by Mia Marlowe
“Is there a ghost that vexes you?”
He looked down, his mouth drawn tight. A muscle worked in his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t have to answer. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s all right. Yes, I have ghosts. Every officer loses men under their command. It comes with rank,” he said, tight-lipped. “It’s never easy, and I suppose it shouldn’t be.”
Olivia walked on, deciding he’d say more or not as he chose. She wouldn’t press him, but she was glad when he fell into step beside her.
“During the last battle of my command, things…went badly,” he said. “I made a decision that day I’ve had to live with, but even now, I’m not sure it was the right one.”
She remained silent but reached over to briefly squeeze his hand. If he was willing to speak of it, she was willing to listen. Whatever it was, she wondered if it was the cause of the premature streak of silver in his dark hair.
“My horse was wounded. Dying. Both forelegs shattered. My lieutenant, Morris Duffy, was also injured in a French volley. He took a round to the abdomen.” Rhys cleared his throat before continuing. “The gelding was screaming and the French were overrunning our position. I had one shot left.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in a hard swallow.
“No wound is a good one, but a gut shot is a particularly bad way to go. A man can linger a long while.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Duffy begged me to finish him.”
Olivia’s belly churned. “Did you?”
“No.” He frowned at the distant barrow. From the faraway look in his eyes, she suspected he wasn’t really seeing it. “I shot the horse, threw Duffy over my shoulder, and carried him behind the lines.”
Olivia breathed a sigh of relief.
“The surgeons could do nothing for him. Duffy cursed me for three days, raving with fever before he finally died in bloated agony.”
Rhys picked up his pace, and Olivia was forced to trot in order to keep up with him.
“You can’t reproach yourself for this.”
“Can’t I? I gave a dumb animal more mercy than I showed Lieutenant Duffy.”
“But you did the only thing you could do. Don’t you think you’d carry even more guilt if you had shot him? I’m sure everyone you’ve spoken to about this says the same thing.”
“I’ve never told this to anyone.”
That stopped her in her tracks. Rhys trusted her with this horrible bruise on his soul. She would have to tread lightly lest she make it worse.
“And I don’t know why I tell you now,” he said, not slacking his pace for a moment. “Forget I said anything about it.”
She’d never forget it. He trusted her.
“Contrary to what you may think, Rhys Warrington, you are not God.” She stopped him with a hand to his forearm. “There was a chance, however slim, that the lieutenant might survive his wound. You couldn’t take that chance from him. You did the right thing.”
“I try to tell myself that, but I knew at the time there was no hope.”
“There is always hope.” She caught his hand between both of hers and held it tightly.
“I used to believe that.” He smiled sadly at her. “I used to believe a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“That right would always triumph in the end. That a man’s friends can be trusted to guard his back. That a merciful God looks down on us all with a loving eye.”
She squeezed his hand. “You’re right to believe those things because they are all true.”
“No, they’re not. I left them on a battlefield in France.” He pulled away from her and walked on. “Next to my dead horse.”
Chapter 15
Rhys trudged on, lengthening his strides. It was beyond foolishness to tell her what had happened at Maubeuge. Did he imagine she could somehow offer him absolution?
There was no way she could understand, much less grant him peace over it. All she knew of life and death was what she’d been taught by her tutors and her vicar. She’d never looked into the face of a man who dreaded days of pain and putrefaction more than the great unknowable Dark. She hadn’t heard Duffy’s bleating pleas.
Or his virulent curses.
The stench of dying was on Rhys for days afterward. He’d stayed with Duffy to the end, leaving him only when the chaplain came. Rhys suffered with his lieutenant as Duffy lost his dignity and humanity by tortured degrees. A hundred times, Rhys wished he’d made a different choice and spared the man who’d been his trusted companion from that excruciating, demeaning death.
No one would have known it wasn’t a French bullet that carried Duffy off if Rhys had ended things for him on the battlefield.
But I’d know.
