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 4

Faking a death was, in Norah’s estimation, far more exhausting than actually dying.

Dying required only gravity and time. Faking it required logistics.

By noon the house was whispering. The footmen gathered in the pantries, trading bets on whether the Duke would last the week. The kitchen maids wept theatrically into their aprons while slicing onions. Through all of it, cousin Edward paced the drawing room, playing the part of the distraught heir to perfection, fielding sympathetic calls from the local gentry.

Upstairs, the reality was considerably less poetic.

Alistair Hawthorne was draped across the pillows looking like a man dragged behind a carriage. Without the laudanum, the reckoning of weeks of bleeding, near-starvation, and sudden opiate withdrawal hit his nervous system like a hammer. His joints burned. His stomach cramped violently. He spent the first three hours of his secret recovery curled on his side, biting down on a rolled-up leather belt Norah had fetched from his wardrobe to keep from screaming.

Norah stood by the door with a heavy brass candlestick gripped in her raw hands. If Edward decided to check on his cousin’s progress, she was fully prepared to bludgeon the man and run for the coast.

“I am going to kill him,” Alistair gasped, spitting the leather belt onto the sheets. He was soaked in cold sweat, his chest heaving. “I will mount his head on a pike in the rose garden.”

“You couldn’t mount a moth on a pin right now,” Norah said. She did not move from the door. “Save your breath. The pain means the nerves aren’t dead.”

“Where did you learn your bedside manner? A prison ship? A workhouse?”

“They’re much the same.”

She set the candlestick down on the washstand.

“You need food. Your stomach has nothing to process but its own bile.”

“Fetch me a steak. Rare.”

Norah let out a short, harsh laugh.

“If I go to the kitchens and ask for a rare steak for a man whose bowels are allegedly liquefying, we will both be hanged by supper. You get what I can steal.”

She slipped out the door, moving with the practised silence of a servant used to avoiding the heavy hands of drunken masters.

The corridors of Penri Manor were vast, lined with ancestral portraits of hawkish men who all shared Alistair’s sharp nose and arrogant jawline. She ignored them, taking the servant stairs down to the scullery. The kitchen was a war zone of copper pots and shouting cooks. Norah kept her head down, slipped past the massive roasting spits, and slid into the dry pantry.

She took nothing noticeable. A hardened heel of rye bread. A small cloth sack of dry oats. Three bruised apples that had rolled under a barrel of flour. She stuffed them deep into the pockets of her apron and covered the bulge with a bundle of dirty laundry.

When she returned to the Duke’s chambers, Alistair had not moved. He was staring at the ceiling, his jaw tight.

Norah pulled a small paring knife from her apron and began slicing the bruised apple into paper-thin slivers.

“Eat this slowly. If you vomit, I’m not cleaning it up.”

Alistair looked at the miserable piece of fruit. He was a man accustomed to French sauces and roasted venison. He took the slice from her hand — his fingers brushing hers. His skin ice cold. Hers rough as sandpaper.

He ate the apple. He closed his eyes, chewing methodically.

“I need to write a letter,” he said quietly. “To my solicitor in London. Thomas Sterling.”

“You can’t.”

His eyes snapped open. “I am the Duke of Penrith—”

“You are a corpse in waiting,” Norah interrupted, dropping the rest of the apple onto his chest. “Edward controls the post bag. Nothing leaves this house without his seal. If you send a letter changing your will or calling for a magistrate, he will read it. And then he will come up here with a pillow and finish the job himself.”

Alistair’s jaw tightened.

“Then what do you propose, Norah Reed?”

“We wait here eating stolen pig feed until he grows impatient.” She picked the apple slices back up. “We survive. You get strong enough to walk out the front door on your own two feet. Until then, you groan when the door opens. You keep your eyes shut. You let the doctors poke you, and you let Edward gloat. You swallow the slops they feed you, and you spit them into the chamber pot when they turn their backs.”

A knock rapped sharply against the heavy oak door.

Alistair froze. Norah moved immediately — snatching the apple slices and stuffing them into her pocket, grabbing the leather belt and throwing it under the bed.

“Close your eyes,” she hissed, grabbing a wet rag and slapping it haphazardly across his forehead. “Breathe shallow. Rattle your chest.”

Alistair dropped his head back, his mouth falling open. He let out a long, wet, ragged breath just as the door clicked open.

It was Lipton. The doctor stepped into the room, followed closely by Edward.

Norah dropped into a deep, subservient curtsy, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the polished floorboards.

“Still lingering, I see,” Lipton muttered, pulling a gold pocket watch from his waistcoat. He did not bother to check the Duke’s pulse. He merely stood at the foot of the bed, observing the shallow rise and fall of Alistair’s chest. “Fascinating. The human heart is a stubborn muscle.”

Edward stepped closer to the bed. He looked down at his cousin.

Norah watched from the corner of her eye. There was no pity in Edward’s face. There was only a cold, calculating impatience.

“He looks worse, doctor,” Edward said softly. “His skin is grey.”

“The final stages of liver collapse, Lord Edward. The blood is pooling in the extremities.”

“It is a matter of hours now.” Edward’s voice dropped. “Has he spoken?”

“No, sir,” Norah said softly, pitching her voice to a timid, terrified squeak. “He just groans, sir. It’s terrible to hear.”

Edward glanced at her, registering her presence for the first time. He looked at her the way one looks at a damp patch on a wall.

“Leave us, girl. Wait in the hall.”

Norah’s heart slammed against her ribs. She could not leave Alistair alone with them. If Edward decided to speed things along—

“My lord,” she stammered, twisting her apron in her hands. “The housekeeper said I was to stay and keep his lips wet. She said if he dries out he’ll choke, and it’s an ugly sound.”

Edward grimaced, his aristocratic sensibilities offended by the grotesque detail. He waved a dismissive hand.

“Fine. Stand in the corner. Be quiet.”

He leaned over the bed. He reached out and touched Alistair’s shoulder.

“Alistair,” Edward whispered.

The false grief was gone. His tone was intimate. Mocking.

“Alistair, can you hear me?”

Alistair did not move. He let out another rattling breath.

“Rest now, cousin,” Edward murmured, leaning in so close his breath ruffled the hair by Alistair’s ear. “You fought enough. The estate is safe. I will take good care of it.”

Norah watched Alistair’s hand beneath the blankets.

The knuckles were white. He was gripping the mattress so hard his fingers looked like claws.

He was a proud man. A dangerous man. And he was being forced to lie still while his murderer mocked him.

Edward straightened up, adjusting his cuffs.

“Keep the laudanum flowing, doctor. Let us ensure he feels no pain at the end.”

They left the room, the door clicking shut behind them. The silence stretched for ten seconds.

Then Alistair’s eyes snapped open. They were pitch black with rage. He threw the wet rag off his forehead and sat up, a low, vicious snarl ripping from his throat. He looked like a feral dog cornered in an alley.

“I will gut him,” Alistair breathed, his hands shaking violently. “I will strip the flesh from his bones.”

Norah walked over to the bed and handed him the bruised apple.

“Eat,” she said. “You can’t gut a man on an empty stomach.”