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“And I suppose you’re going to tell me the three of you had nothing to do with the fire in my study last night?”
The viscount scoffed. “Of course we didn’t, Ashford. How could you think such a thing?”
Jonathan, however, looked at his feet.
“Polk, Victor, we’ve been friends for a long time. I can’t imagine that one of you started that fire.” Thomas stood and pointed at his cousin. “But Tricia recognized your voice, Jameson, and heard you mention that you were my cousin. She didn’t recognize the other voice, which makes me think it probably wasn’t you, Polk. But perhaps your father was involved.”
“For the love of God, Thomas,” Polk said. “We’ve been neighbors since we were both in nappies. How could you possibly think…”
“It occurred to me that you may have been unknowing participants.” He turned to Jonathan. “How did you get the viscount and his son involved? How were you able to get them to slip poison into my father’s food?”
Thomas saw a flash of hurt in Jonathan’s eyes before he stood up from his chair, his face pale.
“Thomas,” Jonathan said in a shaky voice. “You truly think I’ve got the blood of your father on my hands? He was my uncle!” His voice broke midway, and he had to clear his throat before he could continue. “You think I used the viscount and his son as my puppets?”
“To get my earldom,” Thomas said. “Those jewels you’ve been handing out like sweets are counterfeit, Jonathan. I had a jeweler look at them. You’re flaunting riches that don’t exist. You got rid of my father, and last night you wanted to get rid of me before I produced an heir.”
Jonathan fell back into his chair, looking stricken. “No, the fire… You don’t understand, Thomas, it wasn’t for you. And of course we didn’t know Lady Patricia was in there. You don’t understand. I would never... I couldn’t... You’re talking about family, Thomas! Don’t you see?”
But Thomas was unstoppable now, his anger and hurt pouring out in a torrent of words. “See what, exactly? That my cousin has become a snake? That you’ve lied to us all, manipulated us all?”
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.”
