What the Stillroom Heard
Chapter twenty-six
Violet
They had carried it through the rest of the evening without a word, saying goodnight on the stairs. And now, by one candle at one o’clock in the morning, they found themselves in the stillroom.
Her jars ranked on the shelves, her bunches overhead. Henry stopped two steps inside the door.
“Edmund has no money,” he said. “He economises on his boot-blacking. He has borrowed from me twice this year, and yet he finds banknotes for my wife’s maid.”
“Lovers?”
“Harris said cold. And Edmund is warm with everyone. Coldness from Edmund is itself information.”
“Then she has something on him, and he pays for the keeping of it. What could a lady’s maid know about a duke’s cousin that is worth notes under a table?”
“I cannot begin to fathom what that could be,” he said.
“Or…” she let her thoughts reorganise themselves because it wasn’t a thing that could be said easily or carelessly. “Or perhaps the money is not a secret kept but a service bought. There is exactly one man in England who profits if you die without an heir.”
She expected the flat no he had given her several times before. It did not come. And that frightened her more.
“Edmund cannot hold a confidence past the fourth glass,” he said, finally, but slowly.
“Twelve years of this work wants a discretion he has never once in his life displayed. And,” he stared at the candle, “there is the boy. Harold’s son.
I pay her for his keeping, never once met him.
Ten years of money passing through those careful hands already, and I have never once asked where any of it arrives. ”
“Then we pull the threads in order,” Violet said. “Kit takes the carrier’s direction off the waybook.”
“I will have my cousin to dine,” Henry said, “and look at him myself.”
“And tonight,” she turned toward the room, “we find what this room is hiding.”
He lifted the candle and turned to face the room properly. He walked past the workbench against the wall and stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
For a moment he didn’t answer. He was looking at the far wall, the one with a dresser against it.
“There was a door,” he said. “There. A cold store. Three stone steps down. Harold and I used to steal the damson preserves and eat them on the steps in the dark.” His lips curved into a faint smile.
“My mother always knew. She said the cold kept the jars and the thieves both.” He lifted the candle. “There is no door there now.”
The dresser stood floor to lintel against the far wall, old and laden. He walked its length once, slowly, then crouched and brought the flame close to the flagstones. And there it was: a pale quarter-circle scored faint into the stone, the arc a heavy thing leaves when it is swung many times.
He gripped one end and pulled on it until he could squeeze through. Behind it was a wall, and in the wall, a flush plank door, limed in the same coat as everything else, with no frame to catch the eye. The thumb-latch had been painted over with the rest.
The door opened smoothly without a sound. Three stone steps down, and cold air that smelled of stone and tallow reached them.
The little room below was the size of a pantry and as cold as a well, and it was not abandoned.
Bottles stood ranked on the stone shelf, stoppered and clean.
Muslin, folded. A spirit lamp. She lifted one bottle of rectified spirit to the candle without drawing the stopper. The way it moved told her enough.
A mortar which was scrubbed white. Bundles of dried leaf hung from a string, rue and raspberry leaf and rosemary. She went along the string twice, looking for the one leaf that mattered. It was not there.
“Do you see it?” Henry asked.
“No. I see the harmless kind, but not belladonna. She’s very careful. She likely keeps it where she can watch it.”
They climbed out and repositioned the dresser along its arc. Violet knelt down and set three rue seeds in its path, invisible against the stone, and certain to be crushed to powder by anything that moved.
She stood and brushed her knees. “If she so much as looks inside, we will know. I will have Kit check daily.”
Henry nodded approvingly. “Does she need to access this room to use it? Could she have it extracted in a bottle?”
“She could, and she does. A tincture in good spirit keeps a year or two when stored in the cool and dark. She doesn’t need this room to poison me, but she does need it to make more.”
“Then the trap may sleep for months.”
“Unless we wake it.” She looked at the dresser. “We make her spend it. Let her watch the marriage warm. Let the tray come up. The day the bottle runs dry, she will need to go into this room.”
“Absolutely not.” Henry’s words came out flat and final. She blinked at him.
