“We will see about that,” Lord Carfield retorted, although his voice sounded a little weak. “I can still recall my wife to my home. I can still take her money. I can still?—”
“It’s too late!” Lady Carfield interjected. “You can recall me home if you want, you can beat me, you can lock me in a cupboard, you can even kill me. But I have signed the letter, and nothing will now keep you from justice!”
“And I will be going straight to the authorities with the definitive proof that you ordered my parents’ murder,” Phineas added.
“He’s been saying that they won’t arrest him right away,” Iris said, hurrying forward. “He’s been scaring us, making threats…”
“He is lying.” Phineas snorted, his eyes blazing.
He looked at Iris, and for a moment, the expression on his face softened. Iris’s heart skipped a beat in response. Was it possible that he believed her? Then his expression darkened again, and he turned back to Lord Carfield.
“He will be arrested the moment we bring these documents to the authorities.”
“You can’t threaten me!” Lord Carfield seethed. “I am a viscount! I have rights!”
But there was a desperation in his voice now, and Iris had to work hard to keep hope from flaring inside her.
“Oh, but I can.” Phineas advanced slowly on him, and the Viscount shrank back. “Did you know, Lord Carfield, that a peer accused of assassinating another peer can be stripped of his titles? That not only will he suffer the indignity of a ruined reputation and spending the rest of his life in prison, but he can have his lands taken from him, his heirs disinherited, and his family name blotted out from the peerage?”
Phineas laughed softly at the way Lord Carfield’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Now, I won’t recommend that the prosecutors follow this action, as it would deleteriously affect my wife and sisters-in-law, but I want you to understand that what you have done is serious enough to ruin even the most powerful man in the world—the British peer.”
Phineas took another step forward, and Iris couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He had never looked so tall and splendid, nor her father so small and pathetic. She was sure that when Phineas spoke again, it would be to shout at her father, to threaten him again, or to order him out of the solicitor’s office. So she was surprised when, after Phineas had backed him into a corner, he spoke softly.
“There was a time when you were my parents’ closest friend,” he continued, and although his voice was quiet, it was also powerful. “A time when they trusted you more than anyone else in the world. You were the person with whom they shared their secrets, their innermost fears and hopes. My mother once told me that when they realized I would be an only child, you were the one who comforted them in their grief at being unable to have more children.”
Something flickered in Lord Carfield’s eyes, but Iris couldn’t quite place it.
“When I was a boy, you were like a father to me,” Phineas admitted. “You would play with me, teach me how to ride horses and fence, comfort me when I scraped a knee or stubbed a toe, and bring me gifts whenever you visited. You were my favorite of my parents’ friends, and most of all because you treated me like an equal, even though I was only a child. You never talked down to me or made me feel small. Which is how, I realize now, you were able to manipulate me so well. And in doing so, to betray my parents even more deeply than you already had.”
Phineas cocked his head. “I’ve been wondering all these years, My Lord. Did you ever really love them?” His eyes bored into Lord Carfield’s. “Or was it all a ploy to get their land?”
“Of course, I loved them,” Lord Carfield barked.
“Then why?” Phineas murmured. “Why did you do it?”
“I…” Lord Carfield’s face reddened. “I don’t have to answer this. Nothing has been prov?—”
“Why?!” Phineas roared. “Why did you do it?!”
“Because they had everything!” Lord Carfield screamed. His face was contorted in his rage, and for a moment, Iris thought he looked like some medieval statue of a gargoyle. “Why should they have gotten everything—wealth, a happy marriage, a son and heir—while I had nothing? I had a title and an old name, yes, but lands that had been sold off to cover my forefathers’ debts, until our estate was so broken up that there was nothing left. I had a wife, yes, but one who was obstinate and disobedient. And only daughters. Three daughters, with an estate entailed away from the female line!”
“How can you call a wife and three daughters nothing?!” Phineas yelled. “You had four wonderful women in your life, and instead of caring for them and loving them, you only ever tried to hurt them.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Lord Carfield snarled. “You’re just like your father—arrogant and unsympathetic to my plight.”
Phineas scoffed. “You disgust me, Carfield. You killed my parents because you were jealous of them? You killed them and then betrayed me because you wanted to take from them what you believed you ought to have as well?!”
“I wouldn’t have had to take the land if your father had just sold it to me!” Lord Carfield screeched. He looked demented by rage.“He knew I was flailing, that I needed money to save my family seat. But no, he wouldn’t sell me his land, or even lease it to me, because he believed the mines I wanted to build were dangerous. It was pathetic. He was more concerned for the well-being of some penniless coal miners than for the survival of my family name and estate!”
Now it was Iris’s turn to scoff. Her father rounded on her, and she drew herself up. “If you had actually met any of the ‘penniless miners,’ as you call them,” she hissed, “then you would know they are more worthy of help than you have ever been!”
“My father was an honorable man,” Phineas said, and Lord Carfield turned back to him. “He wouldn’t sell you the land because he wanted to do right by his tenants. Perhaps he had even started to realize your villainy. I shall never know. But I am sure he could sense that your heart was becoming as blackened as the coal you wanted to mine.”
Phineas paused, and to Iris’s surprise, a small smile spread across his face. “You know, all these years, I always thought it was the theft of my parents’ land that had dealt me the severest blow. Yes, my parents’ deaths hurt more, but that was something I couldn’t prevent. The theft of the land, though—that was my fault. And it filled me with such shame to think I’d let my parents down. So getting back the land became my focus, my obsession, the wound that informed every one of my decisions. And I told myself that if I could just get it back, if I could just take my revenge on you and the others who tricked me, I would be happy. But it was never about the land, I realize now.”
He glanced at Iris, his eyes blazing. “The severest blow you struck wasn’t taking my land, but taking my ability to trust. Because after everything you did, I thought that’s all I deserved from people. And I assumed no one in this world was trustworthy. If you could turn on me like that, then what would keep someone else, who had less reason to care for me, from turning on me?
“So I closed off my heart. I made a cage around myself, and I never let anyone inside of it. Some days it was so lonely that I thought I might die. But I couldn’t see a way out of the cage. I thought I would spend my whole life alone, unable to form a strong attachment to anyone, because they would only hurt me, like you had.
