The Physicians Gave Up on the Duke’s Only Son – The Herbwoman They Scorned Stayed the Whole Night…

Chapter 10

Julian Croft was reading in the library when they returned. He looked up from his book as the door opened, and his expression — when he saw Alexander standing in the doorway, fully dressed, pale but upright, with Elara and Pemberton behind him — was the first honest thing Elara had ever seen on his face.

It was fear.

“Alexander,” he said, rising. “You should be in bed. The journey — ”

“Was necessary.” Alexander walked into the room and closed the door behind him. “I have something to show you, cousin.”

He laid Mercer’s confession on the table between them. Julian looked at it, and the color drained from his face in a way that was almost theatrical.

“I don’t know what this is.”

“You will read it, and then you will tell me whether you wish to make your own confession, or whether you prefer to let the magistrate extract it from you in his own time.”

The silence that followed was the longest Elara had ever endured. She stood near the door, her hands clasped in front of her, watching a man’s entire life crumble behind his eyes.

“Twenty physicians,” Julian said at last, and his voice was bitter. “Twenty of the finest minds in England, and none of them could see what a scullery maid noticed in five minutes. I accounted for everything. The ambush. The wound. The physician. The venom. I accounted for every variable except the one person in this house who was too insignificant to notice.”

He laughed, and there was no humor in it. “A maid. I was undone by a maid.”

“You were undone by your own arrogance,” Alexander said. “The ring. You wore your signet ring into a poison trader’s warehouse. You could not resist. You wanted him to know he was dealing with a man of consequence — and you wanted the ring on your finger while you did it. That is what undid you, Julian. Not a maid. Yourself.”

Julian’s gaze shifted to Elara, and there was something in it that made her skin prickle. “I should have had you dismissed the moment I saw you lingering outside that sick room.”

“But you didn’t,” she said quietly. “Because you didn’t see me. None of you ever did.”