Page 33 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

IT WAS EASIER than Hyacinth might have expected to get Fateux drunk. He progressed from wine to brandy easily enough and then took no nudging at all to having whisky after that.

Though they were drinking at the dining room table, he ate little.

And as the evening wore on, she said less and less as he spoke more and more. His anger toward Champeraigne was already bubbling under the surface. She didn’t have to do much more than validate him here and there.

Hours later, he was staggering up the stairs to Champeraigne’s bedchamber, raging incoherently.

Hyacinth trailed slowly after him. She had long ago realized that the idea of a duel was too neat and clean for whatever was going to happen.

This would not end like that, at ten paces, with some impartial party calling out orders.

It was going to be messier, and she had done it herself, had put it all into motion.

She considered, as Fateux banged on Champeraigne’s locked door, that it was going to go badly for Fateux.

But if so, she would get free of Champeraigne one way or the other.

She’d get their marriage annulled so that Champeraigne and Seraphine could get married.

It would be a happy ending of sorts, even if the dukes would not be free of Champeraigne .

However, she shouldn’t have worried.

Fateux banged on the door, shrieking at the top of his lungs in French, going on about how he had tolerated this kind of behavior from his wife and friend for far too long.

And then the door opened, and Champeraigne was there in his trousers, sans shirt, his hair sticking up in the back, saying, “Calm down, calm down, Mathieu.”

Fateux yanked a knife out of a sheath on his belt and stuck the tip of the blade under Champeraigne’s chin. He told Champeraigne to speak in French, speaking French himself.

And then Champeraigne switched to French, hands up in surrender, backing away from the blade.

Fateux followed him into the room, chased him all the way across to the far wall, where he pinned them there, knife point at Champeraigne’s throat.

Seraphine was in the bed, holding the blanket to her chin, demanding to know what her husband thought he was doing.

Fateux said to her, in French, “Whatever I said to you back then, Seraphine, I never meant him. You could have bedded anyone but him.”

Her eyes widened in shock.

Fateux turned back to Champeraigne. “And you? My wife?”

Champeraigne let out a noise of disbelief. When he spoke again, it was in English. “Put the knife down, Mathieu. You’re drunk. You’ve never given a shit about her—” But he never finished speaking because Fateux punched the knife upwards into his throat. He pulled it out.

Blood poured down over Champeraigne’s neck and bare chest. He groped to cover his neck with one hand.

Seraphine screamed, leaping over to him, naked.

Fateux stepped backwards, eyes wide, looking stunned. “Fuck,” he whispered.

Champeraigne was trying to hold the blood into his neck. Seraphine was trying to hold the blood into his neck.

Blood was going everywhere .

Fateux dropped the bloody knife, letting out a choked noise.

It took Champeraigne a long time to die.

AT LEAST IT seemed like a long time to Hyacinth, who stood frozen in the doorway, watching them try things, like tying sheets around his neck, trying to stanch the blood.

Seraphine was naked and blood was smeared all over her skin.

Champeraigne was sprawled out, back against the wall, lifeless—though his eyes were wide open.

Fateux was trying to help Seraphine, but he was drunk and he slipped on the blood on the floor at one point, going sprawling.

Champeraigne kept gurgling and reaching out, trying to say something, maybe a plea, maybe something else.

Hyacinth just stared at it all, gaping at it, feeling a strange sense of power.

This must be what it was like, what Champeraigne had done, using people like playing cards.

It felt… good.

Eventually, Champeraigne stopped moving.

But Seraphine didn’t, not for some moments after that.

Finally, though, she caught sight of Hyacinth just standing there, watching everything. Her eyes narrowed. “I see you, mon chaton, ” she said in a low and lethal voice.

And at this, Hyacinth fled.

She rushed down the stairs and went to the door. It was dark outside now, but it was a warm night in early summer. She shut the door behind her, lifted her skirts, and ran.

She ran all the way to Dunrose’s house, where the servant who answered the door told her that everyone was at dinner now, and she demanded to be shown into the dining room, even though the servant said that she must be announced and that he must ask the Duke of Rutchester, because he was running the household.

She pushed past the servant and sprinted her way through the house and into the dining room.

The three dukes and the two duchesses all looked up at her as she barreled inside.

“Well,” she said. “Champeraigne is dead.”