The minute he came home, all that had been lost. He was back to a life of aimlessness that only stabilized when he found his work at the Lyon’s Den. There he guarded good people against unruly gamblers, and his company became the veterans who worked under him to watch the doors and the women who eked out a living under that roof. That was the real reason he hadn’t gone home to his parents. They weren’t his family anymore, and he refused to go back to the empty life of privilege.
So it was with some bitterness that he headed downstairs to where Simpson bowed to him and called him “my lord.” He was about to navigate through people who would assume he was another frivolous gentleman filling his time with stupid amusements and none of the serious work of a man: protecting the vulnerable from other people’s sins. It was fortunate that the first person he encountered after Simpson was the one woman with whom he’d wanted frank conversation for twelve years.
Diana’s mother stood at the base of the stairs with an imperious air.
“I will see my daughter now!”
“You will do no such thing,” Lucas snapped, his voice as hard as if he disciplined the rawest recruit.
“How dare you—”
“Are you aware that the constable suspects you of murdering Lord Dunnamore?” He didn’t wait for her to process the words but kept dropping facts like sharp rocks tossed at a rat. “He has little evidence beyond your presence here last night. But you were alone with him and had ample time to poison him.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Arsenic in his tea, my lady. The very same tea you ordered for his lordship, and the very same tea that killed him.”
Her eyes widened in horror as she looked at Simpson. “Arsenic?” she gasped. “But why?”
He didn’t leave Simpson time to answer. “Because, my lady, you sacrificed your daughter to your fears, forcing her to marry Lord Dunnamore because he promised to help manage your finances.”
“You…you have no right,” she cried.
“Over the years, you’ve seen to your great embarrassment how badly your daughter is treated by her stepchildren and indeed, by yourself, who preens about town with no thought as to the woman who paid for your fripperies with her freedom.” He gestured with a disdainful flick of his wrist at her very fashionable gown.
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not true that you regret it? Well, you should have, my lady. Because the very daughter you claim to be here to support has been miserable for twelve years thanks to your cowardice.” He lifted his chin. “A mother should protect her daughter.”
The woman shook her head. “She has a husband, status, and money—”
“The constable thinks that perhaps you regretted your actions and, in a misguided attempt to save your daughter from her fate, poisoned his lordship’s tea with arsenic.”
“I did no such thing!” she cried.
“Of course not,” he agreed. “Because you do not have a caring bone in your body for your daughter. You’d never think to help her unless it benefited you somehow.”
“I was here last night to help her. Do you think I enjoyed sitting with a dying old man all evening while she went to a masquerade?”
He looked at her, his lips curled in disgust. “And yet you married her to him when she was but a child.”
That shut her up, and well it should. He could tell from her expression that she knew what she’d done. And perhaps she had regretted actions taken in fear after just being widowed. Even so, he couldn’t forgive her.
“If you wish to avoid the hangman’s noose, then you will do exactly as I say.”
“The noose!” She was all but choking on her shock.
“Yes,” he said as he leaned down to tower over her. “The constable is in the housekeeper’s office conducting interviews. You will go there now and tell him the truth—every single bit of it. How you sacrificed Diana to your fears. How you know that she has been treated to insults and abuse from Oscar’s children. And that you did nothing, absolutely nothing to help her.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out. Not a single one, but the glitter of tears shone in her eyes. And into that taut moment, Simpson gestured with a slow movement of his wrist.
“This way, my lady,” he intoned.
She started to move. And in that place of vulnerability, he poked her one last time.
“How did you know?” he asked her.
“What?”
