The breath lodged in his throat when Mr. Willmott stepped closer.
“That man will be punished. That man will suffer.” The faintest glisten of moisture formed in the corner of his eyes. “That man is me.”
“Dr. Bagot shall arrive soon.” Lord Cunningham paced back and forth before the drawing room window. He’d sent the stable lad for the doctor over two hours ago.
Still, the boy had yet to return.
Meg wiped a new sheen of sweat from her forehead. “You should sit.”
“If Violet falls ill, it will kill her.”
“She won’t.” So far, the poison had only affected the servants. Whoever orchestrated this plan had slipped into the abbey unseen, worked with deliberation, and injured Meg where it hurt the most.
These people, all of them, had taken her in.
They’d loved her.
How unfair, how terrible, that they should suffer now on her account. And itwason her account. She didn’t know how. She didn’t know why.
But this was nothing more than another letter.
Another message to her.
Written in agony instead of words.
Lord Cunningham smacked both hands into the sash window, and the panes rattled. His breath fogged the glass. “He should have returned by now. I should have gone myself.”
“Uncle says the poison is unlikely to render fatality.”
“A fact he offered in the spirit of comfort not truth.”
“You misjudge my uncle. He is not so apt to conceal distresses.”
“I see.” Lord Cunningham turned and glanced to where she sat perched on the sofa. If he disapproved of her unkempt hair and rumpled clothes—evidence of hours assisting Uncle—it only made him sigh. “You must rest, Margaret. Neither of us knows what this assault means, but I fear we both know it warrants more trepidation for you than me.”
“I am sorry”—the words fell flat, inadequate—“that I ever appeared under your elm tree. That I ever made you love me … and brought this suffering into your sanctuary.”
“Penrose Abbey is not my sanctuary.” He shook his head. “It has not been, ever since my father died.”
“I increased your pain.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “But you were a balm to it as well—”
The drawing room door banged open with such force Meg’s heart pitched. She stood from the sofa, hand at her chest.
A boy stumbled inside. He fell to his knees on the rug, a trickle of blood at his hairline, a wooden cudgel pinning the back of his neck. “My lord, I be sorry. I—”
The cudgel whacked his head. The boy slumped into the rug. Motionless.
No.Meg scurried backward, closer to Lord Cunningham, as two ragged figures stormed the room. Recognition ignited. The same assailants who’d set off an explosion in the forest.
The young one pressed a foot onto the stable boy’s back. He grinned as he swept off his turkey-feathered hat. “And sorry I be, m’lady, but nobody’s going no place at all.”
Nighttime possessed a strange coldness. The streets were empty, eerily still, and every scrape of his boots on the cobblestones was loud and haunting.
Tom wandered the streets he knew by heart.
He strayed to the alley, the one where young Meg had met with tragedy, and dragged his fingers along the brick. He used to curse this place. Him and Mr. Foxcroft both.
