Pretty Poison (29 page)

“As to why I did not tell you,” Margaret said into the silence in the carriage. “I did not know. She’d been ill, of course I knew that. But I’d never met her before, only knew her from Charlie’s letters. I did not realize she was not behaving normally. And Charlie was off touring railways thinking he’d left her in good hands.”

Margaret lifted her hands, turned them this way and that, before giving an inelegant snort. “He’d left her in the worst possible hands. I had a mind only to see her wed to you, never mind that she was such a peculiar girl, so quiet and meek one minute, then laughing like a lunatic at some jest only she understood. But I wanted her money in your pockets, yours and Andy’s and mine. Even when I started to have visions of saddling you with the same sort of wife your father had. No offense, your mother was a sweet lady for all that her belfry was filled with bats.”

Nick couldn’t even begin to take offense at the apt description of his mother, a woman he’d barely known, a woman who’d spent most of his childhood locked away in her room. He was filled with a pulsing rage.

“Christ, woman, it’s only money,” he snarled. “We would have figured something out. There was no need to destroy a girl. Hell, it would have destroyed me to be saddled, as you so delicately phrase it, with a lunatic for a wife!”

“Emily is not a lunatic!”

“By your own admission you thought she was. You thought your niece was a peculiar girl, laughing at nothing, with bats in her belfry. And you still brought her to London for a fucking Season. Jesus, Margaret, I’ve seen perfectly healthy, perfectly sane ladies crack under the pressure of a London Season!”

Margaret stared at him with round eyes, her breath rushing out in little pants and sighs.

“Ah, hell,” Nick muttered. “Look, Maggie, I’m just so damned shocked and angry and I need a whipping boy.”

“No, you are absolutely right,” she replied, blinking back tears. “I deserve your anger and your condemnation, and then some. You haven’t even heard the worst of it.”

“I don’t think I care to hear anymore.”

“Too bad,” she responded, back to her normal ferocity in the blink of an eye. “We’ve still five or more minutes before we reach the village and there is more you need to know.”

Nick looked away from her pale face and shining eyes, out the window, and sure enough he could see the village in the distance. Emily was somewhere in that village, alone and hurting, believing that he’d broken the only promise he’d made to her that truly mattered.

“Tell me,” he ordered as he turned to face Margaret once more.

“Emily recovered from the fever and putrid throat and seemed healthy, if still somewhat weak, so we began to prepare for the Season.”

“There’s no need to rehash the events in Town. I was there, I lived them.”

“But what you don’t know is that we, that is Charlie and I had drummed it into her head that you would make her an ideal husband if only she would curb her tongue and behave with a minimal amount of decorum. She was drinking laudanum like it was tea by then and I suppose in her opium addled mind she thought you would reject her if she showed you her true self.”

“So she hid her light under a bushel,” Nick murmured.

“After the gossip rags got a hold of her, when they stuck that ridiculous moniker on her and it became obvious to all you were looking elsewhere for an heiress, we had a right awful row. She started spouting nonsense about scandals and improper behavior. She said she’d created scandals without even trying, scandals the likes of which we stuffy English had never seen.”

Nick couldn’t help the raspy chuckle that escaped at her words.

“As she stood there swaying back and forth like a drunken sailor, shouting at me it finally occurred to me that something was not quite right.”

“Ah, so that’s when it occurred to you.” Nick did not even attempting to hide his sarcasm.

“I started thinking about all those letters Charlie wrote over the years, letters filled with tales of his daughter’s hijinks and mischief, all of the scrapes and snafus she’d gotten into. I remembered all the times his letters made me laugh until I cried.”

“And you realized you’d yet to meet that girl, your brother’s wild daughter,” Nick replied when she drifted off in the memories, a faint smile flitting across her lips.

“So I wrote to my brother telling him that Emily was in trouble, that I was taking her to the country,” she continued. “He joined us here as soon as word reached him. Unfortunately it was nearly two months before my letter found him. They were moving around, those railway-mad gentlemen, riding all over the country.”

“And during those months?” Nick wasn’t certain he wanted to know what had happened during that time. He suspected those two months ended with a jagged scar between Emily’s breasts.

