A duke found his bride-to-be’s servant bound to a chair in a cottage with a theft charge. But the girl slipped a folded note into his pocket — and it named the poison meant to be poured into his wedding goblet, purchased through the very household he was about to marry into.

PART 3

Sleep did not come easily in the tower. Norah made a show of lying still upon the cot for the guard’s benefit, listening to his footsteps grow slower and heavier below, until they stopped altogether, replaced by the soft, rhythmic breathing of a man who had given up his watch for dreams instead — helped along, though she did not yet know it, by a mug of strong ale left at his elbow earlier that evening.

She waited a while longer, counting the church bells in the distance until she was certain of the hour, before reaching into the hem of her skirt, where a thin iron hairpin had been sewn since her first week in service — a habit her grandmother had taught her long before either of them had ever set foot on this estate.

The chain at her ankle proved simple enough, an old lock meant more to discourage than to truly contain. It gave way with a soft click after a few careful turns of the pin.

The door was another matter — old, rusted, its bolt stiff enough to have taken her the better part of an hour, if it had needed working at all.

It did not. When she pressed her palm flat against the heavy oak, it swung open at the barest touch, the bolt drawn back already, though she had heard no hand do it.

Old Ambrose stood on the other side, a single candle shielded in his cupped palm, his lined face unreadable in the dim light.

“I have served this house since before his lordship could walk,” the butler said quietly, before she could ask. “I know what it looks like when a woman is accused to save someone else’s skin. Go now, quickly, while the guard sleeps soundly. I gave him a heavier pour than usual. He will not stir before dawn.”

He said nothing further, only inclined his head toward the stairs and melted back into the shadow of the landing, leaving Norah to slip past the sleeping guard on feet that made no more sound than a cat crossing a carpet.

She did not take the main stairs. Behind a tapestry on the second landing, worn thin from years of dust rather than use, lay a narrow servant’s passage built into the old stone walls — the kind every great house kept hidden for the movement of trays and linens without disturbing the family above.

Norah had discovered it during her first month at the estate, chasing a runaway cat through what she had assumed was an empty broom closet, and had kept the knowledge to herself ever since — the way a person keeps any small secret that might one day prove useful.

The passage was cold and close, smelling faintly of tallow and old timber. It carried her swiftly and silently down through the belly of the house, past the kitchens where the last of the coals still glowed dim in the hearth, past the wine cellar with its rows of dusty bottles, until she reached a narrow door that opened directly into the lower study.

Sebastian was already there, seated at his father’s old desk with a single lamp turned low, the folded parchment spread open before him. He looked up sharply at the sound of the door, relief loosening the tension in his shoulders when he saw who had entered.

“You should not have come,” he said — though there was no real reproach in his voice.

“Ambrose let me out,” Norah said, crossing the room to stand beside him. “I did not ask him to. I did not think he even knew my name.”

“He has always known more than he lets on. It is why my father trusted him with everything and told him nothing.” Sebastian gestured toward the parchment. “Come. Look at this properly, in decent light.”

The note was brief, written in a hand she did not recognize — careful and slanted in a way that suggested someone unused to writing at all, perhaps copying words dictated by another. It spoke of a quantity measured in careful drops, a goblet, and effects meant to unfold slowly, days after the wedding — nothing in it naming who would carry the deed out, or when precisely the drops would find their way into the wine.

“There,” Norah said, pointing to a small mark pressed into the wax at the corner, half torn but still visible. “That is no ordinary seal.”

Sebastian frowned, tilting the parchment toward the lamp.

The mark showed the faint outline of a mortar and pestle crossed with a sprig of some herb neither of them could name with certainty, encircled by lettering too worn to read in full.

“I have seen such marks before,” Norah said slowly, memory stirring. “My father traded goods along the coast for a time before his health failed him. He used to speak of the port apothecaries in Blackwood, each with their own particular stamp pressed into their wax, so buyers might know which shop had prepared a remedy without needing to ask. This looks near enough to one he described — though I cannot say which shop exactly.”

“Blackwood is half a day’s ride,” Sebastian said, more to himself than to her. “If this seal belongs to a shop there, someone traveled a fair distance to secure whatever ingredient this note describes. That is not the act of a servant acting alone on some petty grudge. That takes planning, and coin, and reason to keep the matter far from the estate’s usual suppliers.”

“Someone who did not wish the household apothecary to notice unusual purchases,” Norah finished quietly.

They sat with that thought a moment, the lamp flickering between them, before Sebastian spoke again, his voice lower now, more careful.

“I must go to Blackwood myself. Quietly, before the wedding — before whatever this note describes can be carried out.”

“Then I will come with you.”

“Norah—”

“If you are seen away from this house, I am already accused of theft and blackmail,” she said, a dry edge creeping into her voice despite the gravity of the hour. “What further harm could one journey do my reputation? Besides, you do not know Blackwood as I do. My father took me there. I know its streets, its shopkeepers, the manner of speaking that marks a stranger from a local. You would be lost within the hour, and twice as noticed.”

Sebastian studied her for a long moment, the lamp casting soft shadows across features that held far more steel than her quiet manner in the estate’s kitchens had ever let show. Whatever doubt he carried about the wisdom of bringing her along, it could not outweigh the plain truth of what she offered.

“Very well,” he said finally. “We leave before dawn, while the household still sleeps and Vivien believes you safely chained in the tower. I will announce business on my coastal lands, nothing more. You will travel as my scribe — plain dress, nothing to draw the eye.”

Norah nodded, already turning the plan over in her mind, already thinking of disguises and excuses, and the particular walk of a woman who belonged nowhere near a duke’s private business.

Outside, the first gray hint of dawn had not yet touched the sky. But neither of them mistook the stillness for safety.

Somewhere beyond these walls, a plan long since set in motion was already waiting for its moment. And they had precious little time left to reach the truth before it arrived.