The Apothecary's Curse

by Barbara Barnett

  Simon’s sneer disparaged Braithwaite’s confession. “Yet it has taken you so many days to track her down here?”

  “She left for me a note, eventually found, saying she needed some days alone—away from our home. I do believe six days is adequate time for my wife to have come to her sens . . . to forgive me. We are still quite newly wed, and I am no expert at matters of the heart. But do understand, Dr. Bell, I love your sister with all my soul and am much distressed to not have her beside me.”

  Simon did not believe one word.

  “I shall speak to her, if you will give me a moment, Lord Braithwaite. I am not optimistic, however. Shall I have tea and biscuits sent in to you?” Simon had already begun forming in his head how to prevail upon James to use his connections at court to sever the marriage.

  “Of course. Tea and biscuits sound lovely, especially if freshly baked by your marvelous cook.”

  “I do believe, Lord Braithwaite, that she has had some in the oven, if my nose does not lie.”

  “I thank you, sir, from the very bottom of my heart.”

  Simon exited the drawing room and started up the stairs toward the guest wing.

  “A word, Dr. Bell?” Erceldoune tapped him on the shoulder, startling him.

  “Might it wait, sir? I need to find Eleanor; I believe she is still in her room. And be aware. Lord Braithwaite is in the drawing room. I am certain you do not wish to cross his path—”

  “If I but had a gun, I would slay him before he caught the first glimpse of me. But never mind that. It is your sister we must discuss. I could not help but overhear your argument, and you must not allow her to return with him under any circumstances.” Erceldoune gestured up the stairway. “Let us remove this conversation to another place, shall we?”

  Simon nodded. “I have no intention of doing so if my sister does not desire it, but how can I—”

  Eleanor awaited them at the top of the stairs, her hands gripped on the gallery railing. “Forgive me, I was reading in the gallery and heard your voices. And, Simon, who could not have heard your argument with my Richard? Your roaring rattled the poor chandelier prisms something awful!”

  A look passed from Erceldoune to Eleanor and back again, a tête-à-tête in furtive glances, questions and responses Simon did not even begin to comprehend.

  “Lady Braithwaite.” Erceldoune’s voice dropped to a husky whisper. “I implore you, please tell him.”

  Simon interrupted the exchange; he’d had enough. Erceldoune obviously knew something, and it nettled him to be so in the dark. “Tell me what? Forgive my confusion, but, Eleanor dear, what the devil is going on?”

  She finally spoke. “It is but a trifle, Simon,” she said lightly, her expression fixed on Erceldoune. “Whatever Mr. Erceldoune may think, or may have said to you on the matter of my husband, it is undoubtedly an exaggeration.” She laughed gaily. “Simon, my dear brother, you know me well. It is as much my own nature as Richard’s fault that we rowed.”

  Her expression said something quite different, yet he could not refute her own avowal, no matter his inclination.

  “And now I shall go. He awaits me in the drawing room?”

  Simon huffed out a breath, exasperated by her sudden change of heart. “He does.” Indeed, Eleanor could be the most mercurial of women, but there was something else afoot. He stopped her as she crossed the gallery. “Wait. Eleanor, dear sister, you must confess to me what is going on here.” He looked toward Erceldoune, silently imploring his assistance.

  But Erceldoune only stared at the floor, until Eleanor turned down the corridor and toward her rooms.

  “Tell him I shall be down presently,” she called out to Simon. “I’ve only to get a few things from my room and make myself presentable.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Gaelan followed Eleanor to her room. “A word, if I may, Lady Braithwaite?”

  She stopped, pivoting toward him, until she stood near enough he could smell the citrus of her perfume.

  “Wait a moment.” He held up a finger, listening for the faint click of the drawing room door as it closed, assured that neither Bell nor Braithwaite was in earshot.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Erceldoune, I’ve a mere fifteen minutes to make ready to greet my prince; if you will excuse me—”

  “There is something deeply amiss here. How can you return to him after what you confessed to me?”