“I searched Emily’s room when she was out wandering in the gardens with Tilly.”

“And found the laudanum.”

“It wasn’t hidden but sitting on her vanity amid all the other bottles of perfume and lotion. I’ve had need of the poison from time to time over the years. I don’t know a lady who hasn’t. Of course what I knew about laudanum, about opium and its effects, at that point would fit on the head of a pin.”

“Did you confront Emily?”

“I was waiting for her when she returned to her room,” Margaret said. “I waited until she was standing before me to pour the poison out the window. She only laughed, said I was being ridiculous, that she certainly did not need the magical elixir. That’s what she called it.”

“Go on,” Nick urged when she fell silent beside him.

“But she did need it. Her body had become accustomed to the stuff. She seemed fine that day and the next. But by the third she couldn’t drag herself from bed. She lay buried under a mountain of blankets, the fire roaring until the room was like a furnace, while she shivered and moaned. Then the purging began.”

“Purging?” he asked in alarm.

“Laudanum… Well it stops a body from… Physicians prescribe it for cholera.”

“Oh,” Nick replied as realization dawned.

“She was in a terrible way for two days, then she was up and about again. I heard her in the house, saw her in the gardens, but she avoided me. I thought it was embarrassment. I’d seen her at her worst after all.”

Nick supposed he was expected to respond when Margaret paused again. But he was quiet and still, gathering himself for what he knew was to come.

“She’d sent Tilly to the village, to the apothecary.”

“Stupid,” he whispered.

“It’s not the girl’s fault, Nick,” she hurried to defend. “Tilly is little more than a child and Emily in a temper is truly terrifying.”

“I wasn’t talking about Tilly,” he murmured. “You must have known a head strong woman like Emily would find a way to get what she wanted.”

“I had yet to meet the real Emily,” Margaret argued. “And as I said… The head of a pin. I did not know how the opium takes hold of a person, makes them irrational and fixed.”

“How long before you figured it out?”

“Nearly a month,” she admitted. “Then I had the maids scour her rooms. They found bottles stashed under her mattress, behind books on the shelf, in the pockets of her frocks in the wardrobe, they were everywhere.”

“Jesus,” Nick whispered.

“It was the strangest thing.” Margaret spoke so quietly he barely heard her. “All those bottles were blue, some cut crystal, others porcelain, all of them exquisitely made. There was one made from the thinnest glass I’ve ever seen, dainty and feminine, with a fluted neck and a curved handle just big enough for a lady’s finger to fit within.”

Nick shivered in the warm carriage and turned to stare out the window with sightless eyes. In his mind he saw that bottle, all of those bottles, and Emily, his strong, courageous, willful Emily, undone by the poison they held.

He came back to himself as the carriage turned onto High Street.

“So it went for weeks. I’d find her cache of bottles and dispose of them. Emily would find a way to procure more. I sent Tilly to the servants’ quarters and allowed only my maid, Dorothy, to tend Emily. But as soon as Dorothy turned her back, Em would be gone to the village.” Margaret words came faster and faster as they made their way up the bustling village street. Nick reached over and clasped her fidgeting fingers in his hand.

“I told the apothecary I would shut down his shop, burn it to the ground if he sold even one bottle of laudanum to anyone. I paid for every drop of the tincture in his possession and watched as he disposed of it in the dirt behind his shop.”

“And yet?” Nick prompted as they neared the corner, as the horses prepared to turn right.

“And yet one evening she disappeared. She’d taken a horse and ridden to Colbert, nearly twenty miles away.” Margaret’s harsh laughter told him they were fast approaching the crux of the story. “I had the grooms lock the stables, carried the keys on my person at all times.”

The carriage made the turn onto the narrow little side street.

“She was finally unable to get her hands on the poison. I was more ready for the aftereffects this time. I was prepared to withstand her temper while her mind cleared. I was prepared for the heat in the room as she sweated the laudanum from her body. I was prepared for the indignity, hers and mine, that was to come with the purging. But I was in no way prepared for her howls of anguish, for the wrenching sobs that filled the house. Nor was I prepared for her to beg me for one sip, one spoonful, just one taste.”

