Chapter 8: The Duchess Faints

Mina's POV

The Empress's lady-in-waiting arrived at Rothgar Hall on a Thursday, with two trunks and a tonic.

"For the Duchess's nerves," she said, and curtsied with her eyes on the floor.

The Duke stood behind her in the hall. He watched her hands.

He had written to the palace and she had come, exactly as he'd wanted.

I thanked her and took the tonic.

I gave it to Greta, who poured it down the pantry drain.

The Founders' Dinner was that Saturday.

Forty northern lords would sit at the long table and toast the Grand Duke and his new Duchess.

Scene six in the book was The Duchess Faints.

She stood to answer the toast, her face went white, and she dropped.

The Duke caught her, and the lords decided her health was poor.

Two weeks later she was dying quietly in a back bedroom.

"It's the tonic," I told Bertram in the corridor.

"At the toast, someone puts a drop in my glass. I'm not going to be in the room."

"I'll see that the kitchen sends you nothing," said Bertram.

"That won't stop her. I need to leave before the toast, and I need it to look natural."

"How natural, Your Grace?"

"A faint."

He looked at me over his ledger.

"A very natural one," I said. "I'll do it in the soup."

At the dinner I smiled at forty lords, and sat very still, and did not touch a single drink.

The lady-in-waiting stood at the sideboard with a glass on a tray.

The Duke stood. He lifted his cup.

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