Men died in battle all the time, but this was different. This deliberate, willful taking of another life smacked of murder, however much Duffy begged for it.
Nevertheless, he was ashamed when Duffy suffered in hopeless agony. And when the lieutenant finally drew his last labored breath, Rhys was even more ashamed, because he was relieved to have it over.
Except that it wasn’t over. He relived the whole thing countless times. The battle at Maubeuge was a miserable defeat in which all his actions were questioned. His decision about Duffy was just the final expletive-laced footnote to the dismal end of his military career.
He never should have brought it up to Olivia. Now, between one heartbeat and the next, the hated visions would crowd out his present reality and he’d be transported back to Maubeuge to experience those horrendous moments again.
It always started with a dull roar deep in his ears. The hellacious sulfur of spent cannons came next along with the coppery tang of blood. Then his head would fill with the distant bugle call of retreat, the clash of sabers, and shouts of men locked in mortal combat. And always there was Duffy’s silent, accusing face, frozen in time, mouth drawn in a tight ring of despair as Rhys spent his last round into the thrashing gelding’s head.
He steeled himself against the malevolent apparitions that were sure to come.
Ghosts that refuse to lie quiet indeed.
But to his surprise, no roaring rose up in his mind. All he heard was the crunch of pea gravel under their feet, the rattle of bare limbs when the wind cut through the nearby woods, and Olivia’s breathing as she labored to keep up with him.
He slowed his pace. When she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, the tightness of unshed tears pressed against the backs of his eyes.
“You don’t despise me?” he asked, tight-lipped.
“You vex me sorely sometimes, Rhys,” she said softly, “but I could never despise you.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
Once she learned his true reason for being at Barrowdell, she’d despise him with no effort at all. Ever since Maubeuge, it seemed he’d been faced with one winless choice after another. What to do with Olivia was only the latest in a long string of shite-covered crossroads.
He could destroy her or watch helplessly while Alcock used him to destroy his family. He thought he’d made the right decision, but now, with her slim hand tucked trustingly in his elbow, he wasn’t so sure.
“Believe me, I know my own mind,” she said, blithely unaware that she ought to run from him, shrieking all the way. “Though you may try to hide it, I think you’re a good man.”
For her sake, he almost wished he was.
The gravel path ended at the ornate wrought-iron door of the hothouse. He opened it and ushered her into the shelter, out of the blustery wind. Warm, moist air, rich with loam and earthy scents, washed over them. He helped Olivia out of her pelisse. Then he removed his garrick and hung both of them on pegs near the door. Another garment, a much patched but serviceable great coat, was already dangling from one of the pegs.
“Mr. Weinschmidt?” Olivia called out. When there was no answer, her brows drew together in a frown. “I’m so behind on the repotting, I sent him ahead to start on the Dactylorhiza
fuchsii. He ought to be here. That’s his coat.”
If Mr. Weinschmidt was there, they should hear him puttering away with a trowel. The hair on the back of Rhys’s neck prickled. The hothouse was too quiet.
“Mr. Weinschmidt? It’s not like him to wander off.” Olivia walked down the aisle between high benches laden with pots and seedlings. She tugged off her kidskin gloves as she went. Then she halted as if she’d run headfirst into an invisible wall. “Oh!”
Rhys hurried in front of her and saw what had stopped her so suddenly. A white-haired fellow was lying on his side on the hard-packed earth, his back curved like a question mark, his lips tinged with blue. His unseeing eyes were turned toward the iron girders overhead.
“Oh, Mr. Weinschmidt!” Olivia dropped to her knees beside him.
“Careful. Don’t touch him.” Rhys crouched beside her. “I’m no expert, but this death has the look of poison about it. Put your gloves back on.”
To Rhys’s relief, she obeyed him without question.
“Poison? But why would anyone want to hurt Mr. Weinschmidt?” A sob broke her voice. “He’s been with the estate forever, a sweet old German who never harmed anyone or anything but aphids.”
