Chapter Thirty

S hortly after breakfast, Pippa walked into the orangery. Something was amiss.

It was quiet.

The faucet was dripping in the back right corner, but she always turned it off completely, as would Bea. She stopped to take in the situation. The philodendron's leaves were bent and had light yellow cracks. Someone had been there—someone with little regard for breaking leaves of precious tropical plants.

Pippa slowly walked farther into the orangery, carefully listening to the familiar sounds of her favorite place. She closed her eyes to take in the atmosphere as she knew it before she'd received spectacles.

The silence in the orangery was punctuated by the faucet's irregular drip—a sound that echoed ominously. As Pippa held out her hands, palms outward to feel her way along the path between the high beds, the cool, waxy touch of the tropical leaves sent an unfamiliar chill down her spine. She closed her eyes, reaching out farther into the strange silence, her fingertips brushing against a broken twig of the ficus.

With each breath she took, the intoxicating fragrance of the blooming citrus trees almost obscured the disconcerting smell of disturbed earth. It was a scent that didn't belong in her carefully tended environment, and it made her heart quicken. The orangery—the place she knew like the back of her hand—felt different, foreign.

Suddenly, the soft, hushed sound of breathing caught her attention—a breath that was not hers. It stemmed from the corner where Sir Hoppington usually nestled in his haybed, a space meant for tranquility, not fear. Pippa's heart pounded in her chest as she tried to see through blurry vision, her serene sanctuary now a setting of unexpected suspense.

A rush of shock and then anger coursed through her veins as she raced to the corner, the unsettling crunch of the hay under her feet sounding louder than ever. The breathing was there—steady, yet strained—and it filled the orangery with suspense that cast a dark shadow over its usual luminescence. Pippa felt a knot of unease tighten in her stomach as she neared the haybed.

Stepping farther into the corner, her foot crunched on more hay than usual—hay that she hadn't left there. Pippa was meticulous about her orangery. She always swept the ground, and any dry leaves or dead blossoms were religiously piled into a barrel outside. This untidiness was out of place and out of character for her sanctuary. Someone had disturbed the most peaceful place in Pippa's world. Her heart plummeted to her stomach, an icy sense of dread replacing the knot of unease when she reached the end of the path between the high beds and came to the potted palm tree in the corner where a dark shape hovered. It was a woman. But it wasn't Bea.

"I can see you," Pippa snarled and Wife Six emerged from the shadow of the palm. But before she could think of anything more to say, her breath hitched.

The daybed was a mess, and it was stained with blood. Sir Huffington's blood. All she could make out was a ball of fur.

"What have you done?" Pippa hurried to pick up her little friend. His soft fur was no longer fluffy, but sticky with blood and even though she tried to be gentle, he squealed.

"You caught me early. I was planning on bringing him to your room. His bed is made on your pillow." Wife Six stood next to her, her bloody arms crossed as if the stains of murder were no more than hand cream to her. "Imagine my nap before the face massage." She scratched the dozens of mosquito bites on the face and neck. "Look at me!" Her face appeared swollen, and she bore uncountable red spots everywhere on her skin.

If Pippa hadn't been in such shock, she'd laughed at the sight. Wife Six resembled a pubescent boy in a lady's gown but her hands bore witness to her cruelty.

"What do you want?" Pippa's voice trembled as she gently set her trembling friend back onto the hay.

"Revenge."

"For what?"

"You planted those mosquitos in my bedchamber. Don't think I'm stupid. I know what kind of person you are."

"And what kind is that?" Pippa looked at her bunny, trying to ascertain where he was bleeding. If only she could see!

"The devilish kind. You planned to sneak away for a tryst and wanted to cover it up. You thought I'd be bedridden for days after succumbing to a million stings. But you miscalculated, darling." Her evil stepmother tsked and wagged her blood-stained index finger. "I have a potion that soothes the sting, you see." She produced a glass vial with a cork from somewhere in her bodice.

"What is it?"

"My father's special recipe; it's been in our family for generations." Wife Six slid it back in her cleavage. "And you can't have any."

"What is it?"

"Liberty cap, dear. A mushroom."

Pippa gasped as she recognized what Six held in her fingers. "It is toxic. It causes delirium."

"Very good, ever the botanist. But it also soothes various ailments, including itches from mosquito bites. It's also tasteless and odorless and more importantly, your dear father doesn't notice it in his wine, and it keeps him malleable."

Pippa's stomach dropped to her knees. "You're poisoning my father ? Why?" Pippa had fought with him, but what Wife Six had done was criminal. A crime against a duke would send her straight to the Tower of London.

