Twenty physicians bled the Duke of Penrith for three months and called it “bad blood.” But a poor maid earning only a few shillings a week scrubbing floors discovered a poisoned green stitch hidden in his collar — revealing the chilling truth that not a single doctor had seen.

 PART 3

Alistair choked.

He gagged, his eyes flying wide open in blind panic. He flailed — a weak hand striking Norah’s shoulder, trying to push her away — and coughed, spraying black water over her white apron and his own chin.

“Swallow it, you stubborn fool.”

She snapped it flatly, keeping her grip tight on the back of his neck, tilting his head just enough to let gravity do the work.

“Swallow it, unless you want to be in the family crypt by Tuesday.”

Perhaps it was the shock of a servant speaking to him like a misbehaving child. Or perhaps it was pure reflex.

He swallowed. He gagged again, violently — but the charcoal stayed down.

Norah lowered him back onto the pillows and wiped his mouth with her sleeve, uncaring of the mess.

“Good,” she breathed, her own heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

For the next four hours she did not leave the room.

She stood over the bed, forcing a new cup of charcoal water down his throat every hour. Between doses she washed the blistering rash on his neck with clean water and mild soap, wiping away the green residue with careful, methodical strokes.

Around three in the morning, the fever broke.

It did not break gently. It broke in a torrential flood of sweat. The Duke shook so violently that the heavy mahogany bed frame rattled against the floorboards. Norah piled every blanket in the room on top of him, and finally climbed onto the mattress and pinned the quilts down with her own body weight, knees tucked tight to hold them against his thrashing form.

By dawn, the shaking had stopped.

The grey light of morning crept through the gaps in the heavy velvet curtains, painting the room in bruised shades of purple and blue. Norah was asleep — slumped in a wooden chair by the fire, her head resting awkwardly against the brickwork, her apron stained black with charcoal and red with blood.

A raspy, dry voice broke the silence.

“If you are the angel of death, you need a bath.”

Norah jerked awake. Her neck cracked.

She blinked the sleep from her eyes, and the dim bedroom slowly came into focus. Alistair Hawthorne was looking at her. He was still horizontal. Still pale enough to haunt a graveyard. But his eyes were clear — the glassy, fevered sheen of delirium was gone.

For the first time in a month, he looked entirely present.

And he looked utterly annoyed.

Norah did not jump up. She did not curtsy. She rubbed the back of her stiff neck, wincing.

“I’m a maid, Your Grace,” she said, her voice thick with exhaustion. “We rarely smell like roses. Especially after wrestling our betters into swallowing ash.”

Alistair frowned — the movement clearly hurt. He flinched, his hand moving slowly, shakily, to his throat. He touched the raw skin where the blisters were beginning to scab.

“Ash.” His voice was a ruined whisper, like boots crunching over dry gravel. “My mouth tastes like a blacksmith’s floor.”

“Charcoal. It binds whatever’s still sitting in your stomach,” Norah said flatly.

She stood, feeling her knees pop, and walked to the washstand. She poured a cup of clean water and brought it to him — standing beside the bed, and this time not offering to lift his head.

Alistair stared at the cup. Then he dragged himself up onto one elbow. It took immense effort. Sweat beaded on his lip; his arm trembled violently under his own meagre weight.

He took the cup with a shaking hand and downed it in three desperate gulps. Then he slumped back, panting.

“Poison,” he repeated.

It was not a question. He let the word hang in the air, turning it over. He did not sound shocked.

He sounded tired.

“Arsenic,” Norah said. She picked the empty cup off the blankets. “Dyed into the embroidery of your green nightshirt. The one with the high collar.”

Alistair closed his eyes. A long, shuddering breath escaped him.

“Edward.”

“I don’t know the gentleman’s name, but if he’s the one currently pacing the downstairs hallway asking the footmen whether you have stopped breathing yet — then yes. Edward.”

His eyes snapped open. The exhaustion in them was suddenly eclipsed by a dark, dangerous intelligence.

He looked at Norah. Really looked at her. He saw the cheap stained cotton of her uniform, the raw state of her hands, the lack of deference in her posture.

“And who are you?”

“Norah Reed. I do the grates and the chamber pots on the third floor.”

“A chambermaid found what the King’s own physicians missed.”

He laughed. It turned into a wet, rattling cough, and he clutched his chest, waiting for the spasm to pass.

“What a humiliating way to survive.”

“I worked in a modiste’s shop before I came here,” Norah said, uncaring of his wounded aristocratic pride. “I used to dye the fabrics. Scheele’s Green is notorious. It flakes when it dries. When it gets wet — say, from the sweat of a sick man with a fever — it leeches straight into the skin.” She nodded at his neck. “You have been wearing a toxic compress for weeks.”

Alistair looked at his own hands. The fingernails were tinged blue. The skin flaky and thin.

“They told me my liver was rotting from melancholy.”

“They were charging you a fortune to watch you die,” Norah corrected. “The charcoal will absorb what’s left in your stomach. The rest, your body will clear on its own, given time — if there’s enough of you left to survive it. That means real food, not thin broth. And it means you stop letting your cousin dress you.”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

The reality of it settled between them. The Duke of Penrith was alive. But he was weak, bedridden, and entirely surrounded by people who either wanted him dead or were too incompetent to prevent it.

He was a prisoner in his own grand estate.

Alistair turned his head to look at her. The haughty arrogance of a duke was stripped away, leaving only a bruised, battered man fighting for breath.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. The cynicism in his voice was thick. “Edward would have paid you handsomely for your silence. He pays everyone.”

Norah crossed her arms.

“He wouldn’t have paid me. He would have thrown me down a stairwell to tie up loose ends.” She reached for her buckets. “Besides, I have a profound dislike for waste.”

“Waste?”

“A perfectly good life being thrown away because a bunch of overeducated fools couldn’t see a green thread.”

She turned toward the door. The morning bells would ring soon; the rest of the staff would be waking.

“I have brass to polish. Your Grace. I suggest you pretend to remain on your deathbed. If Edward finds out you are recovering, he might skip the embroidery and go straight for a pillow over your face.”

“Wait.”

Norah paused at the door, her hands full of bloody rags, the shredded poisoned silk hidden at the bottom of the pail.

“If I am to pretend to die,” Alistair said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur — and a faint spark of life finally returning to his pale eyes — “I will need an accomplice. You saved my life, Norah Reed. Now you have to help me keep it.”

Norah looked back at him.

She saw the desperation behind the pride. She knew she ought to walk out of that door, take her shillings, and disappear into the London fog. Helping him meant crossing a man who killed without leaving fingerprints.

She sighed — a heavy, exhausted sound.

“I charge extra for treason, Your Grace.”

The corner of Alistair’s mouth twitched upward. It was not quite a smile.

But it was a start.

“I am a very wealthy man, Norah,” he said. “Or at least I will be, once I hang my cousin.”