Olivia’s chin quivered, but she didn’t go to pieces or keen hysterically like her mother would have if confronted with a dead body. Rhys could have kissed her.
He removed his gloves.
“If it’s not safe for me to go gloveless, why—” Olivia began.
“Because I’ll be careful and you might not be.” He felt her stiffen beside him so he hurried to add, “Your concern for my safety is duly noted and appreciated.”
He leaned over Mr. Weinschmidt and passed a hand over the old man’s face to close his sightless eyes. Now, with the exception of the bluish tinge about his mouth and the general graying of his flesh, the little German looked as if he might have fallen into the light sleep of advanced age, albeit in a rather contorted position.
“His flesh is still warm,” Rhys said. “He can’t have been dead long.”
A whiff of spirits wafted up from the body.
“He was a drinker,” Rhys observed.
“I wouldn’t say that. Oh, I know he hides a bottle of schnapps here in the hothouse behind the date palm. My mother has a firm policy against the help imbibing, but it was an open secret between us. Mr. Weinschmidt might tipple on occasion, but only if his rheumatism is plaguing him. You don’t think the schnapps killed him?”
“No, but it may have made him less cautious than he should have been.” Rhys studied the body, looking for a wound but found none. Poison still seemed the most likely cause of death. “Did he always work here in the hothouse?”
“For the last few years, yes. Mr. Weinschmidt was here even before Papa bought Barrowdell. He used to be the head gardener. He’s the one who designed the maze.” Her voice was flat and curiously impersonal, as if she were trying to push out as much information as she could without letting herself feel anything about it. “He wasn’t strong enough for regular gardening anymore, but he didn’t want to retire completely. He has no family, no place to go, so Papa kept him on to help me in the hothouse.”
“What did you say he was repotting?”
“Dactylorhiza fuchsii. Common spotted orchids. We intend to plant them in a marshy bit of land this spring to see how quickly they colonize. Mr. Weinschmidt is really keen on the project and…I mean, he was keen on it.” Her eyes filled with tears again, but she swiped them aside, obviously determined not to let her feelings stop her from answering his questions. “Lots of plants are poisonous if you ingest them, which I’m sure Mr. Weinschmidt knew. This species of orchid isn’t poisonous to the touch.”
“Then something else must have touched him.”
Rhys carefully uncurled the man’s balled fist and found an inch-long thorn imbedded in the fleshy part beneath his thumb. He draped his handkerchief over his fingers and pulled the thorn out. Then he stood and checked the potting soil on the nearest bench. Using his pocketknife, he stirred the dirt and found five more similar thorns mixed into the loamy soil. He spread out his handkerchief and lined them up, six miniature spikes on the white linen.
“This looks like the same sort of thorn that was worked into the padding of Molly’s saddle,” he said. “About the same length and shape.”
“I never saw that one.” She crowded close to peer down at the thorns. When she reached to touch one, he caught up her hand and held it fast.
“I think we have to assume whatever poison killed Mr. Weinschmidt is coated on those thorns.”
“I’m wearing gloves,” she said testily, but she lowered her hand. “They do seem a bit shiny. I have no idea how to determine what sort of poison it might be. However, I do know plants.” She squinted at the thorns. “That’s curious. We have hawthorns and several types of brambles here at Barrowdell, but these aren’t from any of those. I’ve never seen their like here at all.”
“So someone brought them on the property specifically for this purpose,” Rhys said. “If we knew what sort of thorn they are, where they come from, it might give us a clue about the person to whom they belong.”
“There’s a book in Papa’s library that might help. But I need to take at least one of the thorns with me so I can compare it to the illustrations in the text.”
“We’ll take them all.” Rhys carefully folded the handkerchief so the thorns would be padded by the linen and put it in his outer jacket pocket. “And the small pot of soil they were mixed into, just in case we missed one. We don’t want anyone else to be poisoned.”
