Lady Be Good

by Meredith Duran

  “That was my concern earlier,” the doctor allowed. “But I understand that no one else has sickened. That is an encouraging sign. It further persuades me that the culprit is some contaminated food, ingested solely by the young lady.”

  “What could it have been?” Palmer wanted to know.

  “Nothing from my kitchen,” Mrs. Barnes muttered. Lilah waved at her to hush.

  “The most common toxin is contaminated milk,” the doctor said. “But Buckley Hall has always had its dairy from the Elders’ farm, and I trust their sanitation implicitly. Personally? My suspicion fixes on the chocolates that Miss Everleigh kept by her bed. She had eaten several of them today.”

  “I see.” Palmer paused. “Well, I do thank you—”

  “And rest assured, my lord—I shan’t breathe a word of this. Your sister need not worry on that count.”

  “My . . . sister?”

  “Oh, don’t mistake me! I’m quite certain that Miss Stratton procured the chocolates from the finest purveyor. But I would nevertheless recommend that you warn her, in case she also purchased a box for herself.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Palmer said sharply. “My sister has not been here.”

  The doctor sputtered. “I—perhaps I’m mistaken. But the note was from Miss Stratton. She invited Miss Everleigh to share the truffles with you—”

  “What note?”

  Dr. Hardwick sounded increasingly panicked. “I never meant to pry! I examined it only to see if it yielded clues to the chocolates’ provenance. I am sure Miss Stratton intended them as a—a very pleasant gift! But travel by post, you know—it exposes foodstuffs to all manner of contaminants . . .”

  Palmer came storming around the corner. Lilah and Mrs. Barnes barely had time to jump out of his way. He disappeared inside Miss Everleigh’s suite.

  The doctor came rushing after, clutching his bag to his chest. He drew up beside Mrs. Barnes. “I did not mean to distress him!”

  “No,” Mrs. Barnes said faintly.

  The three of them waited in a breathless silence until Palmer emerged again, two maids trailing him in a panic. “Where is this note?” he bit out, as the maids took shelter behind the housekeeper.

  “I—” Dr. Hardwick looked to Mrs. Barnes, who spread her hands, looking helpless. “I suppose it was thrown out with the sweets.”

  “But it was signed?” Palmer demanded.

  “By Miss Melanie Stratton,” Hardwick said haltingly. “Was I mistaken? I simply assumed by her surname . . .”

  “And the note was addressed here.” A muscle ticked in Palmer’s jaw. “To Buckley Hall?” His questions were assuming a clipped, military precision. “It implied that I would be present to share the gift?”

  “I confess I did not look at the direction. It never occurred to me—”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Barnes squared her shoulders. With the dignity of a martyr before the firing squad, she stepped into Palmer’s line of sight. “I saw the envelope. I tossed it into the fire along with the chocolates. Forgive me, my lord. I simply wanted the nasty things gone.”

  Palmer took an audible breath. In the next moment, with an unnerving completeness, he mastered himself, becoming once again the picture of polite composure. “Thank you, Mrs. Barnes. That is very good to know.” To the doctor, he directed a nod. “Until tomorrow, sir.”

  His departure left a stunned silence, which the doctor leapt to fill. “Someone must sit with her at all hours. I would prefer someone literate, for I have left very specific instructions for the medicines.” He handed a sheet of paper to Mrs. Barnes, who looked it over and passed it onward to Lilah.

  Was she to play the nursemaid? The woman on the sickbed had sacked her this morning.

  Absently she trailed Mrs. Barnes back into the sickroom. “Call into question my kitchen,” the woman was muttering. “Why, I’ve never served spoilt food in all my sixty-six years.”

  Miss Everleigh lay insensate amid a pile of pillows, her unbound hair a pale tangled cloud around her slack face. Mrs. Barnes laid a hand on her brow, frowning at what she felt. “I’ll take first watch,” she said to Lilah. “Come fetch me at half four. And leave those instructions.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” All sickrooms smelled the same. It was impossible not to think of Fiona. Gratefully, Lilah started to retreat.

