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 6

Norah looked at the heavy iron poker in Alistair’s hands. Then she looked at his face.

The aristocracy was entirely burned away. He looked like a brawler from the Spitalfields gutters.

She walked over and took the poker from him. It was heavier than it looked.

“If I miss, he will kill us both,” Norah said.

“Then do not miss,” Alistair replied simply.

The hours bled away.

The sun sank beneath the treeline, casting long skeletal shadows across the grounds of Penri Manor. The house settled into a heavy, oppressive quiet.

Alistair lay in the bed. Norah had rubbed a thin layer of ash beneath his eyes to hollow them out, and slicked his hair with water to simulate cold sweat. He looked horrific.

He looked ready for the grave.

Norah stepped into the massive cedar wardrobe in the corner of the room. She left the heavy door cracked open a fraction of an inch — just enough to see the bed. The smell of cedar and mothballs was overpowering.

She gripped the iron poker tightly, her knuckles white, her heart beating a frantic, violent rhythm against her ribs.

At ten o’clock, the iron latch of the bedroom door clicked.

Norah stopped breathing.

The door pushed open slowly. The hinges whined in the darkness.

Cousin Edward stepped into the room.

He was dressed in immaculate evening wear — a stark contrast to the grim task he had come to perform. He held a single silver candlestick, and the flickering light cast monstrous dancing shadows against the walls.

He closed the door behind him. And he locked it.

The heavy clack of the bolt sounded like a gunshot in the silent room.

Edward walked slowly toward the bed. Alistair lay perfectly still — eyes closed, breathing a shallow, ragged performance of a man clinging to his final seconds.

Edward stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at his cousin.

He did not say a word. He just watched, his eyes cold and empty.

He set the candlestick down on the bedside table. Then he reached over and picked up a heavy velvet decorative pillow from the armchair.

Norah tightened her grip on the poker. Her palms were sweating.

Wait, she told herself. Wait until he is fully committed.

Edward stepped to the side of the bed. He held the velvet pillow in both hands. He looked down at Alistair’s face.

“Goodbye, Alistair,” Edward whispered.

He pressed the pillow down over Alistair’s face.

Norah shoved the wardrobe door open.

She moved with the silent, desperate speed of a cornered animal. She did not shout. She did not hesitate. She crossed the room in three steps, swinging the heavy iron poker with every ounce of strength she possessed.

The iron connected with the back of Edward’s right knee.

The crack of breaking bone was deafening.

Edward let out a high, piercing shriek. His leg buckled instantly, bending at a sickening, unnatural angle. He collapsed to the floor, dropping the pillow, his hands desperately clutching his shattered knee.

Before Edward could draw breath to scream again, Alistair moved.

The dying Duke threw back the covers. He lunged off the mattress, gravity and adrenaline propelling him forward, and dropped heavily onto Edward’s chest, pinning the injured man to the floorboards.

He grabbed Edward by the throat with both hands and squeezed — with a sudden, vicious strength born of pure rage.

“Hello, cousin,” Alistair snarled, his face inches from Edward’s terrified eyes. “I hear you’ve been looking for a corpse.”

Edward could not breathe.

The weight of a grown man — a man he had thoroughly believed to be hours from a coffin — pressed down on his ribs. Alistair’s thumbs dug into Edward’s windpipe. The Duke’s hands were trembling from sheer physical weakness, but adrenaline and hatred fuelled the grip.

Edward thrashed, his expensive leather boots scraping uselessly against the polished floorboards. Every time he moved his right leg, a wet, grinding sound echoed in the quiet room, followed immediately by a muffled shriek of absolute agony. The shattered knee was a ruin of splintered bone and torn muscle beneath his tailored trousers.

“Look at me,” Alistair snarled, leaning closer. His breath smelled of stale bread and fever. “Look at the man you tried to murder.”

Edward’s eyes rolled frantically. He clawed at Alistair’s wrists. His face was turning a mottled, desperate purple.

Norah stood three feet away. The iron poker hung loosely at her side, the hooked tip resting against the floor. She watched the aristocrat suffocate.

She felt no pity.

She felt only the cold, sharp clarity of survival.

“Alistair,” Norah said quietly. “If you kill him now, they will hang you for madness and murder. Let him breathe.”

Alistair did not let go.

His chest heaved. The muscles in his forearms stood out like coiled wire. For five terrifying seconds, Norah thought he was going to snap his cousin’s neck and damn them both.

Then, slowly, Alistair’s grip loosened.

He did not get off Edward’s chest. He simply shifted his hands from the throat to the lapels of Edward’s velvet coat, hauling the injured man’s shoulders off the floor.

Edward sucked in air. It sounded like a tearing sail. He coughed violently, spitting a fine mist of saliva and blood onto the floorboards, weeping from the excruciating pain in his leg.

“You’re dead,” Edward wheezed, his voice a broken rasp. He stared up at Alistair with wild, uncomprehending eyes. “The poison—”

“Lipton is a fool who reads books and ignores what is right in front of him,” Alistair said softly.

He reached out and patted Edward’s cheek. The gesture was patronising. Terrifyingly calm.

“I, on the other hand, had the good fortune of employing a maid who knows her textiles.”

Edward’s gaze snapped to Norah.

The confusion in his eyes morphed into a raw, ugly sneer.

“A servant. You let a chambermaid—”

Norah stepped forward.

She did not swing the poker again. She simply placed the heavy iron tip directly onto the fabric covering Edward’s ruined kneecap. She did not push. She just let the weight of the iron rest there.

Edward screamed. A high, thin sound that tore his throat raw.

“I prefer Norah,” she said, her voice entirely devoid of inflection. “Miss Reed, if you’re feeling polite — which, given your current position on the floor, I suggest you do.”

She lifted the poker an inch.

Edward collapsed backward, sobbing, his forehead resting against the cold floorboards.

Alistair watched her. The corner of his mouth twitched — a fleeting shadow of a smile in the dim room.

He looked back down at his cousin.

“We are going to play a game, Edward,” Alistair said.

He pushed himself off the floor, his breathing harsh, the exertion clearly draining his meagre reserves. He stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the heavy mahogany bed frame. Norah moved instantly, wrapping a steadying hand around his elbow.

He leaned into her touch without hesitation.

“You are going to write a letter to the local magistrate, Justice Hail. You are going to detail exactly how you procured a nightshirt heavily laced with Scheele’s Green. You will explain how you instructed Lipton to ignore the blistering on my neck. You will confess to attempted murder — and you will sign it.”

Edward ground his teeth, clutching his leg. The pain was making him dizzy, but his aristocratic arrogance was deeply ingrained.

“Hail is a friend of my father’s. He won’t believe a confession tortured out of me by a madman and a—”

The word hung in the air.

Norah did not flinch. She had been called worse things by better men.

But Alistair’s reaction was instantaneous. He did not yell. He did not strike his cousin.

He simply turned to Norah.

“Fetch the slop bucket.”