A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(110)

Which made Miss Campbell’s involvement all the more troubling to contemplate. Though, if she was our culprit, we still required proof—something we were sadly lacking at the moment. And something we needed to remedy.

I turned to find Gage watching me, and I gave him a slight nod, letting him know I’d accepted it was time we talked. But first, there were two things I needed to do.

“I’m exhausted from the past few days,” I told Morven, suddenly feeling all the hours of sleep I’d lost the past two nights to Emma’s catarrh and then Bree’s poisoning. “I think I’ll take a tray in my room for dinner. Will you make my excuses to your mother and Charlotte?”

“Of course,” she replied immediately, her face crinkling in empathy.

“You’ve had the devil of a time,” Lady Bearsden commiserated. “But you’ll rest easier tonight, dear.” Her optimism was kind but, given everything that still weighed heavily on my mind, not very encouraging.

I excused myself, saying I needed to see to Emma, and trusted Gage would find a way to excuse himself from dinner as well. However, rather than go straight to my bedchamber, I deviated to the room where Bree was currently recovering. I found the door open and her sitting up in bed, her complexion still pale and dark circles under her eyes. But the signs of her recent sickness were somewhat mitigated by the fury in her eyes as she glared at Anderley with her arms crossed over her chest.

“She keeps trying to get out of bed,” he explained to my arched eyebrows.

“Aye, well, I can fetch a book five feet away. I’m no’ that helpless,” she groused.

Anderley’s mouth was set in a mulish line. One that rivaled even Bree’s.

I suppressed a sigh. “Gage and I will be taking dinner in our chamber tonight,” I told the valet. “Why don’t you go and see if he requires anything. I’ll sit with her for a time.”

He nodded, striding from the room with a brief backward glance.

When his footsteps had receded down the corridor, I turned to my maid with a look of mild chastisement. “He was very worried for you. You must realize that.” My lips pursed wryly. “Or are you determined to be stubborn?”





Chapter 30




Bree turned away, her obstinate expression lessening by only a degree.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Anderley in such a state, and well, I don’t think I ever wish to again,” I admitted, allowing some of my own distress to creep into my voice as I sank down in the chair next to the bed.

She looked up at this, allowing me to see some of the fear she must have felt during her ordeal after she’d realized she’d been poisoned. “He was rather gallant,” she admitted. “Held my hair back while I cast up my accounts.”

“I’ve always thought that was an excellent indication of a man’s heroism,” I replied with sincerity, thinking of how Gage had done the same for me after merely a few hours’ acquaintance when neither of us was very sure of the other.

She flushed. “I couldna seat my mount after that, so he took me up before him. Carried me up the stairs, too, didna he?”

I nodded.

She seemed embarrassed by this.

“You had just been poisoned,” I reminded her. “No one expected you to be able to function. And all we could think to do was purge it from you as best we could.” I grimaced. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Dinna be. I understood why it had to be done, and under the circumstances . . .” She lifted her hands as if to indicate her being alive. “I canna complain.”

We sat silently for a moment, each of us contemplating what might have been, and then I inhaled deeply, knowing if I gave way to such thoughts, I would never ask the questions I needed to.

“Has the physician been to see you yet?” I asked, knowing a rider had been dispatched early that morning.

“Nay.”

I frowned but did not comment on that further, knowing Bree didn’t hold the answers to what had delayed the doctor. Instead, I explained how we’d deduced that the poison had been put in her chutney, and that she’d survived because she’d not ingested more than a few drops and we’d purged the rest in quick order. She confessed to some lingering stomach cramps, but that was to be expected given the violent vomiting twelve hours prior. I also told her how Mrs. Mackay had been the person to finally recognize the poison was the paternoster pea.

“I wondered when she got that glint in her eye after we talked this mornin’,” Bree confessed. Her brow furrowed, and she glanced toward the window where outside the gloaming had fallen. “Was it just this mornin’?”

I smiled in commiseration. “Yes.”

“And noo that ye mention it, I do recall my mother tellin’ me stories aboot the beads used to make some rosaries.” Bree had been raised a Roman Catholic and still attended mass whenever possible during our travels. “But do ye truly think Miss Ferguson did it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But thus far she’s the only one we’ve discovered to have access to the poison.”

“Aye, but there are other Roman Catholics nearby who likely own rosaries. Even the Campbells are Catholic, if somewhat lapsed. That is, if Mrs. Kennedy is to be believed.”