  A faint call from the bed made her turn. Miss Everleigh was squinting in her direction. “Is that . . . Miss Marshall?”

  Mrs. Barnes clucked. “Yes, that’s right.” She stroked Miss Everleigh’s hair from her face. “Quite a scare you gave us, miss.”

  “Tell her . . . stay.”

  “What?” Lilah approached, panicked. “She can’t mean it,” she told Mrs. Barnes. She could not bear this stuffy little room. “You have far more experience in a sickroom than I!”

  “Mean it,” Miss Everleigh rasped. “Miss . . . Marshall. Stay.”

  But they loathed each other! In disbelief, Lilah stared down at the girl. It was madness, of course, to imagine that Miss Everleigh intended to punish her by this request. Selfish, paranoid madness. But what a talent the girl had for hitting a sore spot!

  “Seems she wants you,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Did you take heed while the doctor was explaining the dosage? Here, read it again.”

  Lilah took the paper with a trembling hand. Turn down all the lights. That was the very first line the doctor had written. Nothing must disturb her.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Barnes asked.

  Heat burned in Lilah’s cheeks. No doubt she looked a fine coward. She was not the one whose life was at stake. “Yes. I’m fine.” Girding herself, she settled on the little stool. Miss Everleigh’s eyes had closed again. She looked as waxen as a corpse. “Leave the medicine on the table.”

  She waited until the door had shut. Then, with a shaking hand, she turned down the lamp.

  There. Darkness was not so bad. Miss Everleigh’s pallor made her dimly visible. The smell of sickness, sour and pungent, hung sharp in the air.

  Miss Everleigh dragged in a rattling breath. Her hand twitched once on the counterpane.

  A memory came to Lilah. How desperately she had longed, that faraway night, for Uncle Nick to reach her. To pull her to safety, or simply . . . to grip her hand, so she would not feel so alone.

  She laid her hand over Miss Everleigh’s. “I am with you,” she whispered. “I won’t go just yet.”

  Minutes might have been hours. A crack in the curtains showed her the moon for a little while. Then it passed out of view, and time crawled.

  Each random creak, each whisper of wind against the windows, made Lilah flinch and remember tales of the ghost who haunted the halls. But no specter appeared to disrupt the darkness. Gradually, as Lilah listened to Miss Everleigh’s pained breaths, she found herself wishing otherwise. She would welcome the appearance of a spirit—even a demon, slobbering blood. Proof of Satan’s wickedness would not frighten her. If his evil was real, then so, too, was God. If some souls were cursed after death to roam the earth, then others surely were lifted into heaven.

  She hadn’t abandoned Fiona. She had done her best; she wouldn’t blame herself for what had happened. But it would be so much easier to bear if she felt certain that her sister had not died afraid—or that afterward she’d woken from fear into God’s arms.

  Bring on the ghost, then. She prayed for it. Show us we can hope for better in the hereafter. Show me that you mean to save her, if you let her die.

  But this heretic philosophy went unnoticed by the heavens. Meanwhile, four times Miss Everleigh choked in her sleep, requiring Lilah to lift her onto her side so she might expel noxious fluids. “It’s all right,” Lilah murmured. “I’m here.”

  Once, Miss Everleigh opened her eyes and spoke. “Poisoned,” she rasped. She tried to lift her head before collapsing back into the pillows.

  “Shh, don’t sit up, now. You’re sick, but you’ll be all right.”

  “He isn’t . . . here. Is he? Please check! So . . . dark.” />
  Lilah turned up the lamp. “Nobody’s here but me, miss.”

  The girl’s bright, feverish eyes made a sweep of the shadowed room. “Yes,” she said. “Alone. Don’t . . . let him in.”

  “Lord Palmer, do you mean?”

  “My . . . brother. He’ll . . . kill me.”

  “He’s not here,” Lilah said slowly. “I won’t let him in.”

  The girl’s eyelids dropped shut. Her face grew slack again.

  Fever could produce delusions, of course. But Lilah still felt chilled an hour later, when Mrs. Barnes came tapping at the door. Everyone knew Peter Everleigh resented the terms of his father’s will. She had never seen him exchange a warm word with his sister. Who knew how he treated her behind closed doors?