  Eleanor sniffed, addressing him with the disdain she might show a disrespectful servant. “I have rethought my position, Mr. Erceldoune, and am convinced that Lord Braithwaite’s advances were no more vigorous than that of an amorous lover.” She busied herself about the bureau, gathering a few things into a small handbag.

  Her words were a dagger struck sharp and true. “What?” Gaelan tried to capture her eyes, but she resisted, refusing to engage him. “I . . .” Staggered, words failed him as he swallowed back anger over this mercurial shift. Yet he believed not a word of it.

  “And the knife to your neck. Was that ardor? Was that passion? Do you think me so simple I cannot comprehend you?” He stalked the room, furious with her, with Braithwaite, the whole bloody lot of them. He struggled to keep his voice a whisper. “Tell me this again, but to my face, not hidden, with your back to me. You think I cannot perceive beyond your words, but you know me not at all. Even your hands belie your claims. I see them tremble as you endeavor to speak falsely.” He stepped very near, her scent invading his nostrils. He must step back from this brink.

  “I must be mistaken about the knife; ’twas his teeth must’ve grazed me on my neck, that is all! Admittedly, it was unfair of me to use you so when you were only trying to be kind. I was angry is all . . . at Richard . . . at Mama, at Simon . . . at the world. And you . . . you with your gentle manner despite the suffering you have endured—” She was fighting tears, and he wished them to fall—to reveal a truth she was trying so hard to deny. She turned away again. “For that I so humbly apologize, Mr. Erceldoune.”

  “You mean to go back to him?” he murmured.

  “I do.” She turned toward him, resting a delicate hand upon his arm. He grasped it, entwining his fingers in hers.

  “Please reconsider.” He watched her struggle as resolve receded from her expression. But he knew already she would not change her mind.

  “What choice have I? To live solely by my brother’s generosity, which shall never do? Go home to Mama, who will send me back to Richard in a trice? Cast my lot with you? A penniless ex-convict?”

  He ignored the sting of her wounding words. “To be with me? I could never ask that of you. Ever. Why would you even think—”

  The grip on his hand tightened as the other went to his face, tucking a long lock of his hair behind his ear—an intimate gesture that stole his breath. “No. I must go back to my lord, who will undoubtedly shower me with rubies and ermine. Who would not desire such adoration?”

  “Please look at me, into my eyes, and repeat the claim that you wish to return to . . . him, and I will know you speak truly from your heart.”

  “I owe you no explanation, Mr. Erceldoune, and certainly no more than I have given you. Your impertinence is an affront to me!” She pulled her hand from his, leaving him standing in her bedchamber.

  He could not leave this alone, despite the rebuff. He followed her into the corridor, stilling her with a gentle hand on her back before she reached the end of the long hallway. “Eleanor . . . Lady Braithwaite . . . I cannot allow myself to believe that what passed between us was false, what you confessed to me of his . . . was a lie.”

  She whipped around to face him, her features hard and cold as granite. “It matters little what you believe. I have the situation well in hand, I assure you.” But the tremor in her voice troubled him.

  She pivoted back toward the gallery, nearly knocking Gaelan off balance with the sweep of her skirt. He could do little more to mount a challenge without grabbing her about the wrist and physically stopping her. He let her go, irritated and smarting, observing h
er from the gallery balcony as she made her way down the stairs and into Braithwaite’s waiting embrace.

  He descended to the foyer as soon as he heard the horses pull away. “Dr. Bell, there is something not quite right in all this.”

  “I agree, but what on earth might I do about it? She is a married woman, and does as she pleases to do. Had I a choice I would have insisted, but you heard her—”

  Gaelan sucked in a breath. To hell with his damnable promise of silence. “Dr. Bell, if I might speak frankly?”

  “Go on, but do not speak to me in riddles and obscurities. I have had quite enough of that from both Eleanor and you these past days. If you’ve something to say that I should know, out with it, and clearly!”

  “Your sister elicited from me a vow not to tell you, yet I feel compelled—”

  “Out with it, man!”

