Lucien stalked toward the attic, driven by the consuming need to have all the answers.
Soon, everything would be revealed, once and for all. He despised secrets and the vagueness of uncertainty. Without proof, he felt so powerless, anxious.
A similar feeling had plagued him since the night his parents had died. As a boy, he’d only stood there, frozen and terrified, while their lives had been draining out of their bodies. And the only thing he could do was try to make sense of it, albeit after the fact.
That very same quest had brought him here. And yet, as he reached the narrow stairway, he stopped.
The book was likely waiting in there. He could spend the next few hours searching for it. And when he found it, he would have the leverage he needed to force her hand.
Yet, as soon as the thought entered his mind, he knew he didn’t want to coerce her. Oh, he wanted her, there was no question about that. One hundred percent certainty. But he was startled to realize that he needed more. Startled to realize that he’d already imagined their life together—her smiles, clever wit, the effervescence of her laughter brightening his days. He’d pictured her inside the rooms and corridors of Caliburn Keep, her presence bringing warmth and light to a place that had been dark for far too long. That was the life he wanted to share with her.
In fact, he needed that life. With her. She’d had it right all along. There should be nothing standing between them, all the barriers stripped away. Only then would she finally, truly, be his.
The book didn’t matter to him. Not as much as she did.
As the words filtered into his consciousness, Lucien was hit by a sudden, dizzying tidal wave of certainty. It had been this way from the beginning, only he’d been too blind to see it.
The past two years hadn’t been a search for the book, or for Lady Avalon. He had been looking for Meg!
It had all been about her. That was the real reason he’d stayed. Because for every question he’d ever had in his life, she was the answer.
A great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. He felt buoyant as he turned away from the attic stairs, intending to seek Meg out. Then together they would go to the nursery for Guinevere. And his heart swelled at the knowledge that they had created a child together.
I have a daughter, he thought, thunderstruck. And he wanted a dozen more just like her with cherub cheeks and jammy fingers.
Rounding the corner, he saw the Parrish sisters marching toward him in the corridor. And by their stern expressions he could tell that this was not going to be one of their more pleasant conversations.
“I have a bone to pick with you, Merleton,” Maeve said with an upraised index finger, confirming his suspicions.
Myrtle nodded, looking very much like an angry bird with a topknot of downy feathers and her brown shawl flapping at her sides. “And I, as well. How dare you not even taste those little puddings.”
“Sister, now is not the time for that. We have more important matters to address.” Maeve turned a steely glare on him. “You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking the worst of our Meg. She never stole a thing from you.”
He grinned at them. “Without any desire to argue with, or to upset, either of you, I happen to know otherwi—”
“You only assume you do. But we have proof to the contrary. Come.”
Lucien had been about to soothe their ruffled feathers by admitting that Meg had stolen his heart like a besotted fool. But now he was so intrigued by Maeve’s suggestion that he held his tongue and readily agreed to accompany them to their rooms.
A few minutes later, as he was facing a scattered whirlwind of paper scraps, he felt his brow furrow. “And you’ve stolen all of these.”
“Oh, these are only the ones from our holiday,” Myrtle declared proudly. “We have heaps more in the garret. Three trunks full, to be sure.”
He took it all in, remembering the times when they’d wandered off and left Meg alone. Now he knew what they’d been doing. “But why?”
“For the grandest wedding breakfast ever held. We have a reputation to uphold, after all. The feast was featured in the society pages. See?”
She thrust a newspaper into his grasp. And sure enough, there was the article remarking on the vulgar display of fine dishes and hailing it as a triumph for Miss P— and Miss P— of Upper Wimpole Street.
Lucien felt his brow pucker, remembering the entire ordeal of locating proof of these women’s identities. And yet, here was a newspaper article practically drawing a map to the Parrish house?
He rarely read the society pages. Those were usually confiscated by his sister, who had more interest in the trivialities of the ton. But his hired investigator, on the other hand, should have found something, considering there was an address for these two in London. It didn’t make any sense.
And yet, he recalled Meg mentioning an old cantankerous caretaker who’d begun telling everyone that the Parrish sisters had died. That could explain any discrepancies in the report he’d received. But not really.
It became quite clear that he was going to have to break the news to Morgan that Mr. Richards was an abysmal detective. This mystery could have been solved before he’d ever left Calais.
Now he wondered what other obvious clues Richards had missed.
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck and lowered the page. “How is it that you left Italy without a trace? I’d stopped at every single hotel and coaching inn searching for the three of you.”
The sisters exchanged a speaking glance. Maeve cleared her throat and looked askance, plucking a thread from her sleeve. “That was our doing, as well. You see, there was a reason we needed to leave Italy, and we might have needed to employ certain measures to ensure that any potentially angry panettiere or brother of said baker wouldn’t be able to follow us.”
