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 4

Dawn broke gray and thin over the estate — the kind of light that promised rain without committing to it.

When Sebastian gave word to his stablemaster that he intended to ride out to inspect the coastal boundaries of his land, a matter he claimed had been neglected too long amid the wedding preparations, no one questioned a duke’s sudden interest in his own property. Though the stablemaster did raise a brow at the sight of the plain, unremarkable carriage Sebastian requested instead of his usual coach.

“The good carriage draws too much notice on rough coastal roads,” Sebastian explained, and the man accepted this without further thought, already turning to see the horses readied.

Norah waited near the servants’ entrance, dressed not in her usual kitchen apron but in a modest gray traveling dress, borrowed quietly from the housekeeper’s stores. Her hair was pinned beneath a plain bonnet that shadowed her face well enough to pass unnoticed. She carried a leather satchel stuffed with paper and ink — the picture of a scribe accompanying her master on business too tedious for anyone else to bother with.

When Sebastian’s carriage rolled to a stop beside her, she climbed in without a word, and the door closed behind them before any early-rising servant thought to look twice.

The journey to Blackwood took the better part of the morning, the road winding first through fields still silvered with dew, then narrowing as it climbed toward the coast, where the air grew sharper with salt and the cries of gulls replaced the quiet birdsong of the estate grounds.

“You said your father traded here,” Sebastian said as the first rooftops of the port town came into view. “Yet you have said little of what became of him.”

Norah’s expression did not change, though something in her shoulders drew tighter.

“He fell ill some years past — a sickness of the lungs from too many seasons at sea. We came here often when I was young, before his health failed him. I know the harbor better than I know my own kitchen garden.”

Sebastian did not press further, sensing the weight behind her brief answer.

“How do you propose we find this particular apothecary among however many the town holds?”

“By its mark,” Norah said, drawing the parchment carefully from where Sebastian had tucked it, studying the torn wax seal once more. “Every reputable shop presses its symbol into whatever it sells, whether medicine or dye or tonic. My father used to say a man could read a shopkeeper’s honesty in how carefully he stamped his wares. This mortar crossed with the sprig — I have seen something near it before, though I cannot place exactly where.”

The carriage rolled to a stop near the harbor’s edge, close enough to the water that the smell of fish and tar hung thick in the air, but far enough from the main thoroughfare that their arrival drew little notice among the fishermen and dockhands going about their morning trade.

“I will remain near the harbor road,” Sebastian said quietly, adjusting his coat to sit plainer across his shoulders, less like a nobleman’s fine tailoring and more like a merchant’s practical dress. “If anyone from the estate has followed, or if word of our journey reached ears it should not have, I would rather see them before they see us together. You know these streets. I do not. Find the shop, and I will watch the road.”

Norah nodded, tucking a loose strand of hair beneath her bonnet, before setting off along the narrow cobbled street that curved away from the harbor toward the row of shops she remembered from visits long past.

Many had changed hands since then, their signs repainted, their windows displaying different wares. But the particular rhythm of the street remained familiar enough to guide her steps without hesitation. She passed a baker’s shop, its windows fogged with the warmth of the morning’s first loaves, and a ropemaker’s stall where thick coils hung drying in the salt air, before her eyes caught on a narrow shopfront tucked between two larger buildings.

Its window was lined with glass jars of dried herbs and colored tinctures. And above its door, painted in faded gold, was the very mark she had been searching for — a mortar crossed with a sprig of some bitter herb, encircled by lettering now clear enough to read.

Corwin’s Apothecary. Established by royal license.

Norah paused across the street, studying the shop a long moment before glancing back the way she had come. Sebastian stood near the harbor road, positioned casually against a low stone wall, his attention seemingly fixed on the boats bobbing in the water — though Norah had no doubt his eyes tracked every figure that passed near enough to notice him.

She caught his gaze briefly across the distance and gave the smallest nod. Confirmation enough that she had found what they sought.

He did not approach. That had been their agreement, whispered in the carriage on the ride down. If both of them entered together — a duke and his scribe, asking careful questions of an apothecary — suspicion would follow as surely as smoke follows fire.

Better that Norah, alone, dressed plainly and speaking with the easy familiarity of someone who belonged to these streets, should test the shopkeeper’s willingness to talk. While Sebastian remained near enough to reach her should trouble arise, but distant enough that no one watching the harbor road would think to connect them.

Norah smoothed the front of her borrowed dress, steadied her breathing, and crossed the street toward Corwin’s door.

Whatever answers waited inside that narrow shop, she intended to have them before the sun climbed much higher over Blackwood’s rooftops.