“You are proposing to use yourself as bait. One morning you may be forced to drink in front of her to hold the pretence, and it might be the one drop that makes you ill or worse. No.” He turned to the door.
“Whoever brews does so at night when everyone sleeps. Have Kit watch the room. The moment someone enters it, he shall identify them.” He turned back to face his wife.
“Very well,” Violet said with a sigh. “But Kit does not apprehend her. We need evidence first.”
“Agreed.”
“I do wonder…” Violet met his gaze. “Why murder your wives unless… Has she tried to seduce you?”
Henry stiffened. “I…”
Her eyes snapped back to his. “She has. I can tell by the look on your face.”
“Well…” He scratched the stubble on his chin.
“When?”
His hand went to the back of his neck this time. “Not overly forwardly but just in the tone of her voice or with the movement of her fingers to her… décolletage.”
“When?” Violet’s voice was cooler, firmer.
“Before you. And after.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” he said. “I did nothing except dismiss her.”
“She is pretty.”
“Yes, but—” He stopped. She watched him gather himself, watched him decide.
“She is attractive the way frost on a window is attractive. I noticed it as a man notices weather through glass.” He took a step toward her.
“She arranged herself. Every gesture of it priced and placed. I have spent my whole life among people who arrange themselves, and I can smell it the way you smell henbane.” Another step.
“You have never once arranged yourself for me. You negotiated like a horse trader. You struck me across the face when you had everything to lose. You asked me to my face whether I had murdered my wives, and I laughed for the first time in years, and I have not been entirely sane since. She put her fingers to her collar, and I felt nothing but the wish to be elsewhere. You roll your sleeves and I lose the thread of my own arguments.” His voice dropped.
“There is no comparison, because she was a tactic. You are the world I live in.”
Violet’s heart was doing something unsalvageable.
“That is a very thorough report, Your Grace,” she managed, and heard how little of her voice was left to manage with.
“I have not finished it.” He closed the last of the distance and took her face in both hands, and his thumbs were not quite steady. He kissed her.
It was not careful. It was not gentle. It was the kiss of a man who had held himself apart from his wife and could not hold himself apart for one more second.
Her back met the edge of the workbench and she did not care.
Her hands found his shirt and held on because her legs had decided they were finished.
He broke away first. They were both breathing hard. His forehead rested against hers.
“I have not done that,” he said, “for twelve years.”
She understood what that meant. She put her hand against his jaw and felt it working, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that the kiss had not already said.
He crushed his mouth to hers once more. His lips caught her upper lip then held it.
He was deliberate and unhurried. His hand moved to her nape, and the thumb stroked the skin in rhythmic motion.
A moan escaped her throat. His other arm circled around her waist and pulled her to him.
His growing arousal dug into her thigh. With a groan, he pressed her body against his, his teeth now grazing her bottom lip and biting lightly.
He released her mouth. His jaw was rough against her cheek as he kissed her earlobe then travelled down her neck. His hand found the hem of her nightgown.
“Henry…” she breathed.
“I know.” His mouth found hers again and this time, he held nothing back. His hand came to the back of her head and tightened in her hair. He pulled gently to angle her head exactly the way he wanted, then he was on her.
His mouth opened against hers and just as she gasped, his tongue swiped her bottom lip. He deepened the kiss, coaxing her mouth open with his tongue then coaxing her tongue to tangle with his. Pressing her mouth against his own, he ground his hips against her thigh.
Violet’s arms were wrapped around his neck, one hand raking through his hair. Just as she needed to break for air, he released her mouth, his lips then rested on her throat.
“Violet,” he rasped.
“Yes.”
“I want more.”
“Yes.”
“But we cannot.”
“I know,” she breathed.
“But when this is all over…”
He drew back. They were both breathing hard. His thumb moved across her cheekbone slowly. She turned her face into his palm, her eyes closed.
He kissed her again. Softer now with a slight drag of his lower lip. He kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw. She breathed him in.
“You head back first. I will be close behind you.”
She nodded, and he reluctantly placed her on the floor. She could feel him watching her as she walked through the door.