“Know what?”
“You mindless fool. I could have killed you and it would have been a kindness. Then I could have secured the five thousand pounds a year. No one would have ever known. You would have had a burial far better than you deserve—”
“What are you saying?” William braced himself, tried to prepare his mind, but every inch of him needled with fear.
She snarled and laughed. “You are not my sister’s son, you wretch. We took you out of a workhouse the night Constance and her child died in childbirth. I raised you under pretense. All for the money. All so I might have the means to get back at Edward Gresham, the fool who chose my sister over me and was willing to pay five thousand pounds to keep you secr—”
“You are lying.” William stepped back and shook his head. “They must be lies.”
“Ask your precious Miss Ettie.”
“No—”
“You know it is true. Filthy little pauper. You are nothing next to me. Nothing next to my son. You look and smell and act like the dirty rats you came from. I hated you from the second they brought your starving little carcass into this house.”
Numbness cloaked him and threatened his vision. He backed up another step.God?This wasn’t true. Shelton would not have sent William after Edward Gresham if the man was not William’s father. Shelton would have told him the truth.
Miss Ettie would have told him the truth.
“You owe me everything.” His aunt leaned forward, pointing a jeweled finger. “You would have died in the workhouse if it wasn’t for me. You would have been like all the other starving little brats, scrounging for food, sleeping in corners, hungry and despicable and rotten.” She clasped her chest with more coughs. “Now get out. Nothing here belongs to you. You deserve nothing. Nothing.”
“Aunt—”
“I am not your aunt!” she screeched and jerked her fist at the door. “Leave! Leave!”
“One word from you is supposed to satisfy me?”
“It is the truth, you beggar. Why do you think you were so wicked as a child? Why do you think I had to punish you so much? You’re the offspring of pigs, that is why. Criminals and prostitutes and …” Coughs. “And …” More coughs. “Get out! Out!” She doubled over, grasping her heart with both hands, a strangled cry filling the room.
William moved next to the bed, her stench of sweat-mingled rosewater perfume overwhelming. He grasped her shoulders and leaned her back against the pillows. “Can you hear me?”
“Do—not—touch me.” Her eyes were closed, features twisted in pain, but she spat in disgust.
The spittle landed on his cheek. Rage burned through him, choking, and he swiped away the moisture with his coat sleeve. He had to get out of here. This room. This place. The lies upon lies. His entire life had been untrue? Everything he believed of himself? Or was Aunt so desperate to see him gone that she’d invent such deceptions?
He turned for the door, but another cry pivoted him back around.
“Help.” For the second time she hugged her chest, curling into a fetal position with gasps. “Someone … help.”
Hundreds of memories flashed through his mind. The many times he had begged her to let him out of the black room. Her ring in his skin. Her spittle on his face. The lies she’d just unearthed and exposed to him.
He didn’t want to help her. He hadn’t that kind of strength.
He quit the room, slammed the door, but made it no farther than the hall before he sprinted back into the chamber he despised. He tucked the bed linens under her chin, added another pillow behind her head, and brought a glass of water to her lips.
“Help.” Her lips mouthed the word without sound. The water sloshed past them but then oozed back down her face without making it down her throat. “Help …”
“I am here. Stay still. I shall call for someone to ride for the doctor.” When she didn’t answer, he yanked the bell pull beside her bed, then marched out into the hall and shouted for assistance. As footsteps announced someone coming, William returned to her bedside.
He took her hand, but the cold, clammy skin startled him. “Aunt?”
She didn’t stir, or cough, or spew more hatred, or demand him to get out of her sight.
Nausea pushed through him as he inched his hand to her wrist. No pulse met his fingertips.
Dear heavens, she was dead.
Lilias’s head swayed back and forth with the motion of the carriage. “I do hope we arrive soon. The roads these days are insufferably atrocious. Indeed, one more jostle and I shall likely fall apart.”