Olivia’s slim shoulders quaked. “I don’t think it really hit me before. Someone is trying to do harm to us here at Barrowdell.”
Not us. Someone was trying to harm her. Whoever put the thorns in the potting soil wasn’t after the little German gardener. At least she took the threat seriously now. He put his arms around her and she came willingly into his embrace.
A dedicated rake would have made the most of the situation. She was afraid. She was vulnerable. She was ripe for a panicked taking.
Instead, he held her until she stopped trembling, wondering what was wrong with him. Then he planted a soft kiss on the crown of her head.
“I think it best if we allow the rest of the folk here at Barrowdell to believe Mr. Weinschmidt died of natural causes.” He stooped to arrange the body into a more relaxed position, as if the old gardener had fallen due to apoplexy or a stoppage of his heart instead of twisting in toxic agony.
“That way whoever did this will feel safe from discovery.” She nodded in perfect understanding. “They won’t see the need for caution.”
“You, however, must be cautious.”
“I’m spending time with you, aren’t I?” She grimaced at him. He recognized it as an attempt to be flippant about the fact that someone had laced the soil she was going to work with poisoned thorns. “I’d be a fool to be other than cautious.”
***
Olivia and Rhys trudged back to the manor house and reported Mr. Weinschmidt’s demise to Mr. Falk, the estate steward. He concurred that the old gardener had gone to his reward suddenly while doing the work he loved.
“And what mortal can ask more than that?” Mr. Falk had said and efficiently made arrangements for the body to be transported to town for burial in the little churchyard.
Unlike the uproar caused by Olivia’s accident, the solitary death of one of the servants made little difference to the residents in the guest chambers or the family wing. Only Olivia had had much to do with Mr. Weinschmidt, and her mother didn’t want her bringing up such a morbid topic, especially now when more guests were arriving for the house party almost hourly.
Nearly all the places at the long dining table were filled, and conversation was lighthearted and full of plans for the coming days. Only Olivia noticed that the footmen wore unobtrusive black armbands in honor of Mr. Weinschmidt.
No, that’s not right, she thought. Rhys sees it too.
His dark eyes didn’t miss much. While he laughed and conversed with the diners around him, Olivia caught him quietly taking their dinner companions’ measures. She could almost see the questions turning in that handsome head of his.
They’d spent most of the afternoon in the library together, huddled over Professor Hargrave’s Compendium of Noxious Plants. A good bit of the text was given over to a treatise on the Genesis-based origin of weeds and thistles as punishment for the Fall of Man. Investigating a suspicious death certainly confirmed the professor’s insistence on the existence of evil in the world, but the part of the book Olivia found most helpful was the hundreds of detailed illustrations.
On page three hundred and seventy, they discovered a picture that matched the type of thorn that had sent Molly into a frenzy and delivered the poison to Mr. Weinschmidt.
“The thorns are from Euphorbia milii, commonly known as the crown of thorns plant,” Olivia had said. “The long vines are pliable, but the thorns are certainly not, and they grow in excess of one inch long.”
“Not native to England, I assume.”
Rhys hovered over her shoulder, a comforting, solid presence. When he was near, she could pretend this was simply an intellectual exercise, not a deadly serious search for clues about the person who was trying to do her harm.
“Professor Hargrave says they are native to the island of Madagascar.”
Rhys prowled the perimeter of the library like a wolf circling a small herd. “That narrows the field a bit. All your father’s friends from India would likely have stopped at Madagascar on the trip Home. Mr. Stubbs, Colonel Billiter, and the Pinkertons have just moved to the front of the suspect list.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Why would someone do this?”
“Attracting the attention of royalty also attracts other sorts of attention.”
Olivia didn’t know why any of the guests should object to her possible match with the Duke of Clarence. But she also had no idea why anyone would despise her so otherwise. Surely she hadn’t lived long enough or unpleasantly enough to have created an enemy so vicious.