  Gaelan picked up a small cobalt blue bowl, weighing it in his hand as if to judge the import of his confession. “He forced her at knifepoint to . . .” He paused. Even now it was difficult to say the words without hurling the bowl across the room in a rage. “She showed to me a long scratch from jaw to collarbone as evidence that he threatened her—at knifepoint, you see—”

  Gaelan waited a moment, watching Bell’s face turn ashen. He gripped the bowl so tightly it might have broken had it not been so heavy.

  “Threatened. But why? To what end?”

  “Did you not see it, Bell?” Gaelan thundered, disheartened and angry at Bell’s thickheadedness with regard to his sister. “Did you not witness it, plain on her face this very morning? The pain that flared with every hobbled step she took on the day she first arrived? Are you so absorbed with your own unending despair you failed to see it?” He brandished the heavy bowl, sore tempted to hurl it at Bell, setting it down instead. “I have seen it too many times in my day—the women I have attended: whores or wives, lovers, workers in terror of losing their employment, so many! Have you ever seen one of them, near ripped apart, bleeding, their eyes averted in shame as if ’twere their own bloody fault for it? Always with that same walk, like Lil that . . . that morning before . . . Her face yet haunts me at times.”

  Gaelan paused, his composure disintegrating. A breath, and he was able to continue, calmer now, if only slightly. “Perhaps it is the difference between us, Bell. Those you usually attend are too genteel to mention it—the horror of rape, of sodomy. They come to the likes of me instead, yes, even the oh-so-bloody proper ladies of your station.”

  “I have seen it, Erceldoune,” Bell said, sagging against the wall, realization finally dawning on his face. He continued, rallying suddenly. “More than you might suspect. You are right; many fear the shame of discovery and would rather risk seeking help . . . elsewhere. But I have attended the aftermath a time too often of the butchery done by one of your brother apothecaries—”

  Gaelan let the remark pass; Bell was right. Too many apothecaries, he had to admit, had no business treating a bloody nose, much less the carnage of rape, and he, too, had witnessed the damage they wrought. And if Bell wished to redirect his anger, then . . .

  “But why would she return to him, and so readily? Would she not fear him? She seemed so determined to go back to him—to reconcile . . .” Bell stopped midsentence, his eyes darting up toward the second story, and then back to Gaelan, as if struck by a revelation. “Dear God. . . .” Bell fled up the stairs; Gaelan followed.

  They entered a small study just off the gallery. “My uncle’s pistols. He left them to me, and Eleanor would know where I . . .” Bell opened the case, dropping the lid when he saw an empty space where one of the small pistols had been.

  CHAPTER 39

  Simon bolted from the house, bellowing for his horse. He was upon it and off to Braithwaite’s London house at full gallop, hoping they’d gone there and not to the estate in Sussex. If they had . . . He barely acknowledged the cursing pedestrians as they shouted at him, darting out of his way. He cared little but for his sister’s safety, praying he was not too late.

  Braithwaite’s front door was unlocked when he got there. Simon breathed a sigh of relief that his guess had been correct and they had stayed in London. But bursting through to the foyer, he wished to God they had gone south, for then there would yet be time to catch them before the unthinkable had happened. He was too late.

  The grand foyer of the Braithwaite London house had metamorphosed into a wholly new circle of hell. Blood painted the walls and pooled on the foyer floor. Eleanor cowered in a corner sobbing, her face, her gown painted sickly red, Simon’s pistol still in her hand. At first, he thought her injured—that her blackguard of a husband had shot her. But the picture became clear as he drew near her.

  Simon approached with cautious, quiet steps; he did not want to startle her—not with the weapon still curled in her fingers. “Dear God, Eleanor, what have you done?”

  “Is it not obvious?” Eleanor said flatly through her tears. “I have murdered my husband in cold blood, and I shall hang for it.” She stared straight ahead, her expression stony cold. She continued, resolute, defiant, despite her trembling hands. “And I would do it again in an instant.”