"Nah, darling. I wouldn't go so far. It's harmless." Wife Six retrieved the bottle and shook it, peering at the bottle with a deranged fondness.

"What do you want from us?" Pippa snarled. It was then she saw the machete that Wife Six held. She'd taken it from its place on the wall. Now she held it out, admiring the edge as if she didn't see the blood on it. Or maybe she did see the blood and that was what she now admired. That was exactly like her, admiring the sharp blade and ignoring the rest. "Isn't it always the same thing we want?"

"Money?" Pippa grimaced. "You'll never get any from us. Not anymore. After this, I can promise you that Father won't and doesn't love you."

Wife Six laughed in a low, curling tone like a witch who had found a way to bottle evil. "You're so easy to manipulate, so stupid. While you look for love, the grownups are out for money."

"You won't get any from me either."

Wife Six nodded. "That's true. I don't expect you to hand it over, but the inheritance will come to me if your father dies. Then it would go to you. Or perhaps the order should be reversed."

Pippa should have been appalled with a woman who waited out her husband's death. It was macabre and evil, but she didn't expect anything else from this woman. "I will discredit everything you stand for, and those friends of yours across the street at 87 Harley Street." She let out a vicious snarl of a laugh. "Don't think that your visits there went unnoticed."

Pippa stepped back.

With a trembling voice, seething with hatred, Wife Six continued, "What you don't know is that Sir Matthew is my father. We'd heard about you, with your fortune. But you're pathetic and clumsy. No man will marry you. So, we came up with this plan. I'd marry your father and my father would do the rest."

So that was why Wife Six had provoked Pippa. Now that she considered it, Pippa realized that her father had started to get sicker and grumpier shortly before he'd married Wife Six. It had all been a trap. Wife Six was Mr. Matthews's daughter and they'd planned to defraud her father to get to Pippa's inheritance.

That Pippa hadn't expected either. She took another step back, holding Truffles even closer but he grew limp in her grasp.

The witch stepped closer. "See, as long as you don't marry, your father is your closest relation and the next in line to inherit from your grandfather. But I can solve that problem easily. All I have to do is give him a double dose of the mushroom cap to disorient him, then push him over the railing of the gallery. He plunges to his death on the marble floor below. It will look exactly like an accident. A happy accident. For me, anyway." She squinted and touched the tip of the machete to her index finger, twirling it so it caught the beams of sunlight pouring through the glass panes of the orangery.

Pippa stepped back. There was the potted palm. She reached the base of the pot with her foot. She knew the paths between the flower beds as well as her own shadow, regardless of how blurry everything was. One of the advantages of years with bad eyesight was that her other senses were sharpened.

"I saw you running behind the bushes with a man. A man I recognize, from that group of doctors across from my father's practice."

Pippa inhaled sharply. Oh no, Nick. "He has nothing to do with this."

"He has everything to do with this. Those handsome young doctors are siphoning away all his clients. They are the reason I had to rid your father of two wives and now a daughter and a niece before I can get some money."

A niece? Bea! But it was her first claim that riveted Pippa's attention. "Rid him of two wives?"

"Old friends of mine." She waved grandly. "But they were useless, so I had to step in myself." She'd been targeting her father for so long! Pippa wondered when Sir Matthews had appeared.

She also realized that to ask for specifics about who Six had poisoned and was planning to poison now was to put herself in more danger than she already faced. Better to focus on the crazed woman's father and their conflict with the doctors of Harley Street. "Clients? Or patients?" With her right hand on the rim of the flower bed, Pippa felt for the orchid bed—one more step.

"Patients or clients. As long as they pay, it's a wash. Your father first came us when your mother was ill, did you know? He didn't even see me, so blind was he with love for his wife and consumed by the fear of losing her. Luckily, it didn't take long. And it was easy to convince him to return to my father to dull the pain of lost love."

"Pah!" Her father had been desperate to overcome his loss. And these vile people had taken advantage of it.

Wife Six laughed coldly. "He responded well to anything that dulled his pain and his mind."

"That's not medicine, it's fraud. Chicanery. Charlatanism."

"It's business, nothing else."

Pippa stepped back, cradling her bunny close to her with one arm. Beneath her palm, his heartbeat grew fainter. She willed herself to focus on the orchid bed and the mulched earth it held, underneath her other palm. There! Tree bark, cork, and dry moss . She grabbed a fist full of the new soil. There were splinters in the wood chips. Good. "You're a criminal."

"If you want to come up the ranks in society, there's no other way."

"There's always another way!"

