Chapter 10
This was the first time someone who had actually known Miss Whitlock had directly accused her of something unflattering.
“You didn’t like her,” I stated plainly.
He scoffed. “You’ve got quite the gift for understatement, Lady Darby,” Jemmy sneered, using the title I’d asked all the Birnams to abandon upon their arrival at Bevington Park.
“No cause for that.” Alfie reproached the younger man’s insolence. His crossed arms were nonthreatening, but there had been enough steel in his voice that Jemmy reacted by mollifying his tone.
“No, I didn’t like her. But my father did. Couldn’t see the deceit in her.” This bothered him. “And he treated her incredibly well. Better than she deserved,” he grumbled.
“Because she was merely staff?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Because she was a liar.”
I opened my mouth to question this bald statement, but apparently Jemmy was finished talking. He pushed to his feet and strode off with a perfunctorily muttered, “Excuse me.”
I turned to Alfie as Jemmy disappeared through the trees. “Did he tell you anything more?”
“Nothing except that he would sooner slash his throat than wed Miss Whitlock.”
My eyebrows arched skyward. “He despised her that much?”
“Seems so. But I’m no closer to understanding why that is than you are.
” He frowned down at his feet. “Though I must say, it seems rather foolhardy for him to admit all of this if he was the person who attacked her. And for all young Master Birnam’s youth and inexperience, I don’t think he’s this big of an idiot. ”
I peered through the screen of trees in the direction Jemmy had gone. “No, I don’t think so either.”
“For all his apparent hatred, it’s obvious he was still conflicted about the matter.”
I was struck by the astuteness of this observation. “You think he ‘doth protest too much’?” I asked, quoting Shakespeare.
Alfie considered this. “No, I believe he genuinely disliked her. But for all that, he’s still struggling with how he feels about her death.”
“Just because you dislike someone doesn’t mean you wish for them to be killed in such a terrible manner,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s as simple as that.”
“Maybe,” Alfie concurred, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced. Neither was I.
“I’ll keep close,” he said after a few moments. “There’s a chance he’ll say more.” One corner of his lips twisted wryly. “Especially if he continues sousing himself.”
Strong drink did tend to loosen lips.
“By the way, has Lorna had a chance to ask you about the medications the doctor prescribed Birnam?”
I pulled my thoughts away from the lubricating effects of alcohol and the internal debate I was waging as to whether this was helpful or harmful. “She has not.” I turned to face him more fully. “Does she think she might be able to concoct something better?”
As a gifted herbalist—or a hedge witch, as she’d been known on Dartmoor—Lorna knew more about plants and their attributes and healing properties than anyone I’d ever met.
She’d learned from her mother, who’d passed down the knowledge from her mother, and so on, extending several generations farther back than that.
“She said she’s willing to try. I believe she already has something in mind.
That is, if Mr. Birnam would welcome it.
” Not everyone trusted the abilities of a woman, more the fool they.
For all Dr. Clarke’s competence, it was doubtful he’d prescribed anything but laudanum for the pain, which dulled the senses and at times caused nausea as well as a number of other complications.
“I’ll speak with Mr. Birnam,” I said. There was no use in Lorna wasting her time and efforts if the patient wouldn’t even accept it.
Alfie escorted me back toward the river, where I hoped to still speak to Lord Milngavie.
Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be found.
However, I did spy my brother, and what’s more, for a rare moment he was alone.
He appeared lost in serious thought, much like Milngavie had been earlier, but whatever Trevor was contemplating seemed to be grim.
Reading my mind much like his cousin did, Alfie leaned close to murmur, “I shall leave you here.”
I nodded my thanks and picked my way across the rocks and silt toward Trevor, hoping he wouldn’t attempt to evade me and the conversation I was determined to have.
It turned out I needn’t have worried, for he stood waiting, his gaze trained on something on the opposite side of the riverbank.
Only the tension in his shoulders told me he knew I was approaching.
I realized as I drew closer that he was observing a kingfisher’s burrow.
I stopped beside him, watching the brightly plumed bird clean the coppery brown feathers on its breast, and waited to see if Trevor would speak first. It would be far easier if he did. I didn’t like the notion of having to interrogate my brother, but interrogate him I would if need be.
