Page 108 of An Unwilling Earl
Armbruster had told her that her aunt was dead and that they had found everything Charlotte had said they would. The cats. Heads buried in the garden.
“He didn’t have to step in front of that knife. If he hadn’t, he’d be here.”
“He had to protect you.”
She stroked Jacob’s hand, looking for any sign that he could hear her, a twitch of a finger, anything.
“He told me…” She drew a deep breath. It hurt too much to remember. “He told me that I was now the Dowager Countess of Ashland. I don’t want to be the Dowager Countess.”
Armbruster cleared his throat. “He spoke to me a few days before the attack. Told me if anything ever happened to him that I was to watch out for you. He wanted you to do good deeds with your power and position. He wanted lasting changes in the way London handled the downtrodden.”
“It’s a noble cause, but I’m not the one fit to execute it.”
“He seemed to think you are.”
She swiped at a tear that had rolled down her cheek. So many tears and not one had brought Jacob back to her.
“Is this what it was like with Cora? Was it this…” She waved a hand in the air. “Helpless. Just watching. Waiting.”
There was a long pause, and she thought he was probably wishing himself somewhere far away. Away from a weeping woman and a man fighting to live. Then she remembered that Jacob and Armbruster had been friends for much longer than Charlotte had known Jacob, and maybe he was hurting, too.
She looked at him to find that he was staring at Jacob with a look of sorrow.
“It was horrible,” he finally said. “She suffered much in the end and then the baby…” He shook his head and looked away, and Charlotte pictured Cora and the baby up in heaven, waiting for Jacob to join them. Was she being selfish, wanting him to stay with her?
“She would have liked you,” Armbruster said. “And she would have wanted Jacob to be happy and loved.”
Charlotte blinked, and more tears fell. “He is loved,” she whispered.
“I know.”
They sat in silence until Charlotte couldn’t take it anymore. In the silence she thought bad things, like being alone forever.
“Tell me about my aunt,” she said. “I want to know.”
His gaze bounced to her. “It’s all rather horrid. I’m not sure if it’s something you would want to hear.”
“I lived with Aunt Martha and Edmund for five years. I probably won’t be surprised.”
“She was stabbed several times with the same knife that stabbed Jacob. She was sitting at the dinner table, slumped over her dinner plate. He killed her while she was still chewing her food. O’Leary told me that they searched the house. There was a bag in Edmund’s room with a severed head in it. They believe it was his last victim.”
Charlotte let that information sink in. She still didn’t quite believe that they were both dead. She’d lived in fear of her aunt and cousin for so long that the thought of not living in fear was unreal to her.
“The heads…” Armbruster cleared his throat. This was even affecting him. “The heads were found buried in a row. Ironically enough, they were staring at the back of the house, toward Lady Morris’s rooms.”
How appropriate that Edmund would make his victims stare at his mother’s rooms.
“There is more,” Armbruster said. “O’Leary wanted me to tell you that they found Penny.”
Charlotte closed her eyes in anguish for the loss of one of the only people who had shown compassion toward her. “I had hoped that she had run off and was working somewhere that treated her better than Aunt Martha.”
“O’Leary didn’t tell me who she was to you.”
“A servant with a good heart who tried to help me.”
“They think she was the first victim.”
“And when there were no other opportunities in the house, Edmund went hunting elsewhere.”
