Page 88 of The Virgin Who Vindicated Lord Darlington
But it was right where she’d last seen it, lying on its side on the end of one of the lower shelves. She sat at the table with the thick tome, and rummaged around in her apron pockets for the plants she’d picked in the kitchen garden last night. They were wilted and shrunken, much as she’d expected them to be, but she was certain she’d recognize a picture of them when she saw it. The trouble was, she had no idea what the plants were called, so she’d have to go through the entirety ofCulpeper’s Complete Herbaluntil she spotted them.
All four hundred and eleven pages of it.
Each entry included a detailed illustration of the herb, but it might take hours for her to find the illustration she needed. So, she settled in, her wilted stalks on the table beside her as she flipped through one page after the next, searching for the spiky purple plant.
In the end, it didn’t take hours. Just when she was certain she’d go cross-eyed if she had to study another illustration, she found what she was looking for. Green stalks, spear-shaped leaves, topped by a spiky purple flower like a fuzzy starburst.
Pennyroyal.
She leaned over the book to read the page. The entry was brief, as all the entries were, but by the time she came to the end of the short series of paragraphs, her blood had turned to ice in her veins.
…it provokes women’s courses, and expels the dead child and after-birth.
Cecilia read it again, then again to be sure she hadn’t confused the words, or somehowmisunderstood.
Being boiled and drank, it provokes women’s courses, and expelsthe dead child…
The tea Mrs. Briggs had mentioned hadn’t been spearmint at all, but pennyroyal. Cecilia slapped a hand over her mouth as a horrible, sick feeling twisted in her stomach. An herb such as this, that brought on bleeding…
What might it do to a lady carrying a healthy child? What might it do to thechild?
She blinked blindly down at the page, tears blurring her eyes, because she knew…she already knew. Cassandra and Gideon’s child, their son…someone had seen to it he’d never draw breath, and they’d taken Cassandra away too, ensuring she’d be laid in the cold ground before she ever conceivedanother child.
Cecilia pressed her hand tighter against her lips as bile flooded her throat, gagging her. Dear God, she was going to be sick. She gripped the edge of the table, and sat for a long time, the library swimming around her, until at last she gained control of herself. She stared down at the book open on the table before her, not seeing it, her mind working to untangle the interwoven threads of the mystery of Cassandra’s death.
Ugly questions, and even uglier answers, but in the end, there was only one question that mattered. Who at Darlington Castle stood to gain the most if the Marchioness of Darlington died before she could give birth to her child?
Not Gideon, and not any ofthe servants.
No one else had been at the castle during Cassandra’s illness and death but Lady Leanora.
But why would she want to hurt Cassandra or her child? From what Mrs. Briggs had said, Lady Leanora hadn’t even been permitted in the sick room during Cassandra’s illness. It didn’t makesense, unless…
They grew apart somewhat after Cassandra became the marchioness.
Cecilia tapped her palm against her forehead, trying to think. There was nothing so sinister in Lady Leanora’s being jealous of Cassandra once she was elevated to marchioness, but could she have been so jealous she’d have poisonedher own cousin?
No, surelynot, but then…
There was one odd thing that had struck Cecilia about Cassandra’s diary. She’d hardly said a single word aboutLady Leanora.
Cassandra had mentioned Isabella hundreds of times, and Gideon twice as many as that. She could hardly put pen to paper without saying how grateful she was for them both. She wrote constantly of the people she loved, including Mrs. Briggs and theother servants.
The one person whose name rarely came up in those pages wasLady Leanora’s.
Cecilia thought of Lady Leanora’s portrait in the small picture gallery—of her haughty expression, the petulant curve of her lip—and wondered how such a lady would have reacted to her cousin’s sudden elevation in rank. Cassandra had come to Darlington Castle as Lady Leanora’s lowly companion, and six months later she’d supplanted her asits mistress.
Still, jealousy was one thing, and murder quite another. In any case, Cecilia strongly suspected it was the pennyroyal tea that had killed Cassandra, and according to Mrs. Briggs, it had been Gideon who brought Cassandra’s broth and tea on her dinner tray everynight, so how—
But no, thatwasn’twhat she’d said, was it? A chill rushed over Cecilia’s skin as she recalled precisely what Mrs. Briggshad told her.
Lord Darlington brought her a tray of broth every night at dinnertime…only thing she ever touched was the spearmint tea he gave her much later in the evening, tohelp her sleep.
The way Mrs. Briggs had described it, the tea hadn’t been on the dinner tray with the broth. Had anyone actuallyseenGideon give Cassandra that tea? Mrs. Briggs had only mentioned seeing the teacup with the dregs of the tea when she’d taken the dishes down thenext morning.
Could it be Gideon had only given Cassandra the broth, and someone else had given her the tea? Someone like Lady Leanora, for instance?
Butwhy? Why would Lady Leanora go to such lengths to poison her cousin, and when would she have had the opportunity? Gideon was the only one permitted in Cassandra’s bedchamber. Lady Leanora could have crept past him and the staff, of course. But there’d been a great many people in the castle back then, and whoever had administered the poison would have had to sneak into Cassandra’s bedchamber every night for months. Surely, someone wouldhave seen her?
