Page 76 of To Hunt the Hunter

“Touché! Well played, my boy, well played. Damn me, but I really thought I’d won that time. Ah well, the game continues, I see.”

“No,” Lucian replied. “I have no patience left with this game, and you have no cards left to play. And so you will leave.”

“Ah, but I do, or did you want the world to have proof that the lovely Miss Hunt is your whore?”

Lucian stamped down the impulse to react with difficulty, knowing it was what his uncle wished for.

“You will keep your filthy mouth from ever speaking her name again, Uncle, or I shall make it so you cannot speak at all.”

He spoke calmly, aware that that his threats were more potent when there was no emotion underlying them.

“No,” his uncle’s voice was hard, angry now. “You are not the only one who tires of this game. You are in my way, Lucian, just as your father was in my way. I am tired of waiting around. I am growing older, and one way or another I will have that bloody title, the money, and all the things you, your father, and your brothers stole from me.”

Lucian stiffened as his uncle pulled a pistol from inside his coat. Despite his words to Matilda, he’d known there was a risk that Theodore was mad enough to act out of impatience and anger. He would not get away with it, but that was small comfort.

“You will hang if you kill me now. There are witnesses, people who know you are here tonight. You will be the marquess as you desire so badly, but only until the day you die, which will be sooner than I believe you are hoping for.”

“I don’t think so,” his uncle replied, smiling, his expression so gentle and sad that Lucian’s stomach turned. “They’ve never come for me before, after all.”

Lucian paused, an unpleasant sensation climbing up his spine. “What do you mean by that?”

Theodore grinned at him, and there was the flash of evil that Lucian had always known was there, but no one else had ever believed in. Only Pippin, and eventually Denton and Mrs Frant. He studied his uncle now, noting that his clothes were crumpled, and he’d not shaved. He looked ill, in fact, his face lined with strain, his colour high.

“I admit, I did not think it would work quite so admirably,” Theodore said. “I mean, I only hoped to rid myself of your father. I never dreamed to remove two from the succession in one fell swoop. Though I always regretted that your mother died too. Such a beautiful creature, she was. I had hopes of taking her on myself.”

Lucian’s heart crashed about in his chest, and he fought to keep his breathing even.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, refusing to believe it. Theodore was just a man, an evil man, not a monster of those proportions. Not like in his dreams. “No. It was an accident, a terrible accident.”

“Of course it was an accident,” his uncle replied, his tone soothing, like Lucian was a boy again. “I just… helped it along a little, is all.”

“No,” Lucian said.

His uncle smiled, removing a fleck of lint from his crumpled coat sleeve as if he were dressed in his finery for a grand ball. “Your father never took the least notice of his staff, did he? They were nothing more than insects, scurrying little insects, ants that did his bidding. I’m not like that, though. I noticed. I notice everything.”

Lucian’s chest was tight, a sensation like ice water trickling through his veins. Matilda had once said he had ice in his veins, had she not?

“I noticed that his driver liked a drop of brandy more than he ought,” Theodore continued, smiling. “And so I gave him a little gift. A fine bottle it was, though dosed with opium, I’m afraid. And do you remember that evening, the evening your father and mother and brother went out to dine with friends, all dressed up in their finery?”

Lucian nodded, unable to speak. He remembered. He remembered every moment in terrible detail. His mother dressed up, jewels sparkling, impossibly beautiful, and him and Thomas standing on the steps, waving them off. He had spent far too much of his childhood wondering what had happened that night, how he might have stopped it, how he might have at least saved Philip from going out to that blasted dinner. He hadn’t wanted to go; he only had because Father had insisted.

“Do you remember your little brother, Thomas, that night?” Theodore continued, a sad, singsong note to his voice that nauseated Lucian.

It made him want to stop the vile story before he could hear any more, and made him want to put his hands about his uncle’s throat and just… squeeze.

“He always loved to give the horses a sugar lump. Do you remember, Lucian?”

Lucian didn’t answer, a sickening cold sensation swirling in his guts. He didn’t want to hear this.

“You should have seen Thomas’ face when I finally told him he’d poisoned his father’s horses. I told him that a week or so before he died, I believe. He was rather upset to discover that he was responsible for all those senseless deaths, because… I wasn’t even there, was I?”

“No,” Lucian said again, denying it, shaking his head even as he felt the truth in the dreadful words, even as the ground was shifting beneath him, like the tide dragging the sand from under his feet. “Oh, God. You did it….”

“I did,” Theodore replied amicably. “Not that you can prove it. It was someone else who put the bottle of brandy in the driver’s hand, someone else who gave little Thomas the sugar lumps, but I was the spider spinning his web, guiding all the little insects that your father took no notice of until I caught the big juicy fly I wanted. Three flies, as it turned out.”

“You killed my family.”

“Yes,” Theodore said, all trace of that cordial old man gone now, his face hard and implacable. “And now, I shall kill you. You’ve caused a great deal of trouble, Lucian. I never knew a boy who was so hard to put an end to. Thomas was so much easier to destroy, but you… it was like there was some golden charm protecting you.”