Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83053 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83053 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Jonathan clenched his fists. Sweat beaded on his brow, trickling down his face as the room became eerily silent. He took a deep breath before speaking again.
“Thomas,” he said evenly, “I never wanted any of this. The counterfeits…” He swallowed. “Yes, they are my doing. But not as you think.” He swallowed hard, looking Thomas straight in the eye. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me? By putting my life and my title at risk?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “It wasn’t me. It was never me.” He shook his head. “It was your butler. Montague. He put me up to it. Promised me the earldom if I helped him. God help us, Polk and his father are innocent. It was Montague who slipped the poison into your father’s drinks, in cahoots with one of Polk’s cooks.”
“And did it not occur to you, dear cousin, that the only way you would inherit the earldom would be at my demise?”
Jonathan gulped. “You could have renounced your title in my favor…”
“Why the bloody hell would I renounce my title?” Thomas got to his feet. “Perhaps you didn’t like to think about it, Jonathan, but you were actively participating in a conspiracy to have me killed.” He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a patch of oozy red on his shoulder where his cut had soaked through the rough bandage Tricia had fashioned. “This is just one mark your chum the butler left on me. Thankfully he’s not quite as masterful at murder as he is at heading a household.”
The room was silent for a long time. The fire in the hearth crackled, and the only other sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Thomas wrestled with the words that had been so confidently delivered by Jonathan, tried to reconcile them with the image of Montague, his father’s trusted servant, a seemingly devoted family man. He had assumed up until this point that Jonathan was the mastermind behind the plan, and Montague only his pawn. He hadn’t imagined that the opposite might be true.
“You’d have me believe that Montague is the one responsible for my father’s death?” Thomas said quietly, looking at Jonathan with a hard stare.
Jonathan nodded. “Yes. Montague was the one who conspired with the Polk chef to have your father’s food poisoned. Of that I’ve seen concrete proof. Letters between him and a government correspondent, speaking in code about water and border disputes between the Polks’ estate and yours.”
So Montague had a “friend” in higher places, as well as another “friend” in the Polks’ kitchen. And that’s how the Polks, quite unwittingly, got involved.
For a moment, everything felt like it was spinning. Thomas clenched his hands into fists as he processed this new bit of information. He glanced at Polk, who looked equally as shocked.
“I will need to see these letters,” Thomas said finally.
“You can’t,” Jonathan said. “I… I disposed of them. Montague and I had an agreement.”
“You mean you burned them in the fire?” Thomas shook his head.
“No, of course not,” Jonathan said. “The fire was for your father’s journal.”
“But the journal survived the fire.”
Jonathan nodded. “Yes, that was part of the plan. We singed the edges of the journal and then placed it on your desk after the fire had been extinguished.”
Thomas scratched his chin. “Because you wanted it to look as though the Polks had set fire to my office to destroy the journal, the one piece of evidence that could implicate them in my father’s murder.”
Jonathan nodded shakily. “That is correct.”
“So the journal was a fake.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Quite the contrary. Montague figured you would be able to recognize your father’s handwriting. The journal is real.”
A line from his father’s journal slammed back into Thomas’s memory.
Montague pointed out that this was the second time that I have felt unwell after attending a dinner with him and suggested I keep a written record of any odd symptoms I experience after our visits, if only to track if I am perhaps sensitive to one of the more exotic ingredients his chef uses.
“Montague suggested that my father keep the journal. So that when he did die, there was a clear trail of breadcrumbs leading to the Polk estate.”
“My God!” The viscount threw his hand over his mouth.
Thomas looked over at his trembling cousin. His temples were throbbing, and his arms so sore he could barely stand it. “But there is one thing I don’t understand, Jonathan. Montague had no motive. You did. With my father and me gone, the earldom would be yours.”
Jonathan opened his mouth to protest, but no sound came out. Endless minutes passed before he finally gathered himself and spoke.
“You’re right. I did have a motive. But I swear to you, your father’s death had nothing to do with me.”
“That’s easy enough for you to say now,” Polk interjected, his voice shaking with a mixture of anger and disbelief. “Who’s to say you didn’t plan all this from the start? That you didn’t orchestrate everything?”