Chapter 3
Dorian arrived twenty-eight minutes later.
He entered the conservatory and immediately saw Elspeth.
Then the cake.
Then me.
A professional man knows when a room has turned against him.
He did not ask what happened.
That mattered.
I stood beside the dessert table.
“Two years ago, why did you tell everyone Vivian’s death was an accidental exposure?”
His expression remained controlled.
“Because that was the information we had.”
“From whom?”
Silence.
“Elspeth?”
He looked at her.
Enough.
Elspeth stood.
“This is absurd.”
Dorian ignored her.
Good.
I continued.
“Did Vivian refuse dessert?”
“Yes.”
My jaw tightened.
“You knew?”
“Afterward.”
“Did Elspeth reassure her it was safe?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
The world did not move for several seconds.
I had buried my wife believing she made one tragic mistake.
She had not.
She had asked.
She had refused.
She had been reassured.
By family.
I looked at Elspeth.
“Why?”
She said nothing.
Then Dorian made his first mistake.
“This is not about cake.”
I turned toward him.
“What is it about?”
His silence told me there was a room behind the room.
Vivian had been working on something before she died.
I remembered papers on our bedroom desk.
Private conversations she stopped when Caspian entered.
Arguments with Elspeth I assumed were sister problems.
Then three days before the dinner, Vivian asked me:
“If someone keeps protecting you from threats they helped create, are they loyal?”
I had laughed.
I thought she was speaking hypothetically.
She was not.
I looked at Dorian.
My security adviser.
Then at Elspeth.
The woman who hosted half our neutral family dinners.
Security.
Venues.
Threats.
Hospitality.
Suddenly the shape appeared.
“You were working together.”
Neither answered.
I smiled without warmth.
“Good.”
Elspeth’s face tightened.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
I spoke slowly.
“Because if Vivian died with a secret, I no longer have to wonder where to start.”
May you like
I looked at both of them.
“I start with the two people who worked hardest to convince me there wasn’t one.”