  “Eleanor . . . darling . . . Please give me the pistol.” Several scenarios ripped through Simon’s mind as he imagined the scene. Braithwaite had forced her, threatened her, held a knife to her a second time and . . . No, this was calculated. He approached Braithwaite’s body; she’d shot him through the back of the head. There was little left of it, like a jack-o’-lantern smashed the day after Hallowe’en. Eleanor was covered in his blood and tissue; she dripped in it bodice to hem. She seemed not even to notice, or be sickened by it, as she stared straight ahead.

  “It is done, Simon. I—”

  “Did he—”

  She looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face. “Did he what? Try to force me—again? I would suppose that your houseguest confessed what I confided to him the other day . . . what I asked him not to share?”

  He gathered her in his arms. The blood would need explaining to the servants once he got her home. But they would be quiet about it, he was certain; they were loyal. It would be the least of his worries. What’s to be done with her, with . . . this? Simon took in the horrific scene. “Yes. Erceldoune confessed it, but why did you not tell me yourself?”

  “I was afraid you would—”

  “Would do what? Murder him? Like you have done? My God, Eleanor what shall we do?” He must get her from this place and safely back to his house. Who knew what passerby might have heard gunshots? They needed to move swiftly.

  “There is nothing to be done. Simon, what he did to me—I could not go on. I would rather die in the hangman’s knot than live in constant fear.” She broke down entirely in her brother’s arms.

  “Shh. We’ll think of something. Obviously, there are no servants about with the house closed.” It was a question.

  “He brought me here straightaway from your house. We are alone. To be sure, Simon, I believed with all my heart that he meant to do me in right here, and—”

  “Self-defense, then? Hardly likely, since you stole my pistol. That alone signifies intent. Has this been your plan all along—to murder him first chance?”

  “Self-defense only in the loosest sense, I fear. Besides, even if it was, do you really believe I would stand a chance in the halls of English justice, given Richard’s position? At best they would lock me up at Bedlam as a madwoman. At worst . . . well, we shall find out soon enough.”

  “My carriage should be outside in a moment. I rode here like a madman on horseback, knowing that you’d stolen my pistol from its case. Let us go back home, and we will think it through; we shall call the authorities after you’ve cleaned up—and we rid ourselves of that weapon. And its mate.” Eleanor looked ready to swoon from her ordeal.

  “You cannot be serious, Simon. I shall not let my brother become an accomplice to this crime.”

  “Hush. Say nothing more of it.” The carriage had arrived.
“We must move quickly.”

  Simon wrapped her in a blanket found in the library and trundled her into the carriage. “My sister is very ill,” he instructed his coachman, whose horrified expression begged further explanation. “She is vomiting blood . . . and more. Make haste and get her away to my house as quickly as you can. I shall meet you there.” Simon mounted his own horse and sped through streets, barely aware that he, like Eleanor, was covered in the remains of Lord Richard Braithwaite.

  Gaelan’s boots echoed through the three-story foyer as he paced like an expectant father, growing more anxious with each moment. No good would come of this, and he could not thrust from his mind the vivid image of Eleanor in Braithwaite’s brutal hands. How had he let it happen? Allow a tether to so firmly attach itself from her heart to his? And now he was in agony as he awaited her fate.

  Simon erupted through the door, covered in blood. He was shaking, appearing to be in shock, as if he had emerged from a battlefield, not a London house. His words emerged in short gasps punctuated with deep draughts of air. “Erceldoune,” he managed, “there is little time before my carriage arrives with Eleanor. Braithwaite is dead!”

  Gaelan froze, absorbing the blow. Had Simon, then, murdered him? He could imagine the scene, Simon interrupting God knew what and shooting Braithwaite dead.

  “How is she?”

  “How the bloody hell do you think she is? She just bloody murdered her own husband!”

  “Eleanor did? My God.” There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but the words refused to form.

  “Erceldoune! Do not simply stand there agape! Braithwaite shall be missed soon enough, I assure you, and we must—”

  “Then you mean to do nothing, not tell the police?” Gaelan’s eyes widened in surprise. Yet, what might they say that would keep Eleanor from the noose?