I had just begun to fret over how to begin when Trevor heaved a heavy sigh.
“This is a right guddle, isn’t it?”
He surprised me by choosing the Scots word.
I’d heard both Mrs. Mackay and Bree use it before, but I supposed Trevor might also have learned it from one of his farmhands—living in the Borders region as he did, with both Scottish and English influences.
His home, where we’d all grown up, sat on English soil, but we could see Scotland through the rear windows just over the river.
Wherever he’d picked it up, it aptly described the situation.
“You know what I’m going to ask you,” I said softly, keeping my gaze trained on the brilliant blue feathers of the kingfisher’s back.
“I do.” He inhaled a shaky breath. “And the truth is…I just don’t know.”
Hearing the agony in his voice, my heart constricted.
If he would have welcomed my compassion, I would have reached for his hand, but I knew my brother well enough to tell how tightly coiled he was.
Any display of empathy and he would retreat rather than confront the emotions bubbling beneath the surface.
“Have you told me everything you know about Miss Whitlock?” I asked instead. “Did you hold anything back?”
“I didn’t hold anything back.” His mouth flattened. “Though I know there’s more. I asked Matilda about it after you left the library, but she claimed she didn’t know anything else.”
“But you don’t believe her.”
He spread his hands helplessly. “How can I? Miss Whitlock lived with her for years, said she was like the sister she never had. And she’s been in close proximity with her often enough since she returned from school for Matilda to have learned something about her.”
“You mentioned that Matilda said something occurred to cause Miss Whitlock to be sent away. Did she at least tell you what that was?”
“She says she doesn’t know. That she never has.”
But he didn’t believe this either. And frankly, neither did I.
I risked stating the obvious. “She’s afraid.”
He turned to look at me, his features suddenly guarded.
“I know you saw it in the library, too. Something has terrified her.” I searched his eyes beneath the shaded brim of his hat. “And I think we both hold the same suspicion what.”
Trevor turned away, unable to continue holding my gaze, and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Aye,” he admitted. “Though just because she fears someone from her family killed Miss Whitlock doesn’t mean they did.”
The firmness of his tone and the glint in his eyes made me wonder if he was also speaking for himself. If in a roundabout way he was admitting to his own fear that Matilda might have been involved.
“You’re right,” I answered evenly. “But we still have to confront the possibility whether we like it or not.” I turned away, observing the river as it flowed around the rocks, forming little eddies and currents.
“Didn’t you have to confront the possibility I might be guilty of all those things Sir Anthony’s colleagues accused me of? ”
Trevor seemed caught off guard by my harkening back to that dark moment—one of the most terrifying of my life—when I’d been taken before the Bow Street magistrates, accused of all sorts of despicable crimes.
“No,” he insisted, growing almost angry.
“Not for a moment did I think my sister capable of what those morbid, overwrought men suggested.”
I rather liked hearing them described as “overwrought,” but there was a point to be made.
“But I did.” I could tell I’d stunned him and then realized I should clarify.
“Not the luring men to their deaths on my husband’s anatomy table and feasting on their organs nonsense!
But I did assist Sir Anthony with his dissections.
I did make anatomical illustrations of the bodies laid open on his table. ”
“Because you had no choice!” Trevor’s face was red fury, but I could also sense his rising alarm.
He was right. Had I refused, Sir Anthony had threatened to break all my fingers and throw me into a lunatic asylum.
And as my husband, he would have had every right to do all of it, and neither my family nor the law could have stopped him.
I forced myself to breathe calmly as I recalled the terror of those years of my first marriage, of knowing Sir Anthony had such absolute power over me.
The same could be said of Gage, but I had married a very different man the second time.
Though even that knowledge didn’t entirely impede the dread I sometimes felt creep over me that he could change, and I would have no recourse.
However, I trusted Gage. I trusted in his love, honorability, and goodness.
And I trusted in my ability to discern that he would never use any power he might hold to hurt me.
“But I still did it,” I murmured to Trevor, allowing him no quarter.
He blinked at me.
“And you must have at least had to consider the possibility of my guilt.”
His gaze was so stricken as he stared back at me that I trusted my point had been made.