around the room as they were all seated around the table together. It was the first opportunity he’d had to ask her about the most curious part of the day thus far. “Averston?”
Callie glanced over at him, all wide-eyed innocence. “What?”
“Do not say what as if you aren’t perfectly aware it was unexpected. Did you ask him to come?”
She ducked her head. “No, I didn’t. It was rather a surprise for me, as well. But I think it was a nice gesture, don’t you?”
“That depends on what will come of it, I suppose.”
And she smiled once more, beaming at him in a way that literally stopped his heart. “Family, of course.”
He continued to stare at her, simply swept away by how beautiful she was and by how much he simply adored her. Even as the laughter and low hum of conversation filled the room as everyone enjoyed their meal and the celebration of a newly formed family, Winn felt as if they were the only people in the world.
*
The dowager duchess finished the last letter and placed it on the table. They weren’t sentimental goodbyes. She certainly didn’t believe in such things. Instead, they were written in the same vein with which she might have conversed with the recipients. Some were snide. Some were belittling. Others still were bossy and manipulative. Those letters represented the last opportunity for her to manage people as she had been doing throughout her life.
Getting to her feet, she draped her shawl about her shoulders and rang for the maid. When the servant entered, not her own lady’s maid as Gerald had decided that the woman could not be trusted, but a maid from his own household, she glowered at the girl. “See that those go out in today’s post. I’m going out into the garden.”
The maid bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, your grace.”
Once the girl was gone with the letters, she waited for a few moments and then stepped out into the corridor. The girl would likely have informed the two footmen stationed at the bottom of the stairs to prevent her from leaving the house. If she did go out to the garden, they’d follow her and hover until she could do nothing.
Gerald had left Highcliff’s vial of poison in her room lest she change her mind and make use of it. But that was the coward’s way out. She’d not lie in a bed, covered in her own vomit when she died. No. She’d die with the same decisiveness and violence with which she had lived. Rather than going down the stairs, she climbed upwards to the next level.
There was a long gallery that looked down onto the ornate marble floor of the entryway. It was lined with the portraits of family members past, those who’d acquitted themselves with honor and duty and a few who had done nothing worthy of the family name other than to die and spare it more indignity. Walking along that narrow hall, she glanced at each portrait as she passed it, until she reached the portrait of her late husband. She’d never loved him, but she’d certainly seen his worth. It was why she’d consented to the match, after all. Being a slightly well-heeled duchess was much preferred to being the wife of even the wealthiest merchant, after all.
Turning away from the portrait, she looked over the railing to the foyer below. From that point, a height of at least three stories, and with her age and blasted infirmities, there was little doubt the fall would kill her. Placing her hands on the banister, she leaned out. A fraction of an inch more, leaning out further and further by the second, until she finally felt the pull of it, the slight dizziness that took her, and then she let herself fall, tumbling over the wooden banister. She never uttered a sound. But the servants shrieked as she hit the floor. There was but a split second of awareness, a brief flash of pain and then nothing. Blackness drew in around her as all the sounds seemed to blur into a distant hum that grew fainter until it, too, was simply gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I t was still early, not quite noon, but Effie and the children were gone. Highcliff and Averston had left as well. The servants had all but vanished, it seemed. Looking around the room, Callie realized that she and Winn were entirely alone.
“Oh,” Callie said in surprise. “Well, it certainly cleared out very quickly, didn’t it?”
“I