CHAPTER 213: CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

Back at the Ellington manor, Augusta was consumed by a frustrated, powerless rage. The triumphant applause that had been meant for her was still ringing in her ears as it echoed the sound of her own defeat. She needed to crash out.

And what better way to vent her frustration than on someone completely unresponsive?

She stormed out of her room, her torn dress and disheveled hair a testament to her shattered composure. She ignored the frightened servants who scattered from her path. She had one destination in mind: her husband’s room. It was the one place in the house where she still held absolute power, a room where she was the unchallenged queen.

She threw open the door to Henry’s sickroom, ready to unleash a torrent of bitter words on his silent form. But she halted just inside the doorway. She felt a different air in the room. The usual stagnant smell of medicine was fainter, replaced by the clean scent of fresh air. The heavy curtains had been pulled back slightly, allowing a single, determined beam of late afternoon sun to cut across the floor.

A new, cold unease trickled down her spine. What was that fool Gable mumbling about when I arrived? she thought, her mind flashing back to the housekeeper’s panicked attempt to speak to her. She had dismissed it as nonsense about something concerning the Baron. But what if it was something else?

She walked slowly, almost cautiously, to Henry’s bed. She looked down at his still, pale face. With a trembling finger, she placed it just under his nose, checking to see if he was actually dead. A faint puff of warm air touched her skin.

"He’s still alive," she whispered, a strange mixture of disappointment and relief in her voice. At least he was still here.

She collapsed into the armchair close to his bed, the fight momentarily going out of her. Her magnificent dress was ruined, her hair was a mess, and her carefully constructed world was in ashes. She looked at her husband’s unmoving form and began to speak, the words spilling out in a bitter, rambling stream.

"At the meeting, your father said he’s giving everything to Delia," she spat, the name like poison on her tongue. "And that little fool stood there and said she has no desire in running the establishment at the moment. Can you believe the nerve? She wants to bring in an outsider, an ’expert’, to run things until she’s ready. Who does she think she is?"

She leaned forward, her eyes wild. "She thinks she can just walk in and take what is rightfully ours. What I have worked twenty years to secure." She let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Just wait, Henry. This isn’t over. I will..."

Her words were cut short by a sudden, impossible pressure. She looked down. A hand, pale and surprisingly strong, had gripped her wrist.

Augusta shouted, a short, sharp scream of terror. She tried to pull her hand away, but the grip was like an iron band. Her terrified eyes followed the hand up the arm to the face on the pillow.

Henry’s eyes were open. They were no longer dull and lifeless. They were open, and they were looking directly at her.

"H... Hen... Henry?" Augusta stammered, her heart hammering against her ribs so hard she thought it might break.

Henry’s lips, dry and cracked from disuse, parted. A single, raspy word escaped, a sound full of a chilling, quiet accusation.

"You."

The word, the look in his eyes, the strength in his hand—it was all too much. Augusta ripped her arm from his grip with a desperate yank. She scrambled out of the chair, knocking it over in her haste. She fled the room in absolute terror, her heart racing, her mind screaming.

She half-ran, half-stumbled down the long hallway, her own panicked thoughts chasing her. " How is he awake? He can’t be awake! Wasn’t the arsenic dosage enough? All those weeks. I increased the dosage... it was supposed to keep him like this forever!" The memory of his grip, so much stronger than it should have been, sent a fresh wave of fear through her. " The way he held me just now... what is going on? What is happening in this house?"

As she came clattering down the grand staircase, her hand trembling on the banister, the great front doors of the manor opened. Delia and Baron Edgar entered, their presence calm and utterly damning.

Augusta froze on the stairs, her eyes widening in shock. They were here. In her house.

Prescott, then climbed up the stairs from the servants’ entrance, his face a look of calm decorum. And then, Mrs. Doris, Delia’s old nanny, the woman she had fired and framed twenty years ago, came out of the kitchen, a confident, triumphant smile on her face.

Before Augusta could speak, Mrs. Doris wiped her hands on a clean apron. "Welcome, Baron. Welcome home, Your Grace," she said to Edgar and Delia, her voice warm and respectful as she offered a deep, proper curtsy.

Augusta stared, completely confused. She was surrounded. This was an ambush. "Wh...What are you doing...?" she asked, her voice a weak, shaky sound.

Mrs. Doris interrupted her with a smirk. "It has been a very long while, hasn’t it, Baroness?" she said, her voice full of a cold, satisfying pleasure. "I had thought, after all these years, that you would have gotten better at taking care of a child’s simple needs, especially after you so unfairly kicked me out of this house. But as I can see now, that is clearly not the case." She threw the subtle, but deeply cutting, insult right in Augusta’s face.

Augusta’s mind was spinning. She looked around frantically for someone loyal, someone who could explain this madness. "Where is Gable?" she cried out, her voice rising in hysteria. "Gable? GABLE?"

"Her services are no longer needed here," Delia replied calmly from the foot of the stairs.

That was when it all clicked into place with a sickening thud. Mrs. Gable, with her pale, terrified face, hadn’t been trying to tell her about Henry, that was awake. She had been trying to tell her that she had been dismissed. That the entire household staff had been changed. That this was no longer her house.

"All of you..." Augusta pointed a trembling finger at the group assembled below her. "Get out of my house! You have no right!"

Just then, a new sound joined the tense tableau. The soft, rhythmic squeak of wheels on polished wood. Prescott appeared at the top of the stairs she had just fled down. He was not alone. He was pushing Henry on the ramp made for his chair. He was now sitting upright in a wheelchair, dressed in a simple clean shirt, a thick blanket over his legs. His eyes were open, aware, and fixed directly on his wife.

The final piece of Augusta’s world had just crumbled into dust. She was surrounded, her escape routes cut off, with all of her victims, past and present, gathered before her.