“So we flirted, in order to gain the silence of the proprietors,” Myrtle said with an abashed shrug. “Rather shamelessly, I’m afraid. They were ever so kind. In fact, three of them still write letters—”
“Sister! Have you no shame?”
“At my age, what would be the point?”
Maeve sighed heavily, then looked at Lucien. “So now you know our sordid secrets. And our Meg had nothing to do with it.”
“And we would do anything for that girl,” Myrtle added. “Anything at all.”
Even lie for her so that she could pretend to be Lady Avalon? Lucien wondered.
And yet, he already knew the answer. So he thanked them for clearing up some matters and went downstairs.
He needed to find Meg. But he also needed a moment to alter the proposal he’d practiced earlier that morning . . . before everything had gone to the devil.
Stepping outside, he began to walk the grounds.
It wasn’t long before he found himself at the paddock fence just as the stablemaster was exercising one of the Arabians. And that damnable sense of familiarity was back again.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Your Grace?” the man asked when he brought his mount to heel near Lucien.
It wasn’t until then that he realized he’d been staring quite fixedly. He was about to shake his head in dismissal, knowing that his investigator would soon send him the report on this man’s history. However, having learned a good deal about Richards’s capabilities, or lack thereof, Lucien decided on the straightforward approach.
“How long have you been in this trade?”
Beneath the broad brim of his brown felt hat, the man’s brow furrowed. “I’ve worked in these stables my whole life. And my father before me.”
“Impossible. I know I’ve met you before. London, perhaps?”
“Not in London, sir. But aye, we’ve met,” he said with a rusty chuckle. “It was years ago. Can’t remember the whole of it, but I think your driver took ill. Then your carriage hit a rut, and you were in a right foul temper. You asked to speak with the marquess, but he was too preoccupied to meet you. Even so, I took care of everything and sent you on your way.”
He was starting to remember it now. That was the dreaded day he’d spent in Wiltshire . . .
The hair on the back of his neck lifted. “Why was Lord Hullworth preoccupied?”
“Well, that was nigh on ten years ago, I’d say . . .” He looked thoughtful for a moment and then nodded. “But, if I recall, that was the day Miss Stredwick fell from a tree.”
Lucien could almost hear Meg telling him the story.
I remember, when I was young, climbing the wishing tree . . . I put a coin in the cradle of the highest branch and whispered my heart’s fervent wish to have my future husband appear that very day . . . But then I fell.
No, it couldn’t be, he thought as the breath dropped out of him. And yet, it all made a strange sort of sense now.
How had he not seen it before?
Fate, he thought dazedly. It had been fate all along.
A sudden clap of thunder rumbled in the distance as if the heavens were in agreement.
* * *
“Merleton, have you seen Meg?” Hullworth asked, stopping Lucien the instant he strode through the front doors.
He shook his head. “I was just coming to speak with her.”
“Ah. Well, she’s probably off looking for Guinevere, too,” Hullworth said, frowning. “My niece has escaped again. Johnathon said they were playing hide and seek, and now the nurse is frantic.”
“Guinevere likes the butterfly garden. But”—Lucien looked toward the tall windows flanking the doorway and at the bank of dark gray clouds looming over the tree line—“surely, she wouldn’t go out in this.”
Hullworth shook his head. “Storms frighten her. She would want to be with Meg. When we find one, we’ll find the other.” Then he put a hand on Lucien’s arm. “I’ve already spoken with the servants, including her maid, and she hasn’t tried to run away. So if that’s what—”
“No,” he said resolutely. “Meg is too brave for that. Besides, she likely wants to rub it in my face that she was right all along.”
“Wait. I seem to recall that you were determined to prove that you were right only a couple of hours ago.”
“That was before Maeve and Myrtle cornered me upstairs.”
“Pestered you into submission, did they?” Hullworth chuckled.
“Very nearly,” Lucien admitted. “They dragged me to see their recipe collection and told me why they’d had to leave Italy.”
Hullworth’s brows inched toward his hairline. “Oh? And why did they have to leave Italy?”
“Hmm . . . I realize by your reaction that I may have said too much.”
“And you’re loyal, too. I like that.” The marquess clapped him on the shoulder before they split off in different directions.
At first, there didn’t seem to be an alarming sense of urgency. Yet, as the distant calls for Guinevere drifted through the corridors and remained unanswered, Lucien’s pulse escalated, and his footsteps quickened.
He stopped a maid in the hall. “Have you seen Miss Stredwick or Guinevere?”
“I took a tea tray to Miss Stredwick in the library a short while ago, Your Grace.”
“Thank you.” He walked on, his brow furrowing in perplexity.
Surely, Meg wouldn’t still be in the library if their daughter was missing. She would have gone to the nursery.
