Prologue
Sheffield, England
October, 1811
Death came not quietly to Venbrough Manor.
Geneviève Amberley, the Duchess of Venbrough, had expected it to come sooner rather than later, given that her husband had been aged some fifty years at the time of their marriage a year before, and a lifetime of excess had taken its toll upon his body already. She had always known she would be a young widow. But she had expected at least to reach the grand age of twenty first, and she had certainlynotexpected to become a widow throughmurder.
She had known something was terribly amiss the moment her husband had begun to complain of stomach pains after dinner. They had eaten the very same meal after all, and she hadn’t experienced so much as a twinge. The only difference had been the wine that he had indulged in at dinner and that she had not. And she had had enough experience in reading the intent upon her husband’s face that it had been impossible not to notice the sinister—and delighted—cast to the faces of his distant cousins when the duke had excused himself and taken off to his bed.
Mischief was afoot, and she ought to have known it. To be certain, she held about as much love for her husband as it was possible to have for a man who had treated her like a possession rather than a person—which was not much. But she was no fool, and in retrospect she ought to have seen the duke’s relations that had just recently come for an extended visit for what they were: vultures circling carrion.
The duke’s death warrant had been signed upon his marriage, and he hadn’t even known it. He had been only too eager to show off his pretty young bride to his relations, and announce his intentions to get an heir from her within the year—an announcement that had been tinged with an air of menace to Geneviève’s ears. The unmistakablecommandlevied in that tone; the decree that she hadbetterdeliver unto him his heir…if she knew what was good for her.
To the duke’s heir presumptive, her very presence had been a threat. She had assumed erroneously that his obvious distaste for her had been due to her French roots, the poverty from which the duke, in hisbenevolence, such as it was, had deigned to lift her. Instead it had been the potential for life that she represented—the child the duke intended to have from her womb. A male child would, upon its birth, supplant him from his place, kicking him straight down the line of succession for the dukedom.
She knew it now, just as she knew her husband was dying in fits and groans just beyond the door to which she pressed her ear. In the depths of the night, there was no one to hear him but her—and the two villainous relations who had intruded upon him in the interests of ensuring that their plans came to fruition. No doubt they hovered over the duke’s writhing body in the certainty that nothing could be done for him.
“For God’s sake; I cannot even hear myselfthinkover this wretched carrying on. How long does it take a man to die?” The sister—Nerissa—inquired icily, as if she had taken the duke’s failure to die promptly and quietly as a personal affront.
“Hell if I know,” Julian Amberley—the heir—sighed. “He’s so muchlargerthan he was last I saw him. Perhaps I did not give him quite enough arsenic.”
Geneviève closed her eyes, shuddering. Her freezing toes curled into the plush rug beneath her feet.
“The bitch could still whelp a boy,” Nerissa said. “We cannot risk losing the dukedom to some half-French brat.”
She wasn’t with child. For all the duke’s considerable efforts, she had not conceived in the year they had been wed. The duke had snarled often that there must be something wrong with her, that she had been a mistake—that he had done her the honor of making a duchess of her, and yet she, ungrateful schemer that she was, had denied him the son he so desperately wanted. As if she had done it on purpose; as if she would not have given anything to conceive—which might have spared her hisattentions.
Julian said, “We’ll have to be rid of her, too. If she iswith child, a convenient death will put paid to that.” And then, “Oh,shut up, you great blithering arse,” as the duke gave a wrenching groan of distress.
Her husband was not long for this world, and Geneviève—Geneviève would not outlast him by any significant time unless she actednow. God alone knew how long the bloodthirsty pair would wait before seeing her off to a premature grave.
Geneviève slipped away from the door on legs that trembled like a bowl of blancmange, unable to work up even a shred of pity for the man who lay in his bed beyond that door, arsenic eating away at his insides. He had never spared any amount of pity for her, after all.
It was her own skin she sought to save; not the duke’s. Never the duke’s. She might have thanked them, the evil heir and the conspiring sister both, had they not sought to engineer her death as well. The duke’s death wouldreleaseher from the gilded cage that had been her prison this last year. She would have skipped merrily away from the whole wretched business—had they but offered her the opportunity.
She skittered down the hallway, bare feet as soft as a whisper across the floors as she ran for her rooms in the opposite wing. Despite the ever-present chill that could never quite be exorcised from the manor, a shiny mist of sweat broke out over her, plastering the wispy blond strands that had escaped from her plait to her neck. Nerves and fear both made her breath catch in her throat in strange, wheezy huffs.
The sprawling manor house was massive; it was a journey of some minutes through the long, winding corridors that had confused her for months when first the duke had brought her here. The wing in which she resided was an addition of only ten years or so past, connected to the main with just the narrowest hallway. It was where the servants slept—where the duke had forcedherto sleep, in penance for her barrenness.
She had thought it cruel to shove her into so small a room, crowded still further by the elaborate gowns and trappings of her new station that he had demanded she wear, as if she were little more than a doll for him to dress and parade about as he saw fit. Now it was a blessing—they would have to search her out to kill her.
She would have time to make her escape. A few minutes at least to prepare for the inevitable. The gowns she could not risk; they were too ostentatious, too heavy. But the jewels—
She had never been permitted to wear the jewels that belonged to the estate, but she had a few baubles that the duke had presented to her, back when he had still been pleased with his young bride. They weren’t many, and the price they would fetch would not be ahandsomeone, but she knew how to be frugal. And since they belonged only to her, they would not be missed.
She hoped.
In the early hours of the morning, the household staff were asleep, utterly unaware that just on the other side of the house, their employer was dying in his bed. And Geneviève intended to keep it that way. She eased open the door of her tiny room, where the embers of her fire had all but guttered out. It had never kept her particularly warm anyway, even in this tight space—she had grown chilled to the bone in the past year; a sort of deep, abiding coldness that even a roaring fire could not have relieved.
It was an effort to find an ember burning strong enough to light the wick of her oil lamp, a waste of precious time—but she needed the light to see by. In its soft glow, she fumbled through her things until she came up with the oldest, plainest reticule among her possessions—a scrap of cloth formed into a drawstring pouch. It was into this that she stuffed the contents of her jewelry box, paltry though it was.
She had not known, then, how the jewels he had given her had been a pitiful offering. They had been the finest she had ever seen—but to him they had been only trinkets; a reflection of her worth. She had been bought for so trifling a price that the duke would not have bothered to stop to collect it had it fallen free of his pocket. But she had learned how little he truly valued her in the year since then. He had made certain she knew it.
A gown—she needed a gown still. She battled her way through a wall of silks and satins, clawing toward the very back of the assembled finery for something that would not attract too much attention. Her fingers closed around a handful of muslin; out of season now, with the approaching winter. But it would have to do.
She struggled into a chemise and several layers of petticoats to blunt the chill of the air, and threw the skirt of the gown over her head, tugging it into place. The walking boots she had found were too fine, too well-made—but the hem of her gown brushed the tips of her toes, and like as not no one would be looking too closely at her footwear. And then at last she shrugged into a pelisse of dark blue, which was plain enough that even for its quality, it might have been several seasons old to judge by look alone.
