Hudson still stood, expression dazed. The Poet Pirate lay sprawled on his back, coat spread wide, blood blossoming from his shirt.
Nathaniel whirled about. If Hudson had not shot him, who had?
There stood his answer.
In the steely form of bald Mr. Tompkins, arm stretched before him, pistol still smoking.
———
Margaret blinked and the scene before her changed. Perhaps it was due to her nightmare, or the fact that she’d read too many gothic novels, but for a moment she’d thought she’d seen a man bent over the bed, pressing a pillow to Lewis’s face. In reality, the man sat on the bed. He was neither masked man, pirate, nor Sterling Benton. By the light of the lamp burning on the side table, she recognized the familiar figure of Connor. The young valet sat, stoop-shouldered, on the edge of his master’s bed, head bowed, pillow on his lap. Defeated. Had she only imagined him trying to suffocate Lewis?
She darted a look back to Lewis’s face, then to his chest. Was there any rise and fall there? Was she too late?
“Nora?” Connor looked up at her, face bleak, eyes bleary. Had he gotten drunk for courage?
“Connor.” She licked suddenly dry lips. “What are you doing with that pillow?”
He looked down at it as if only then realizing he held it in his arms. “Nothing, as it turns out,” he whispered, more to the pillow—to himself—than to her.
“Is Mr. Upchurch...?”
“Alive and well,” he muttered darkly.
Relief filled her. She amended, “Not exactlywell.”
“He will be. Dr. Drummond said as much.”
Margaret felt her brow pucker. “Said what?”
“That Mr. Lewis would recover. Was quite sure of it. And you heard him talking. Coming around. It is only a matter of time.”
Realization prickled through her. “Is that why you are here?”
As if in a stupor, he nodded. “But in the end I couldn’t do it.”
Worriedly, she glanced at Mrs. Welch, unnaturally still on the settee. “Connor, why is Mrs. Welch still asleep?”
He shrugged. “A little laudanum in her tea is all.”
Is that why the woman slept so heavily? “This isn’t the first time, is it?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t want her to see me giving him the stuff. She might have said something. I only meant to keep him quiet until he passedon.”
“Is that what you were doing when I walked in on you a couple of days ago?”
“You made me drop the stuff. It’s not cheap either.” Connor rubbed his brow. “Mr. White was so certain he wouldn’t survive. I thought I could bide my time, but he lived on and on.”
“But it was you, wasn’t it? You shot him in the duel?”
He uttered a desolate laugh. “There was no duel.”
“But, Miss Upchurch mentioned a challenge letter—”
“I wrote that letter and slid it under Mr. Lewis’s door the night of the ball. When he finally returned to his room and read it, he believed Mr. Saxby had called him out over Miss Lyons. How he blustered and paced. I feared he would back out. He decided he would meet Saxby but hoped to dissuade the man from the duel. Said he planned to apologize instead.”
“But still he brought the dueling pistols?”
“I brought them. I had cleaned and loaded them enough times to know how it was done.”