None of this was making sense, and he felt himself pick up the pace as he headed toward the library.
He paused just inside the doorway, where his sister was standing at one of the windows, her back to him. “Morgan, have you seen Meg?”
“I just stepped in here a second ago to watch the storm,” she said with a glance over her shoulder. “But I haven’t seen her.”
He passed a cursory glance toward the grouping of furniture on the far side of the room. From over the curved top of the scalloped settee, he could see the remnants of an afternoon tea on the table. But there was no one else in the room.
“If you see Meg, could you mention that I’m looking for her?”
“Have you forgiven her so soon? All for the best, I suppose. She seemed rather despondent after your argument.”
Despondent? That didn’t sound like the Meg who’d stormed out with her head held high.
“So you’ve seen her, then?”
Morgan shrugged, moving toward him. “A moment ago. She was upstairs.”
“Where?”
“With those busybodies, the Parrish sisters,” she said, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow and ushering him toward the door.
Lucien’s lips parted to explain that it wasn’t possible. He had been with them not long ago, and if Meg had gone up after, he would have passed her on the stairs. Before he spoke, however, he thought he heard a sound from deep inside the library.
He paused to look over his shoulder. But with the storm outside and the fire little more than embers in the grate, the room was too dark for him to reveal whatever it might have been.
“Come, brother. I’m sure we’ll find her upstairs.”
His feet remained rooted to the spot. Something wasn’t right. A peculiar cold chill slithered down his spine, sinking into the pit of his stomach. Normally, he would shrug it off. But after experiencing an overwhelming epiphany just a moment ago, he wasn’t sure he should discount any sensation, even one of dread.
A low growl of thunder vibrated the windows, and he thought he saw a movement by the curtains in the far corner. He squinted.
Morgan tugged on his arm. “Lucien.”
Then a blur darted out from behind one of the drapes.
“Wooshan!” Guinevere called out and ran directly to him, clinging to his legs.
Bending, he picked her up as she buried her tearstained cheeks against his chest. She was shaking.
“Where the devil did she—” Morgan stopped, bewildered.
Lucien held his daughter close, soothing her in passes with a hand along her back. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
She lifted her face, her eyes flashing as she pointed to Morgan. “Bad.”
“Children. How delightful,” Morgan said dryly.
And then, there was that sound again. So faint, it was barely a whisper. But this time, it drew him deeper into the room . . . Then he saw Meg.
He jolted, rushing around the settee. Kneeling, he put Guinevere down and picked Meg up in his arms, the flat of his hand roving over her face. She was cold, alarmingly cold, her complexion ashen.
“Meg! Meg!” He tapped her cheek, trying to get her to respond. A breath left her, faint and stale.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Guinevere pick up the cup of tea.
Reflexively, he smacked it out of her hand, startling them both when it shattered against the hearth.
“No,” he said and pointed to the broken cup. “Bad.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she nodded. “Bad.”
“Oh, dear. What’s happened?” Morgan gasped, her fingertips at her lips. “I knew she was dejected, but I never thought she would resort to this.”
Lucien had had his suspicions over the years about his sister’s darker side. But he had always pushed them aside, telling himself that she was hard and aloof because she’d had to be. She’d been the one to save his life, after all.
But there was something in her eyes from time to time that reminded him of that night and the coldly calculated way she’d stabbed that intruder. He saw that look right now, too.
“What have you given her?”
She smiled. “You’re being silly. Think about it, brother. She was dismayed. All her schemes had been discovered. She couldn’t face the humiliation.”
As she spoke, he leaned in to smell Meg’s breath, to look for any residue that might aid him. She moaned when he lifted her. “What did you give—”
He stopped when he heard her brother calling out for her in the hall, and shouted, “Hullworth! In here!”
The marquess appeared in the doorway.
“We need a physician,” he said, gritting his teeth to hold on to the last shred of his control. Giving himself over to panic wouldn’t solve anything.
Concerned, Hullworth moved into the room, just when Morgan turned to dash away.
“Stop her!” Lucien yelled. “Lady Morgan has poisoned your sister. She won’t tell me what she gave her.”
Hullworth, so horrified by the news, nearly let Morgan slip past him. But he shook himself and reached out to seize her arm. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” she said, all innocence.
“I’ll send for a doctor and have a footman sequester her in her room.” Hullworth began to pull Morgan to the door.
Lucien felt the faint pulse on Meg’s neck. “No, wait! She will have the vials among her things. We cannot let her destroy them. It may be our only hope. Search her maid’s rooms as well. Keep them separated.”
“It’s too late, brother. The poison has already served its purpose.”
At that, Lucien saw the cold gleam in Morgan’s eyes, and he feared that he was going to lose Meg. And there would be nothing he could do to save her.