Dad Hears My Thoughts novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Cup

Two of the Duke's men came off the wall by the doors.

One took my left arm above the elbow. The other took my right.

I didn't let go of the cup.

"She switched them," Ralph said. "I watched her hand. She put her cup at His Grace's place."

"I did," I said.

The whole table went still.

"You admit it," Ralph said.

"I admit I moved a cup. Which one am I meant to have poisoned, my lord?"

"The one you gave him. Obviously."

"This one?"

I tipped my chin at the cup sitting in front of the Duke. My cup. Ordinary tea from the big pot.

"That one," Ralph said. "You meant him to drink it."

"Then let go of my arm," I said to the guard. "I'm thirsty."

The guard looked at the Duke.

"Let her go," he said.

The guard let go.

I reached across the Duke, picked up the cup at his place, and drank it.

All of it. It scalded the roof of my mouth.

I set it down empty in front of him.

"Your Grace's footman poured that from the big pot," I said. "Same as everyone's. Now this one."

I held up the cup I'd been holding the whole time.

"Your heart blend, my lord. You spooned it. You poured it. You drink it."

Ralph laughed. It came out a little high.

"I don't take my grandfather's medicine."

"Neither should he," I said.

Tristram stood up beside me with the baby on his arm.

He was taller than every man in that hall, and his face had gone like the Duke's.

"This is grotesque," Honoria said. "Your Grace, she's a shopgirl. She's making a scene at your table."

"She is," the Duke said. "Fetch my physician."

The physician had been at cards with the steward downstairs.

He came up in his shirtsleeves, a gray-haired man with spectacles pushed up on his forehead.

"Test it," the Duke said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Dad Hears My Thoughts from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.