  As she stepped into the hallway, she felt as though she were waking from a nightmare. Palmer rose from a nearby chair, a burned candle at his feet. “How is she?” he asked.

  She rubbed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “She’s better, I think. Awake, on and off.”

  “Speaking?”

  She opened her mouth, then thought better of it. Catherine’s sickbed rambling was not hers to share. “Only nonsense. She’s feverish, still.”

  Palmer gripped the back of the chair. Veins stood out on his broad hand; his knuckles looked white. “She’ll make it through,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, of course.” His mood seemed as bleak as her own. God above . . . had she figured him wrong? Did he truly care for Catherine after all?

  She had no energy to wrestle with her stupid, shameful jealousy. “Step in and have a look, if you like.”

  “No, I’ll stay here. You should get some sleep.”

  A strange laugh slipped from her. She felt edgy and haunted, the last thing from fatigued. “A drink would suit me better.”

  He studied her a moment. “All right,” he said. “I could use one as well.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lilah huddled on a loveseat by the fire, watching Palmer move around his study—shifting papers from chair to table; procuring glasses from the cabinet; uncorking a bottle. It was soothing to watch him. His body spoke of competence, power. He moved with economical grace, loose and easy, a man trained to fight.

  “Here you go.” He offered her a toast glass. “Brandy, neat.”

  She rolled the glass by its stem, feeling the sharpness of the cut edges. The beveled crystal captured the firelight and splintered it into dancing points. “You were waiting in the hallway all night?”

  He prowled over to the window. Lifted aside the curtain to look out. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  That jacket fit him a shade more loosely than his normal suits. The left pocket hung a fraction of an inch lower than the right. In Whitechapel, she would have noticed that telltale sign immediately.

  He was armed.

  “I never sleep very well here,” she said softly. Nor, she was coming to suspect, did he.

  “Why is that?”

  She looked into the depths of her brandy and shrugged.

  “Ah. The lady rebuffs me.” His tone was gentle. When she glanced up, he offered her a slight smile. “Another secret for me to pursue.”

  She thanked God he could not guess her most troubling secret: how difficult it was to look away from him. Standing against the dark curtains, with firelight gilding his leonine hair and drawing shadows beneath his cheekbones and full lower lip, he looked like a mythic figure. Some medieval tapestry: the hero who had been bloodied, his long scar left by a dragon’s claw.

  To prove she could look away, Lilah turned toward the fire. “It’s not a secret why I can’t sleep. It’s too dark. In the city, there’s always light somewhere, isn’t there? Even in the rankest rookery, you’ll find a lamp burning in a window, or a public house shedding light across the lane. But here, once everybody is asleep, there’s only darkness.”

  “Some count that a blessing.”

  Not he. He traveled armed in his own house. “Who?”

  His footsteps were soundless. A hunter’s prowl. He sat in the chair opposite. “People who want quiet,” he said. “People who value peace.”

  She remembered the interview in the newspaper in which he’d claimed to be one of those people. But he’d lied. “Were you merely waiting tonight? Or were you standing guard?”

  “Both.”

  His honesty startled her. She remembered Miss Everleigh’s fears about her brother. “Are you here to . . . protect her?”

  He sat back in his chair, pulling his face into shadows. “Wouldn’t that be noble?”

  She considered the question. Were her suspicions correct, he was playing some deep game that involved spying on Catherine Everleigh—to say nothing of the “assayers” who prowled the estate with knives and guns. That endeavor could not be upright. Yet he had given her just as much evidence to consider him decent, and to like him, against all odds.

  Like did not quite capture it.

  The table between them was littered with papers that might have helped her decide about his motives. But she did not care to look at them. Her mind, she realized, was already made up.

  He lifted his glass to the light before he drank, admiring the effect as she had. “They’re Irish eau-de-vie glasses,” she told him. “Very rare. Well over a hundred years old.” She had wrapped up an identical glass, yesterday. “You should probably fetch me something else to drink from. It would take a year of my salary to repay you if I dropped it.”

