Harold regarded Catherine’s crumpled form for a long moment, his chest rising with quiet exhilaration. She had seen too much, yet she had not screamed. Had not even clawed with true intent. Even now, insensible upon the floor like a discarded glove, there lingered some trace of decorum in her—and that, he thought, would serve him well.
Harold knelt beside her and turned her face upward, inspecting her eyelids for flicker, her breath for rhythm. The drug held. He smiled.
“Always too clever,” he muttered. “Always watching. I suppose it was inevitable.”
He reached for the scattered papers near Edmund’s lifeless hand, retrieving the authentication notes and sketching diagrams. Those, he tucked into his satchel with practised economy.
Then he stood, turned, and moved toward the hallway. Two shadows waited just beyond the staircase. They belonged to men accustomed to entering through the kitchen door, who did not pause to consider questions of morality or motive. He motioned them forward, fingers precise and silent.
“In the bedroom—top drawer,” he instructed quietly. “Take care. The rest is in order.”
The taller of the two inclined his head and vanished up the servants’ staircase without a sound.
Harold returned to his victims. With practised ease, he sifted through the disarray upon Edmund’s desk until he unearthed what he sought: fine correspondence paper, embossed with the Society’s seal, and an inkstand already uncorked. It required little time. Three notes—each fashioned in a hand plausibly belonging to the countess, the forgery deft enough to invite no immediate doubt.
The first, addressed to Edmund, conveyed gratitude for “his continued cooperation” in scrutinising Penwood’s holdings, while urging him to delay his conclusions until she might “secure the influence necessary to direct the collection’s fate.” The second contained a draft report of supposed discrepancies, annotated with suggestions that certain pieces might be “better catalogued offsite, beyond Marcus’s knowledge.” The third note, more intimate in tenor, lamented the necessity of deceiving Marcus, yet insisted that “access, not affection” had ever been her true purpose.
Harold read them twice, altering a stroke of ink here, crossing a word there, until the effect rang true. At last, he permitted himself a thin breath of satisfaction. It was not only Edmund who had underestimated him.
He ascended to Catherine’s chamber, where he secreted the forged papers among her effects: beneath a folded shawl, within the drawer that held her writing supplies. When they were discovered, suspicion would spring to life ere grief could take root. She had married for access. She had abetted the theft. She had vanished the very night the expert met his end. What narrative could be more plausible?
One man’s tragedy, another man’s folly.One woman’s ambition,he thought with a terrible smile.
Within the hour, they had carried her limp form to the waiting cart outside the stables. One of his companions draped a travel cloak over her; the other concealed her hair beneath a bonnet.
The old mill would serve — dry, abandoned, and distant enough from the village to avoid interference. He meant to keep her alive only long enough to ask a few questions. She must know of other collections, of families with holdings worth reclaiming; her husband’s papers would doubtless mention something.
Afterwards, he would see that Catherine Pemberton, Countess of Penwood, would vanish without a trace—and Marcus would be left to collapse beneath the ruin he had unwittingly trusted.
Chapter Twenty-three
The pounding began before the light. Marcus sat upright in bed, pulse already elevated, mind straining through sleep-dulled haze. The sound was no polite tap but sharp, rapid and too urgent for mere household confusion.
“My lord,” said the voice from beyond the door, muffled and unsteady. “Forgive the hour, but I must speak with you. At once.”
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His robe hung from the nearby chair, the sash catching on his wrist as he pulled it closed. Cold bled through the floorboards when he crossed the room.
He opened the door. Mrs Thornberry stood there, her cap slightly askew, the collar of her wrapper clutched at her throat. Her face was drawn in ways Marcus had never seen.
“There’s been—” she said, her voice breaking. She quickly gathered herself. “Mr Price. In the library. He is dead, my lord.”
He stared at her, words catching somewhere behind his teeth.
“Where is Catherine?” he asked.
Mrs Thornberry shook her head.
“We are searching for her now,” she replied.
A beat passed before Marcus spoke again.
“Where?”
The housekeeper pointed toward the stairs.
“The library,” she said. “The constable has been sent for. But you should come—at once.”
He did not bother with boots, only shoved his arms through the sleeves of his coat and followed her down the corridor, heart hammering without rhythm.
