Page 125 of The Hunter

“Why did you leave?” she railed in her lonely misery after her fictitious lover had callously abandoned her.

Christopher, why did you leave?

“Was it that you were a man with a heart impossible to tame? Or was I a woman not worthy to do so?”

There, she’d done it. The temptress turned vulnerable. Now for the tragedy. Jane, in the role of the jilted wife—the real victim—would appear with the knife and—

Wait a moment, what is Lady Thurston doing backstage?

And what was that in her hand?

The countess stepped onto the stage, and several of the audience members gasped. Some with delight, but others in the peerage—those who knew Lady Thurston—couldn’t contain their shock. A lady of thetonas an actress? It just wasn’t done.

Backstage had been almost deserted by crew and performers alike.

The brilliant lights glinted off Lady Thurston’s pistol, the one she trained on Millie.

The countess looked like the proper society matron upon first glance, but when one was as close as Millie was to her, the inconsistencies became apparent. Her dress was just slightly askew, as though she’d slept in it. Her hair artfully arranged, but a little too wild, too undone.

The costume artists couldn’t have concocted it better themselves.

“Did you enjoy it, whore?” Lady Thurston asked as she advanced, her eyes glittering with malice and touched with madness. “Did my husband woo you? Seduce you? Or did he buy you like the common prostitute you are?”

The audience audibly gasped at her vulgarity, obviously riveted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Millie stalled, entirely shocked. Why wasn’t someone doing something? Couldn’t they see she was in danger? That Lady Thurston was utterly mad?

“He was always the type of man who believed in tradition.” Lady Thurston sneered. “That a wife was for breeding and a mistress was for loving. Do you think you were special to him? Do you think that he didn’t have ahundredjust like you? That he didn’t get bastards on them, too?”

Millie tried her best to compose herself. “It’s not what you think,” she said, putting out a staying hand. “Your husband was in love with my—”

“Shut up,” Lady Thurston hissed. “I don’t want to hear excuses from your whore mouth. This is the end of you.” She lifted the gun.

Desperation swept over Millie with such strength she could taste it. She felt abandoned. Deserted. As she frantically searched the darkness beyond the curtain for someone,anyoneto rescue her. Finding no one, she turned to the audience. Unable to see more than the closest members, she dimly realized that they all thought this was part of the production. Fans fluttered like bejeweled leaves in an approaching tempest and hands clasped at heaving bosoms. The crowd sat in their silk and velvet, watching the spectacle unfold with breathless anticipation.

Perhaps tonight they’d get more than they’d paid for.

God, was she truly going to die in front of hundreds of spectators? Would they applaud as she bled out on the stage?

It all seemed too cheap and disingenuous now. Fame. Money. The love of a country who would readily call her a whore. While the murders of mistresses went unsolved and the injustices of men went unnoticed. Suddenly all the suffering and sadness of the world seemed to crash in on her, and Millie wondered if death might be less painful. A soul-deep agony drenched her in pain as she thought of Jakub, of all he’d lost. Of all the things she’d kept from coming to light, to protect him.

He’d have lost two mothers at such a young age.

Would he hate her then? Would he remember her as his mother?

“Don’t do this,” Millie whispered. “I have a child.”

She realized the moment the words left her mouth that it was the worst possible thing she could have said.

Lady Thurston actually snarled, the sound more evocative of a badger than a highborn woman. “You must have felt so smug meeting us in the foyer, introducing my husband to the son he’d thought he’d lost.” Lady Thurston drifted closer, insanity baring the whites of her eyes. “I did what every wife should do. I turned a blind eye to his infidelities, which he didn’t even have the decency to hide from me. I knew the name of every whore he kept.”

Millie shook her head in denial, taking a step back for every advance Lady Thurston made. “You’re mistaken. Inever—”

“I said silence!” Katherine Fenwick screamed, swinging the pistol wildly.

Millie clamped her lips shut. She could see the copper heads of the bullets shining from the barrel of the gun. Fresh fear broke over her, causing her stomach to boil with nausea.

Time. She was running out of it.