“Does Lady Hillbrook take laudanum?” he asked.
Her sister never traveled without a supply of the drug. There were days when laudanum offered Roberta her only escape from horror. Roberta shot Jonas a frightened glance. “You’re not suggesting I kill myself, are you?”
Jonas’s lips quirked at her dramatic tone. “No.”
“Then what?”
“Take a dose and go to bed.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Not after this.” Her sister’s gaze slid from Jonas’s face as though his scars offended her. Even here where he did his best to save her, Roberta couldn’t look him in the face and say thank you.
Oh, my love, no wonder you’ve learned to mistrust the world.
“Listen to him, Roberta,” Sidonie said urgently. “He’s your only hope of avoiding the noose.”
Roberta’s eyes widened in fear. “Surely it won’t come to that.”
“Surely it will.” Sidonie tried to shock her into understanding their dire situation. She looked at Jonas. “What do you want us to do?”
His gaze met hers. The panic thundering in her chest quieted under the glow of approval in his gray eyes.
“Lady Hillbrook, I want you to take enough laudanum to put you to sleep. When the servants return, they’ll discover you unconscious in your room. If anyone asks, you slept all afternoon and had no idea your husband arrived. His death comes as unexpected news.”
“Yes.” Roberta sounded stronger. “Yes, I can do that.”
“Sidonie, we need to clean up the nursery, then you need to leave the house until the servants return. You’ll walk back across the park and enter the house to discover William’s body. When the authorities arrive, you’ll say you came down from London with Roberta, then took a stroll while your sister recovered from the journey. We need to establish that the house contained only two people, a sleeping Roberta and William, who faced irretrievable financial ruin. He either fell or in a fit of despair threw himself down the stairs.”
Frail hope stirred. “You know, it just might work.”
Roberta shot Jonas a suspicious glance. “You’re very cozy with my sister, Mr. Merrick.”
Jonas’s mouth flattened with impatience. “We’ll talk about that when you’re not facing arrest for murder, Lady Hillbrook. Now we must act.”
Roberta frowned, but even she realized there was no time for an inquisition. “If I must.”
Sidonie released a relieved sigh. “Roberta, go and lie down. I’ll help Jonas then come and mix your laudanum.”
Roberta clasped Sidonie’s forearm with a shaking hand. “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”
“Courage.” She embraced Roberta.
Roberta drew away and nodded slowly. She turned toward her room but hesitated and her voice rose with hysteria. “I… I can’t. I can’t walk away when he’s lying there dead. It’s too horrid.”
“Shut your eyes, Lady Hillbrook.” Jonas stepped closer and swung Roberta into his arms. Roberta squeaked with shock, but after a delay that pierced Sidonie’s heart, she twined her arms around Jonas’s powerful neck.
“I assume she uses the viscountess’s apartments,” he said over his shoulder to Sidonie.
“Yes. They’re along—”
“I know.”
Of course he knew. He’d grown up in this house.
Left alone, Sidonie’s strongest instinct was to avoid looking at William, but macabre curiosity won out. In death her brother-in-law seemed shrunken, the shock and rage of his last moments distorting his face. His dull eyes glared past her and his body twisted grotesquely against the flagstones. The effects of his fight with Jonas were obvious. She hoped to heaven nobody attributed the bruises and abrasions to anything except the fall.
She still didn’t feel anything. Relief or grief or regret. It disturbed her to be so cold. She should feel something when a man whose life she’d shared for six years, however unwillingly, lay dead in front of her. Her only real reaction was a vengeful wish that William roasted in hell for eternity.
When Jonas approached, she glanced up. He’d retrieved a bottle of brandy from Roberta’s supply for mixing with her laudanum. Sidonie’s expression must have betrayed her troubled thoughts because he sent her a reassuring smile. “We’ll come through this, tesoro. Have faith.”