His back was to her as he walked toward his desk. “Well, let’th thee, all th-th-the retheiptth, m-m-m-my lady?”
He pulled a drawer open, took something out, and suddenly her arm was in his grasp, she was being pulled toward him, something was poking at her neck.
“Tell your dog to lie down or I’ll kill you both right now,” Chambers hissed in her ear.
She could not say anything at first. Her mind was swamped with panic. How stupid she had been to think she was safe and protected because her husband had said he loved her. Of all people, she knew everything and anything could change quickly, completely and irrevocably in a split-second. With the opening of a drawer. With a teeter at the top of a flight of stairs.
How arrogant she had been.
“La,” she got out and snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor. She did not dare to turn her head to see if Lavinia obeyed her but there was a sound that might have been Lavinia lying down.
She was pulled toward the door and her arm was released for a few seconds as Chambers shut and locked the door. But the thing poking at her neck did not move.
“I wish you weren’t making me do this, Lady Burchester.”
His hand was back on her arm and he was propelling her toward the desk.
“Sit.”
She sat in the chair behind the desk. She could see Lavinia lying down across the room. Her body was on the floor but her head was raised, her eyes on her mistress. The lips of Lavinia’s muzzle were pulling back, her teeth about to be bared.
“Tell your dog to stay, Lady Burchester. This is a knife against your throat. I will have no compunction about using it.”
“La,” she said, trying to keep her voice even and held out her hand, palm down.
Lavinia let out a growl but put her head on the floor.
“Good. Now go into the top drawer of the desk and get out a piece of paper. Open the ink. Find a quill. You’re going to write something for me.”
She did as he instructed.
Think, Caroline, think. Think your way out of this.But she could barely breathe, let alone think.
“Write what I tell you to write, Lady Burchester.”
She wrote with a shaky hand, leaving blobs of ink across the paper.
Phin—
It’s over. It’s all over. I love you, but I can’t.
Caroline.
“Wh-wh-what?” she choked out.
“Well, clearly you’re deranged. Can’t even speak properly. And you’re so despondent over your husband’s poverty, you run away.”
No. This note wasn’t meant to show a wife who had run away. It was meant to show a wife who had killed herself.
Phineas would know the note was a lie. It would be too late, but he would know. He was Phineas for her, not Phin. She was Caro for him, not Caroline.
And she had never told him she loved him.
Despite her fear for her life and her dog’s life, at that moment her greatest regret was thatI love youmight be one of the clues that showed this note was false when it was the only true thing in it.
She closed her eyes. If she escaped from this, she would make sure Phineas knew she loved him.
A knock at the door.