  He tossed back half the glass, then wiped his mouth. “Break it, if it makes you feel better. I don’t give a damn.”

  From another man, that would have sounded like a boast of wealth. Instead, it seemed a comfort. Your feelings are worth more than the cost.

  She set down her glass. “Whom were you guarding against tonight?”

  “Back to interrogation, are we?” He offered her an unpleasant smile. “Very well, let’s play. Why are you afraid of the dark?”

  “I’m not! Of course I’m not.” She felt embarrassed that he had guessed it.

  “A pity,” he said after a pause. “I prefer fears like that. Simple fears, that can be cured.”

  “Your fears aren’t so simple, I take it.”

  He shrugged. “Do heroes have fears?”

  “I imagine they have enemies. Is that why you’re armed?”

  His surprise showed only in the slight hesitation as he lowered his glass. “Am I?”

  “Your left pocket. A pistol, by the weight of it.”

  Holding her eyes, he rose and stripped a knife from his boot, which he laid across the nearby desk. With a roll of his shoulders, he shucked off his jacket, tossing it beside the knife. Then he turned to his waistcoat, holding her eyes as he flipped open the buttons.

  She had never seen a man undress. It was a different process, more aggressive, than a lady’s careful unlacing. He yanked open the buttons. Shrugged out of the waistcoat and tossed it aside. His wife, one day, would watch him undress. She would admire how his shirt clung to the heavy bulk of his shoulders, the leanness of his waist.

  “Do you like what you see?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  He’d not expected bravery. His head tilted a fraction. A line formed between his brows. “Are you all right?”

  Her mood was indeed strange. So many hours spent reliving what had happened to Fiona—and what it meant to be alone, helpless, in the face of death. The sickroom clung like a pall to her. “You know,” she said on a breath, “I’ve come to like this house.” She glanced around, taking in the scrolled woodwork that trimmed the ceiling—the Turkish carpet—the handsome wooden screen in the corner. “Six generations born and died here. There’s history in the walls.”

  “And skeletons, no doubt.” Palmer settled into his chair again. “The ghost, still pounding to escape.”

  No. There were no ghosts, to her sorrow. “I doubt it. The Hughleys loved this house. They explored the world so they could bring back treasures to fill the halls. It strikes me
as very . . . .”

  “Morbid?” He was watching the fire, his mouth a grim line. “All their treasures bound now for auction. All their adventures, forgotten.”

  She frowned. “Comforting, in fact.” Why . . . perhaps Miss Everleigh wasn’t alone in her wish for a place to belong—somewhere she might always be welcomed, not for her skills and accomplishments, but simply for the person she was. “No matter how far they traveled, they always had this house to welcome them home.”

  “True. Did you ever wonder why they altered it so often?”

  “Miss Everleigh says they were innovators. Visionaries.”

  He glanced at her, the firelight shadowing his face. “They kept knocking down the walls. Expanding them, making new routes for egress. Not much innovation in that. As visions go, it’s the dream of claustrophobics.”

  The notion unsettled her. “What do you mean to say?”

  “I mean, they traveled to escape this place.” He reached for the bottle, splashed more liquor into his glass. Set down the bottle and stared at it. “Came back very reluctantly, already itching to leave again.”

  She did not like that idea. “It was their home. They were a famously loving family—”

  “It’s a house,” he said. “That doesn’t make it a home. And family—yes, family is important. But it can trap you more neatly than four walls and a locked door.”

  Her chest tightened. She knew that truth too well. She would not have imagined hearing it from him. “I like my version better.” She needed that inspiration. “Imagining them free and bold, wandering the world with this place waiting like a beacon.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “It’s a romantic idea, Lilah.”

  Lilah. Sometimes she was still Miss Marshall to him. She did not understand the logic that governed his use of her name. She only knew that when he addressed her familiarly, her stomach dipped, and for a brief moment, she grew soft and foolish.

  Foolish, indeed. The last time they had conversed at length, he had instructed her to fear him. Then he had offered to kill her uncle.