Chapter 3
I sent Annie into the adjoining breakfast room with two guards and told Grace to stay where she could see her.
Victoria objected immediately.
“You’re letting a servant’s child control this entire house.”
I looked at her.
“A servant’s child just stopped me from eating something you’re afraid to touch.”
She had no answer.
I turned toward Caleb.
“You knew about my mother.”
He sat upright now, one hand against his jaw.
“I knew she was ill.”
“No.”
I crouched in front of him.
“You knew enough to defend Victoria before I said anything.”
His eyes hardened.
“Everybody knew Evelyn was ill.”
“Not everybody attacked me to keep that cabinet locked.”
Silence.
I stood.
Grace moved toward the cabinet but stopped.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Mrs. Carter stopped trusting breakfast near the end.”
My chest tightened.
“What do you mean?”
“She would hide food.”
I stared.
“Where?”
Grace looked ashamed.
“In linen drawers. Behind books. Once inside a flower vase.”
I remembered finding a stale cracker in my mother’s sitting room.
I had joked about it.
She smiled.
Said old women became strange.
I believed her.
Grace’s eyes filled.
“She told me things tasted wrong.”
My jaw tightened.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The night before your Chicago meeting.”
Memory returned.
Grace had stopped me near the front stairs.
She said my mother was afraid of something.
I was late.
Victoria appeared behind me and said Evelyn had become confused again.
I told Grace we would discuss it when I returned.
We never did.
My mother collapsed the next morning.
I looked at Victoria.
She saw recognition move across my face.
“That is not my fault.”
I almost laughed.
“I haven’t accused you yet.”
“You don’t have to.”
There it was.
Defense arriving before accusation.
I turned toward Grace.
“What exactly did my mother say?”
Grace took a breath.
“She said someone in the house was waiting for you to inherit too early.”
My father had already been dead.
There was only one inheritance left to accelerate.
May you like
Mine.
And my mother had apparently understood the danger before I did.