"Well." Wife Six tightened the grip of the machete. Her eyes, cold and unwavering, bore into Pippa's, a chilling smile playing on her lips. "Well," she drawled again, her voice echoing ominously in the vast orangery. "This is the path I've chosen. The high road you seem to travel is far too lonely for me." She drew closer, and drew her arm back, ready to strike with the machete.

But before she could follow through, Pippa threw a fist full of dry tree bark at Wife Six. She wailed, holding her forearm over her eyes. Blinded, for the moment anyway.

The once peaceful atmosphere of the orangery was filled with Six's screeching, and it was as if the putrid criminal dirtied the familiar, uplifting aromas of the flowers just with the sound of her voice. The knot of fear tightened in Pippa's stomach. She could taste the metallic tang of anxiety on her tongue, and the scent of orchids around her suddenly seemed pungent and overpowering as her other senses heightened. She heard the drip of the tap in the corner on her right and a bird's call outside. She saw Wife Six wiping away the soil yet the way her fingers tensed around the handle of the machete. She'd wanted to discourage the woman, not enflame her ire. But then, the tiny spark of defiance in Pippa's spirit grew into a fiery conflagration that refused to be extinguished. This was her mother's orangery, and Wife Six was an intruder. This was Pippa's territory. Her life.

Seizing the opportunity, Pippa kicked over the three-foot offshoot of the potted Eastern Cape giant cycad palm between them. It was her mother's favorite and probably at least fifty years old. The large plant toppled with a crash, its leaves rustling and its pot shattering, sending shards of terracotta skittering across the polished marble floor. Without glancing backward, clutching Truffles close to her chest, Pippa turned and bolted. Her heart pounded as she darted through the narrow corridors created by her flower beds.

Her mother's orangery, once a place of tranquility and beauty, had been transformed into a battlefield. But it was this battlefield that had just saved her life.

Behind her, there was a low thump followed by an agonized scream. The sound of Wife Six tripping over the fallen palm and hitting the ground was a sweet symphony to Pippa's ears. She didn't slow down, but the corners of her mouth twitched upwards in a triumphant smile. Fear had met feistiness, and for now, feistiness had won.

But Truffles needed help.

Pippa burst from the orangery, her heart pounding like a wild drum in her chest. The garden lay before her, bathed in the soft glow of the morning sun. It was a place of beauty and respite, but now it was just a path to escape. She ran, her satin slippers skidding on the dew-kissed grass, her silken gown catching on the thorns of roses she usually admired.

Her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, but there was one beacon of clarity amidst the chaos—Nick. He was not an aristocrat; he didn't have an ancestral estate, or a title passed down through generations. Yet, he had something far more valuable, something the people in her world often lacked— sincerity, kindness, and an unpretentious love for her. He was unique. And he had skills—the kind that could save her pet.

He was special in so many ways. And she didn't want to spend another day without him. Unlike hers, his world was straightforward and uncomplicated, not filled with secrets, deceit, and a thirst for power.

She knew she wouldn't have her father's permission to marry, but she had vowed to save Nick from the risks she'd created for him. She was a daughter of the aristocracy, bound by rules, traditions, and expectations, and she'd defied them. But at that moment, as she ran through the garden and into the park, she realized there was nowhere else she would rather be than with him, even if it meant turning her back on the world she was born into. Nick had treated her with more respect, and love, and caring, than that filthy rich world of hers had over the past years.

Pippa commanded the driver of her father's carriage to take her to 87 Harley Street. Seeing the rabbit and the blood on her dress, he made no protests. Pippa cradled Truffles with both hands; his breathing was shallow, and even without her glasses she could see that his eyes were glazing. Blood from his wound stained her hands red.

But as she rode in the carriage toward the safety and comfort of Nick's presence, a chilling thought gripped her. Now that Wife Six's plans had been revealed and thwarted, would she now move to kill her father?

"I won't let any of this happen, Truffles," Pippa whispered to her little friend.

Mr. Matthews and Wife Six wanted her money, her inheritance, even if it meant poisoning her father and killing her. It was Pippa's fault that they'd even targeted Father. They'd ruin everything Nick and his friends had worked for; they'd take good doctors away from patients who needed them for what? Superficial and hypocritical self-enrichment? And still, it was all because of her. She was worse than a clumsy goose, she'd been blind and na?ve, consumed with her own petty problems. No more!

Inadvertently, her family was jeopardizing the livelihood of the man she loved and thus, his life. And his sister's! The realization hit her like a punch to the gut, the sense of doom spreading like poison.

The journey to Nick's place was filled with dread, the looming threat of her family casting a long shadow over her happiness. Indirectly, she was paying for the man threatening Nick's livelihood. It was a moment of reckoning, a moment that would decide the fate of their love. And Pippa was ready to fight for love.