“I need to see Victor.” Her voice croaked on her words. Why was her mouth so dry?
“Here.” Lady Somerton placed a glass against her lips. “Sip slowly.”
Charlotte let the water cool her mouth and soothe her throat.
“Victor?” Charlotte said again when the glass was taken away.
Lady Somerton smiled at her gently. “You cannot see him yet.”
“Why?” Her panic began to rise. “Is he hurt?”
“No,” Lady Somerton answered.
Tears sprang to Charlotte’s eyes. “Where is he?” Did he leave her? Had he returned to Thornhill Park? Had he learned that she lost their child and didn’t wish to see her?
The ache in her heart grew strong. Victor would be here if he cared or loved her as he said. Not a woman she had never met.
As the pain in her chest and back grew stronger, spreading through her upper body and into her neck, Charlotte wished she could go back to sleep and make it go away. She wanted everything to go away.
At the light tap on the door, Lady Somerton called for them to enter. Charlotte hoped to see her husband, but the man who stepped inside her chamber was as much a stranger as the woman who sat beside her. “Who are you?”
“Lord James Bryant, the Earl of Somerton, the magistrate.”
“Magistrate? Why?”
“I have but one question Lady Blackmar.”
Charlotte gave a slight nod.
“Who shot you?”
Didn’t they know? “Maria.”
He nodded. “It was not your husband?”
How could he even ask such a question? Victor would never shoot her. “No. It was Maria.”
“Was it you she wished to shoot?” he asked.
“No.”
These questions were not making any sense. How could anyone think Victor would shoot her?
Was that why Victor wasn’t here. Had he been arrested for something Maria had done. If so, she needed to make this magistrate understand. “He did not...” Charlotte attempted to rise from the bed but pain stabbed through her chest and she fell back on the pillow as a wave of dizziness swept over her.
“You should not overtax yourself,” Lady Somerton insisted.
“Maria held the gun,” she bit out.
“Did she mention how your father died?”
Why did it matter? Except it did. “Maria poisoned his brandy.”
“Not anyone else?” Somerton asked.
Charlotte frowned. “Who? No. She said she did, and father complained of the taste.” Why was she being asked these questions? Her chest burned and she wanted to see her husband, if he truly was still here.
“That is all I needed to know.”
