CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Angelica could see the great house away in the distance, its dilapidation an affront to her sensibilities. A noble should maintain their home, if only to declare to those around them that they were fulfilling their natural role in the world. Letting a grand house fall into disrepair was a declaration of ordinariness, of lost status, of weakness.
Then again, this wasn’t a living house, but a corpse, meant to be a statement as surely as one left in a gibbet might be. The statement was simple: those who crossed the Dowager suffered for it, whatever the law said about royal power being curtailed. It was one more reason why Angelica didn’t intend to fail in her task.
Her task? Call it what it was. She had to murder Sophia.
Angelica was a touch surprised by how little it bo