Margaret was crying by then, big fat tears falling from her eyes to roll down her pale cheeks. Her sobs filled the small carriage much as Nick imagined Emily’s had filled the house.

“Margaret,” he whispered, ready to halt her tale. He didn’t truly need to hear the rest.

“Then came that terrible night.” Margaret swiped at the tears that kept falling, gave a shuddering sigh and tightened her hold on Nick’s hand. “She’d been quiet most of the day, just lying in her bed staring at the wall, and I’d begun to believe the worst was past, that she was finally, oh please Lord, finally, coming back into herself and she would become the girl from Charlie’s letters.”

Nick could see the bright green awning over Morton’s bakery at the end of the street, the bakery where they’d ridden one early morning for fresh scones. Emily must have gone right past the apothecary’s shop that day.

“It was just past midnight. I remember I heard the clock tolling the hour. I was sitting up in bed, trying to read.
Canterbury Tales
. Can you imagine? A quiet knock on the door, I barely heard it over the summer storm raging outside my window.”

“Emily?” he asked as he spied the apothecary’s shop outside the window. They were almost upon it, only seconds before they would pull up below the wooden sign hanging out over the street, waving listlessly in the breeze.

“She was in her night clothes, a white cotton gown and a pink velvet robe trailing over her shoulders, her hair braided down her back. She looked about twelve standing there in the doorway as if uncertain of her welcome. Do you know what she said to me?”

Nick shook his head, unable to speak as the carriage lurched to a stop before the apothecary shop.

“‘Please help me, Auntie Margaret. I think I might die.’” Margaret drew in a stuttering breath and met his eyes. “Just that. ‘Please help me, Auntie Margaret. I think I might die.’ She was clutching an empty blue bottle, the one shaped like a woman, her hands wrapped around it, pressing it to her chest. She started toward the bed, toward me, such a look on her face, such fear, as if she simply could not endure the cravings clawing at her. And I knew I would give in, I would ride to London myself in the storm to give her what she wanted, to erase that look from her eyes, to vanquish the fear of dying.”

Nick waited, picturing Emily standing in her night clothes begging her aunt for help.

“But her night rail was slipping from her shoulders, falling down her arms, trailing behind her, around her. Her bare foot got caught in the hem. She stumbled and fell. It happened so quickly. One moment she was coming toward me, the next she was falling with that damned bottle clutched to her heart.”

Nick pulled Margaret into his arms, held her cheek pressed to his heart, absorbed the shutters that ran down her back. “Shh, it’s over.”

“She fell right on that…that bottle… I couldn’t… There was nothing… She was so still on the floor… Her hands still clutching… She never even threw her hands out to catch herself… The bottle broke…shattered beneath her… I didn’t hear it… Just the tiniest cry as she landed… Then nothing… I saw the blood… before I even reached her… The blood was rolling from beneath… And when I turned her over…oh, God, oh God…”

“Shh, no more,” Nick begged, undone by her anguished words, by the picture they painted.

“I rolled her over and…and it was just sticking out… The neck…that fluted neck…the delicate glass…thin as parchment…protruding from her chest… So much blood…a crimson river above her breast… And the broken neck…right beside her heart…” the words ended in a low wail as Margaret sobbed against him.

Nick held her for long minutes, swaying gently, soothing her while he blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. He refused to cry. He would not pity Emily. There was no room in his heart for pity. It was filled with awe for her courage and gratitude for her survival. And an overwhelming need to see her, to bask in her laughing eyes, to kiss her smiling lips.

Margaret shivered and drew in an unsteady breath before pushing away from him to sit beside him on the carriage seat.

“Dr. Connor stitched her up,” she said calmly, her watery eyes fastened upon him. “I tried to make her take the laudanum he brought with him. Emily would not. Good Lord, I split her lip trying to force the bottle to her mouth. A fierce little warrior she was. Screamed to wake the dead but lay perfectly still and let him sew her torn flesh together.”

Margaret looked away, gave a startled squeak and reached for the door handle. “Why didn’t you tell me we’d arrived?”

“Emily isn’t here,” Nick said.

“No, she’s come and gone by now,” Margaret answered as she pushed open the door and the footman stepped forward to offer his assistance. “But perhaps the poison purveyor saw what direction she took.”