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“—and he confirms that you sent him threatening letters when he rejected your advances,” Benedict went on, speaking over her.

If she’d looked surprised before, Priscilla now looked as though she’d been slapped. “Rejected my advances? Is that what he said? That I pursued him—that nothing ever came of it? That’s not true, not at all.Hewent after me; we carried on a passionate affair. We loved one another! And then he threw me aside like I was nothing.”

Benedict glanced over at his wife, who was looking at Priscilla with a distinct look of pity, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“We have a copy of your letter threatening him,” Emily said, the words nearly gentle. “Threatening to harm his career, his reputation—his family,” she said with the finality of a magistrate’s hammer striking a life sentence.

Priscilla was looking wildly between Emily and Benedict now. The look was dramatic, to be certain, but it lacked the usual self-consciousness of most of the Dowager’s acts of martyrdom. She seemed genuinely distressed. Benedict was beginning to see Emily’s side of things—thiswasa bit sad. His mother had apparently invented some elaborate narrative in her head that was entirely in conflict with the facts.

“He was meant to comebackto me,” she whined. “He wasmine.”

“He’s married,” Benedict said shortly. “He was never yours. And he certainly would never have deigned to look your way again after you had his daughter killed.”

“I didn’t kill her!” Priscilla shrieked. “Theo killed her!”

“At your command!” Benedict insisted. “And then when another man swung for the crime, you blackmailed Dowling because youknewwho had really killed Lady Grace Miller.”

“Yes, I knew!” the Dowager snapped, looking more and more unraveled every second. She barely resembled the woman Benedict had long known now, appearing like a cornered wild animal, snapping pointlessly as it was pursued by hunters. “And if I blackmailed Theo into coming back to me, what did it matter? Hawkins was already dead. The Miller chit was already dead. There was nobody who stood to lose more—nobody exceptme.”

“How can you say that?” Emily asked, sounding horrified. “How can you make this about you when my friend wasmurderedfornothingbut petty jealousy?”

There was a mad glint in Priscilla’s eye as she looked at Emily. It made Benedict want to sidle between them, to block Emily from his mother’s gaze, but he didn’t want to discourage whatever further admission she seemed on the brink of making.

“Nothing? Nothing you say. You don’t know how right you are; Lady Grace was nothing. All you shiny girls are nothing. You’re born to be nothing, bred to be pawns. You’re fattened up like calves destined for slaughter, fed stories ofloveandhappiness. But I tell you—none of it is real. None of it. If you ask me, the Miller girl waslucky. She left this world while she was still theton’s brightest, shiniest star. She didn’t see what it was like to be cast aside, used up, forgotten.”

Benedict was disgusted. “You won’t be forgotten now,” he said, the words low and pained. The truth had to come out, much as the part of him that abhorred scandal hated to admit it. But he could not hide it. Not this.

Priscilla did not heed his words; she was still fixed on Emily.

“You’ve already seen it,” she said, a bitter smile around her lips. “You were a wallflower, a reject, and outcast. You had to become a slattern just to secure yourself a husband. You don’t deserve a merciful ending…but you don’t deserve your happiness, either.”

And then, before Benedict could fully process the implications of these words, his mother plunged her hand down into the side of her chair, the one she’d insisted on sitting upon despite Benedict’s direction. She pulled out a stiletto, its long, thin blade glinting in the light.

And then, in a flash, she threw herself at Emily, knife held out before her.

The world slowed, eternities passing between each heartbeat. Benedict lunged in turn, but he was too far away, too slow. He watched, his body alight with anguish, as Emily’s eyes went wide, as she screamed. Her hands came out in a defensive position; she lurched to the side, away from the attack.

And then Priscilla was atop her, and Benedict, that one, crucial moment too late, got his hands around his mother, grabbing her skirts and her arm to haul her backward, away from his wife.

He’d moved urgently, without finesse; when he yanked his mother back, he did so with sufficient force to send them both toppling to the ground. Benedict slammed his shoulder into the hardwood with enough vigor that it threatened to go numb, but he pushed his own discomfort away. He couldn’t let go, couldn’t let her hurt Emily. Not his Emily.

It was only when the guards he’d left waiting outside stormed in, summoned by the screaming, that he realized he’d been calling for his wife, again and again, in a hoarse, desperate tone while his mother struggled for freedom atop him.

Firm hands grasped the writhing Priscilla. “It’s a’right, My Lord,” a gruff, east-accented voice told him. “We’ve got ‘er.”

The instant his mother was remanded into the custody of two neatly dressed but enormously burly men, another body collapsed atop Benedict’s.

“Benedict!” Emily cried, and her worried voice made his heart begin to beat again. “Are you all right?”

He wanted to clutch her, to never let her go, but he needed to see her, too.

“Let me up,” he urged, his hands traveling over her back, her waist, trying to ascertain as quickly as possible that she was whole and hale, not the brutal victim of his mother’s knife. Emily seemed to find it equally difficult to pull herself from his arms but allowed him to lean her until they were both sitting up.

Priscilla’s furious shrieking faded into the background as Benedict took in his wife. Her face was pale, save for the bright, angry splotches of red on her cheeks. But she was mobile, was alert, was checking him over with the same feverishness with which he inspected her. In fact, she seemed entirely unharmed, except…

His eyes froze on the thin scratch above Emily’s collarbone, so small it might have been made by a seamstress’ careless pinning, rather than a near-miss from a deadly blade. He blazed with fury as he saw where a single, precious drop of blood had welled up.

Emily followed the line of his gaze.