The man was taking his bloody time pulling down the dumbwaiter. At this rate, Ian would beat her downstairs, and she’d have to improvise something to distract him from overthinking what they were doing. Her thoughts ran in a scintillating direction before she corralled them back to focus on her escape.
She thumbed the black-edged envelope tucked into a hidden pocket in her skirt. The letter’s arrival with the menacing bouquet conveyed a simple message, with a complicated outcome. Its sender demanded that Diana make a choice. And left no time for debate.
By the end of the day, she would have to sacrifice something.
The fortune she’d inherited.
The mission she believed was her life’s purpose.
Or the only man she might ever love.
Chaos greeted Ian in the kitchen.
The entire staff had abandoned their posts to gawk at the ominous flower arrangement.
“I won’t have it here!” the cook wailed.
“’Course not, it’s poisonous!”
“And a bad omen.”
“We should burn it!”
“No, that’s worse. We must bury it.”
Despite their overall fear of the thing, they all stood in a close clump around it. Blockading Ian’s route to the dumbwaiter.
Diana had wanted the wedding ceremony at home, rather than in a church, to avoid the rabble-rousing press. Ian had taken it upon himself to secure the special license for them because holding the wedding at the house was ideal for his own plans to lift the necklace.
He hadn’t calculated that if anything went amiss, there would be no retreat from the entirebeau monde.
Mrs. Turner bustled into the kitchen and ordered the servants back to their work. Her mouth pursed as she regarded the special dishes for the wedding breakfast. Silver trays held cold meats and roasted fowl with aspic jelly. Glass bowls glittered with trifle and custard creams and surrounded the five-tiered plum cake frosted in snowy white royal icing.
When she spotted Ian, Turner gestured for him to follow her toward the hallway that housed the dumbwaiters. He placed himself in front of it, hoping that in the event Diana suddenly leaped out of the thing, his height would block Turner’s view.
“Your brother remains unconscious,” the housekeeper said in a hushed tone.
Her stance remained stiff. The woman had overtly resented Ian for years. When his father had returned from Italy one summer with a new wife—and a son he claimed as his own—Turner had glared at Ian with the rancor good society demanded anyone bestow on a bastard.
Over the years, it became harder to deny that Ian wasn’t John Holt’s natural son. They both possessed a cleft in their chin, and Ian grew into the same tallheight and rangy build as his father. But Turner never warmed to him; her favor rested with Jared.
“The doctor believes his condition isn’t from drink alone,” Turner went on. “He says Mr. Holt’s been at theopium.”
And not for the first time. “Did the doctor say when Jared will revive?”
“He believes it will be hours. And Mr. Holt will be very ill when he comes out of it, possibly for days.” She pressed a handkerchief to her lips. “They will have to cancel the wedding.”
“Postpone it,” Ian corrected. “The scandal sheets already have something to write about. We must avoid trying to make it worse by suggesting the wedding won’t happen. Miss Rives’s reputation would suffer.”
And Jared’s debtors would become uneasy at the prospect he wasn’t getting his windfall. They were the most probable suspects responsible for his brother’s condition.
Ian needed to investigate the place Sunderland had found Jared. He didn’t want to entertain the thought that his father’s old adversaries had targeted his brother. It complicated things unnecessarily.
And made it even more dangerous for Diana to go sniffing about where Jared had spent the night.
Turner tipped her chin. “All the same, I must tell Miss Rives.”
“Please wait.” Ian held up a hand. “Diana has asked for some time alone with her thoughts.”