Page 117 of A Fearless Heart
“If you were killing all my potential suitors, why didn’t you kill Mr Pollack?”
Addison chuckled. “As if you’d ever accept him! I had no fear of that.”
Cady nodded, though she was still stunned by the depth of Addison’s obsession with “protecting” her.
“Charles Tompsett?” Gabe went on.
“Much the same. He went to school with Trevor Osbourne years ago. He visited Calderwood many times. Once I caught him ogling Cady when she didn’t notice. She was so young and innocent then. This past year he came to the village of Dorbridge and we struck up a conversation. He asked if Cady was still unmarried. I didn’t need to hear more. I asked him for dinner that evening, and did what I had to do. He traveled back to London the next day and had the excellent timing to die there.
“And as for Lewelleyn Parrish, you can guess. He was poking around London, asking a few too many questions about Arcadia Osbourne and the plants she grew and the nature of poisons. I couldn’t have him spouting absurd suspicions about her being a killer, so I pretended to have some information he’d find helpful and arranged a meeting. When his back was turned, I doctored his coffee. Honestly, why people weren’t more careful about things, I’ll never know.”
“I picked up where Parrish left off,” Gabe told him. “Did you never think that you were taking too many chances? Why did you kill Malcolm MacCuley? I never found the connection to Cady there.”
“Oh, that. Well, to be completely truthful, that was a more…personal issue. I owed him some money and he was pressing me to pay. He was very rude when we spoke at the hotel where I was staying…”
“The Hotel Napier,” Jem said, from his post at the wall.
“Indeed. He came as I requested. And the bottle was right there, so…” He shrugged.
“Jesus. What about Huxley?”
“I overheard him speaking to someone at Kew Park. Kept talking about ‘darling Osbourne’ and ‘precious Osbourne.’ And I’d previously seen him hanging about with Cady’s brother, so I assumed he intended to propose to Cady very soon. I also invited him for a chat at the hotel. He was a second son with no reliable income, not a good match for her at all. I couldn’t risk it.”
“He was talking aboutme, you idiot,” Trevor spat. “For someone so obsessed with Cady, you’ve missed some rather large hints. He was a member of my club, and I was very fond of him…and his income or family lineage never came into play.”
“Oh.” Addison looked surprised, then slightly abashed. “Well, then that was a mistake.”
“Amistake?” Cady echoed, appalled. “You didn’t bother to confirm which Osbourne he was talking about before you killed him? That’s more than a mistake.”
“You don’t sound very grateful, Cady.”
“I’m not, Mr Addison. You did terrible things in my name, and caused me more pain than I can possibly convey. I lived in terror, not even knowing what exactly was going on. But I trusted you as a friend when I should not have. If I’m grateful for anything, it’s the lesson you taught me—not to trust anyone purporting to have my best interests at heart.”
“Sweet Cady, you have to forgive me.”
“I certainly don’t. Did you actually take any clephobine, or was that merely a feint to distract me when I found you in the tunnel?”
Addison sighed. “I may have…exaggerated a bit.”
“But you did give a dose to Gabe.” She glanced over at Gabe’s figure, remembering the terrifying moment when she thought she’d found him too late.
“Only when I saw the carriage approaching, and I knew you’d finally figured out my clue.”
“Close to your heart, burning in hell,” she quoted. “But why did you even send a clue? Why not just kill Gabe in London immediately?”
Addison shook his head sadly, saying, “Darling Cady, do you still not understand? It all starts and ends here at Calderwood. This is your home. I wanted to bring you back home, and this man was the way to do it. But I also wanted to prove my devotion to you.”
Cady gasped. “By killing the man I fell in love with?”
“That’s not love,” he objected. “You’re young, you don’t understand love yet. Your infatuation with him would have faded with time.”
“I don’t think you’re the appropriate person to explain love, considering that you’ve killed a lot of men to justify your version of it.”
“Nonsense. Cady, you would have come to love me, as I’ve come to love you.”
She shuddered at Addison’s idea of love. “No. I’d have hated you forever. What you did wasn’t done for love. You just wanted to put me in another box. Controlling me in a different way, deciding who was good enough for me, what I would be allowed to do.”
Mr Addison just looked away, shaking his head, still not willing to accept that Cady couldn’t ever love him.
