Chapter 306 Sudden heart attack

"Come with me," Carina said. "I need to show you something."

She said it low, with her hand already on the door. The seamstresses looked up from their pins. Helena stood in the ivory gown with the train pooled around her feet, and she did not move.

"Now?"

"Now." There was something in Carina’s face that had not been there a minute ago. The dry joke was gone. What was left was still and careful, like a girl carrying a full glass across a crowded room.

Helena gathered her skirt in both fists. The guards fell in behind them as they went out, two at the front and two at the back, their shoes ringing on the marble. They went along the upper hall, past the long windows and the white ribbons on the stair rail, to a tall door at the end of the east wing. Carina stopped. "Only family," she said to the guards.

They hesitated. One of them started to speak, and Carina looked at him. It was only a look, but it was the look she had learned in this house, and he closed his mouth and stepped back.

She opened the door and pulled Helena inside.

It was a dressing room, bright and white and clean. A tall mirror stood at one end, and a silver tray held a pair of cufflinks and a folded black tie. A bowl of water sat on the counter, with a thin skin of white foam on top of it. A razor lay beside it, still wet.

On the floor, in the middle of the room, lay a man in his shirtsleeves.

Helena’s heart almost skipped a beat.

He was on his back, with one arm flung out and his head turned a little to the side. His face was half shaved. One cheek was smooth and pink, and the other was still covered in a white lather that had begun to dry at the edges. His eyes were open. They looked at the ceiling and did not see it.

A doctor knelt beside him. It was the old man with the gray mustache, the one who had stitched Don’s arm. He had his black bag open at his knee and his hand on Don’s wrist. He looked up as they came in, and his face was gray.

"What happened to him?" Helena said.

"He is dead, Madam." For a moment, nothing in her moved.

Then, to her own horror, she almost laughed. It rose in her chest, high and thin and wrong, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hold it in. It was not joy. It was a shock, pure and plain, like the shaking of a hand after a fall.

"He had a heart attack," the doctor said. "While he was shaving. One of the maids found him. He was gone before she could call out."

"That is not possible."

"Madam...."

"He was fine." Her voice rose. "You told me yourself. He was strong. He was very healthy. You stitched his arm yesterday and said he would live to be a hundred." She stared at the man on the floor. "He was excited. He was going to marry me tomorrow."

"I know."

"Then how?"

"It happens, Madam." The doctor’s voice was tired and flat. "A heart does not always warn you. It goes, and it goes quickly." He glanced at Carina.

"I wish to move the body," he said. "He should not lie here. But she will not let me."

"No one can know."

Carina closed the door and stood with her back against it. She spoke quickly and quietly, with her eyes on the floor.

"Not the guards. Not the staff. Not the other families. The Don is dead, and if the men find out, it will be a riot." She looked up. "You have seen them. They are not loyal to a name. They are loyal to a hand. The moment that hand is gone, they will start tearing the house apart."

Helena said nothing.

"And they will never believe it," Carina went on. "A man like him, healthy, proud, so happy to renew his vows, and he dies of a heart attack in his dressing room two days after a gunfight? They will say it was poison. They will say it was me. They will say it was you." Her eyes were very bright.

"I need time. I need to put the men in order, and the business, and the money. I need a day. Two, if I can get it." She took a breath.

"Please." Helena looked at the man on the floor.

It was a mystery. She knew that. It sat in her mind like a splinter, small and sharp, and she could feel it every time she moved. A healthy man, a sudden death. A razor and a bowl of water. Something was wrong with it, and she did not know what.

But she was tired.

She had a husband who was waking up after twenty years. She had a daughter somewhere on the sea, sick and missing. She had a dress that weighed as much as a child and a wedding she did not want. She had enough on her plate. She could not carry one more thing, and she knew it.

She was only human. She felt bad that a man was dead. A small, sorry part of her even mourned him. He had loved her, in his terrible way, for twenty years.

But she was allowed not to worry about it. She was allowed to let it go.

"All right," she said quietly. Carina turned to the doctor.

He was still kneeling by the body with his hand on his bag. He was an old man, and he had worked for the Don for twenty years, and his hands were not quite steady.

"Doctor."

"Miss."

"You will leave this room." He rose slowly. His knees cracked.

"You will say nothing. Not to the nurses, not to your wife, not to the priest at confession." She did not raise her voice. "If one word of this reaches anyone outside this door, you will be dead by nightfall. Do you understand me?"