.”

Worriedly, she glanced at Mrs. Welch, unnaturally still on the settee. “Connor, why is Mrs. Welch still asleep?”

He shrugged. “A little laudanum in her tea is all.”

Is that why the woman slept so heavily? “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t want her to see me giving him the stuff. She might have said something. I only meant to keep him quiet until he passed on.”

“Is that what you were doing when I walked in on you a couple of days ago?”

“You made me drop the stuff. It’s not cheap either.” Connor rubbed his brow. “Mr. White was so certain he wouldn’t survive. I thought I could bide my time, but he lived on and on.”

“But it was you, wasn’t it? You shot him in the duel?”

He uttered a desolate laugh. “There was no duel.”

“But, Miss Upchurch mentioned a challenge letter—”

“I wrote that letter and slid it under Mr. Lewis’s door the night of the ball. When he finally returned to his room and read it, he believed Mr. Saxby had called him out over Miss Lyons. How he blustered and paced. I feared he would back out. He decided he would meet Saxby but hoped to dissuade the man from the duel. Said he planned to apologize instead.”

“But still he brought the dueling pistols?”

“I brought them. I had cleaned and loaded them enough times to know how it was done.”

Now that he was talking, it seemed Connor wished to confess all. Margaret wished she was not alone in hearing it.

“When we arrived at Penenden Heath, we tied our horses and Lewis looked for his challenger. I gave Mr. Upchurch one of the pistols, and said I was he. I told him to face me man to man, but he refused. ‘Dueling is only for gentlemen,’ he says.” Connor spit out the word like a vile thing. “And apparently as a valet, I am barely even a man, let alone a gentleman. And Laura’s honor not worth risking his life over, not worth anything at all, beyond the few trinkets he’d given her.”

“Who is Laura?” Margaret whispered, fearing she already knew the answer.

“My little sister. Dearest creature God ever made. Only sixteen.”

Margaret did not know which act sickened her more.

“To see his smirking face, when he spoke of sweet Laura. It was beyond me to endure. . . . I pointed the gun and told him to stop laughing, but he would not stop. He said he knew I could not shoot him, that I knew I could not shoot him.”

White-faced, Connor swallowed and whispered, “He was wrong.”

Margaret slowly, gingerly pulled the pillow from his grasp, as though a loaded pistol. “Did you intend to kill him?”

He inhaled deeply. “I was angry. I wanted to stop him. To punish him for hurting her, using her. I didn’t think past that. But later . . . Later I saw how stupid I had been. I tried to throw suspicion on Saxby, even that Poet Pirate fellow. No one suspected me. But Lewis knew. If he lived . . . I would hang.”

She asked gently, “You shot him but could not suffocate him?”

Connor shook his head, expression bleak. “I would do anything to save Laura. But not, it seems, to save myself.”