Adored in Autumn (Seasons #4)(2)

She pulled the gun free and swung it toward him. "Stop!" she croaked through her ragged and sore airway. "I'll … shoot you."

Blood trickled down from his hairline where she'd struck him with the now broken vase. He pushed off her and she gasped a breath, praying he would walk away. Sober up. But his eyes were lit up with rage that would not be contained and he laughed as he looked at her and the gun in her hand.

He lunged at her once more and his hands folded around her throat.

What happened next didn't feel real. It was as if she left her body and watched it from a distance. Watched her dying self press the gun between them. Watched the trigger depress beneath her index finger, the weight of it making her work for her life. She heard the sharp, harsh echo of the discharge and then Erasmus's face twisted in shock and disbelief and pain.

He looked down at her, his eyes wide as his fingers relaxed from her throat. She gasped for air as he wheezed out a long, heavy breath. "Bitch, you shot me."

Then he slipped away, off of her body, down the side of the bed where he'd been leaning and into a heap on the floor. The gun smoked in her hand, filling her nostrils with an acrid scent. The harshness of it made some reality creep in and she slowly edged her body to the end of the bed. She stared down at him, down at where the blood began to pool out from under him. Down at where her husband lay, lifeless.

And then she began to scream.

The door to her chamber flew open and her maid, Cora, burst inside. The young woman looked first at Felicity's face, and then at the lifeless body before her, and all the color drained from her cheeks. She shut the door and rushed over to Felicity.



       
         
       
        

"Oh, my lady," she said, reaching out to grasp Felicity's hand and force the gun she still held out of her clenched fingers. "I thought I'd find you the one who was dead."

"H-he was going to kill me," Felicity choked out. "I didn't want to, I didn't want to do this."

"Hush, now. It's all right." Cora set her jaw and bent down, examining Erasmus carefully. "He's dead."

Felicity dipped her head back with a moan. "Oh no. No. No. I murdered him. I murdered him."

Cora slowly lifted her eyes, then looked back down at the lifeless body. She straightened up and went to the door, where she rang the bell. Keeping the door almost entirely shut, she whispered something to the servant who had come to the sound of her call, then shut the door again.

Cora faced her, her shoulders back and her chin lifted. "I've been with you since you were naught but a young girl, my lady. And I have watched this man treat you so cruelly. I have feared for your life and your future at his brutal hands. And I say that you didn't murder him."

Felicity blinked, clearing her eyes of tears so she could look at her maid. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"I've just asked that Simpson join us, as well as Carter and Moss."

"Our butler and footmen?" Felicity said, numb and uncertain she understood.

Cora nodded. "They're trustworthy and big enough to help."

"Help do what?" Felicity asked.

"Move him out into the estate grounds with a gun and a horse," Cora said, her voice shaking. "You see, I heard Lord Barbridge tell you that he was wanting to have a hunt. He saw a sly little fox when he came back to the estate tonight and he thought the animal needed catching. You asked him not to go in his state, but he insisted. And tomorrow, he'll be found, sadly dead, less than a mile from home."

Felicity pushed from the bed, edging away from Erasmus's dead body. "You think we can make it look like an … accident?"

Cora smiled. "Indeed, we can."

Felicity lifted her hand to her face, knowing it was bruised, feeling the stripes of a dead man's brutal fingers against her throat. "But if they see me … "

"They won't," Cora said. "For when the guard comes to investigate, you will be prostrate with grief, unable to see anyone in your hysterical state."

Felicity swallowed past the soreness in her throat as a faint hope pushed aside the terror of the earlier night and the horror at what she had done to protect herself. "It is common knowledge that he drinks. And he sometimes does foolish things." 

"Many in this house will testify to that," Cora said, folding her arms. "The servants who know the truth will swear an oath of silence and you … well, you will finally be able to return to your family. No one will ever have to know."

"What about the blood?" Felicity whispered, forcing herself to look at the pool of it beneath Erasmus's body. It was dark, almost black, as it collected beneath him.