The Muslin
Chapter thirty-one
Violet
She woke before he did. The room was still dark, the fire burned to embers, the curtains holding out whatever grey light the morning had managed.
Henry lay on his side behind her, his arm still draped across her waist, his breath steady against the back of her neck.
She did not move. She lay in the warm cave of his body and listened to him breathe and felt, for the first time in her life, the simple pleasure of being held by someone who cared for her.
She turned her head carefully on the pillow.
His face was slack with sleep, the hard lines of his jaw and brow softened, his mouth slightly open.
He looked younger. He looked like the man he might have been were it not for grief, guilt, tragedies.
A strand of dark hair had fallen across his forehead.
She resisted the urge to push it back because she did not want to wake him.
She wanted this. Another minute of it. Another hour.
She smiled in the dark. It was a foolish smile, the kind she was embarrassed about even now in private.
Violet slipped out from under his arm and donned her dressing gown. She did not ring for Sarah. Instead she dressed herself with short stays underneath. She was fastening her earrings when she heard the commotion downstairs. A voice in the hall carried upward. Cranbrook.
She hurried to the landing. The duchess was already on the stairs, climbing like a woman with an undertaking, her portfolio under one arm and her expression murderous.
“What has happened?” Violet asked.
“What has happened is that the Iredell ball is to take place in a fortnight and your invitations have not gone out.” Cranbrook reached the top of the stairs and fixed her with a look that could have curdled the chocolate.
“I assumed, when I left here yesterday, that you would attend to the cards. Was I wrong?”
“It has been only one-and-twenty hours since your departure.”
“I would think one-and-twenty hours is enough to write a few invitation cards.”
“I am sorry. We have been occupied.”
“Occupied,” Cranbrook spat, “London has been waiting. You ought to have sent at least the important invitations yesterday. If those cards are not in the post by this afternoon, half your guests will have accepted other engagements and the Patronesses will assume they have been forgotten, which is a slight from which there is no recovery. Come.”
They set up in the morning room. Cranbrook produced the guest list and a stack of ivory card stock with the Iredell crest embossed at the top.
“Two hundred and fourteen,” the older woman said. “Every card personally written. A duchess does not delegate her invitations. It signals indifference.”
“Two hundred and fourteen cards,” Violet repeated.
“By this afternoon. Begin.”
Violet picked up the pen.
They wrote. Cranbrook dictated the wording for each—identical in content, varied in warmth, because the degree of cordiality in an invitation was a weapon as precise as a bayonet.
Some received “the pleasure of your company.” Others received “the honour of your presence.” The Patronesses received “with great anticipation.” The duke of Cromwell received “the pleasure of your company,” because overfamiliarity with an enemy would read as grovelling.
While they wrote, the older duchess rearranged the supper plan.
A ball of this size would not have a formal seating chart.
Guests would dance, circulate, and take supper when they pleased.
But the supper room required a principal table for the most distinguished guests, and the placement at that table was as fraught as any state dinner.
Cranbrook rearranged the supper plan with the same ruthlessness she had applied to the guest list. The principal table was laid for twelve in her head before Violet had finished her sixtieth card.
They worked through the morning. Violet’s hand cramped around the pen by the sixtieth card. By the hundredth, the ache ran from her fingers to her wrist to her forearm. She set the pen down and flexed her hand.
“The cramp will pass,” Cranbrook said without looking up. “The slight of uninvited ton will not.”
Violet picked up the pen. It was nearly half past eleven when the knock came. She was blotting the hundred and fifty-second card when Kit appeared at the door. He stood in the frame with his hat in his hands and his face blank. Something was wrong.
“Your Grace. A word.”
She set the pen down and rose to her feet.
“Whatever you need to say, say it here,” Cranbrook barked. “We have work to do, young man.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Violet said, and went to him at the door.
“The duke is unwell,” Kit said. “His valet checked on him at eleven. He has not risen. He has a high fever and cannot keep his eyes open.”
Violet’s hand flew to her mouth. “Where is he?”
“Your chamber.”
She was already moving. She heard Cranbrook behind her. “I will summon my physician.” And then she was running with her skirts gathered in both fists.
She opened her bedroom door. Henry was in her bed with Mrs Greer applying cold compress on his forehead.
The covers were tangled around his legs, and his shirt was damp with sweat.
His skin was grey and his lips were dry and colourless.
When she pressed her hand to his forehead, the heat of it shocked her.
His eyes were closed and he did not respond to touch.
“Henry.” She stroked his face lightly. “Henry, open your eyes.”
His lids moved, barely, with a slit of white beneath them. Then they closed again. A sound came from his throat, low and guttural.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her fingers to the pulse at his neck. It was there. Rapid and shallow, but there. She pulled back the covers and looked at his body: his legs, his arms, his hands. The skin on his forearms was mottled. His fingernails had a bluish tint.
She sat back and forced herself to think. Last evening, he had come through the connecting door. He had taken the brush from her hand. He had been warm but not so warm that it alarmed her. There had been no perspiration, no shaking. He had been fine.
Except… there had been langour when he entered. His shoulders had dropped. She’d seen the slight unsteadiness when he crossed the room. She had assumed he had been drinking. There had been no brandy or wine on his breath.
He had been ill, not drunk. And she had not seen it because his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on her neck.
Poison.
She stood up and rushed to his chamber. His room was neat, the bed made. She looked at the bedside table. No teacup. No glass. She opened the drawers. Nothing but books.
She called for Mrs Greer who was still in the other room. “Your Grace?”
“Who prepares the duke’s tea in the morning?”
“His valet, Your Grace. The tray comes up from the kitchen, and Mr Fenton pours.”
“Sarah Baker has no part in it? She does not bring the tray or enter his room in the morning?”
“Sarah? Of course not, Your Grace. The duke’s morning routine is handled entirely by Mr Fenton. She has no business in the duke’s chambers.”
“And his evening? His nightcap?”
“Mr Fenton, naturally. He lays out the brandy and retires.”
“Thank you, Mrs Greer. You may attend to His Grace now. Let him sip tea with sugar if he is able. Prepare it yourself and trust no one, Mrs Greer.”
The housekeeper looked perplexed but went without a word.
Violet stood in Henry’s dressing room and looked at the orderly surfaces. There was nothing that could have been used to make him ill. Then what?
The muslin.
The memory came to her like a bell struck in the dark. She turned and looked at Henry’s dressing table. His shaving things were laid out with military precision: the straight razor, the strop, the badger brush, the shaving bowl with its cake of soap.
She picked up the bowl. The soap was smooth, pale, and smelled of sandalwood. She turned it in her hands. It looked like an ordinary shaving soap.
She set the bowl down and scraped a thin curl of soap with the razor and held it to her nose.
Sandalwood. Nothing else. She looked at the hearth.
The fire had been laid but not lit. She knelt on the cold stone and struck the tinderbox until a flame caught on the kindling.
She held the soap curl over the flame on the flat of the razor blade.
The sandalwood smell burned off in seconds.
Underneath it, rising with the heat, was something faint.
Acrid. Her mother had taught her this smell when she was nine years old, holding a dried sprig of yarrow over a candle while her mother explained which plants stored metals in their roots and what happened to the soil when arsenic leached from the mine tailings on the north hill.
Garlic. The heated soap smelled of garlic.
She dropped the razor. Her hands were shaking. She stood and walked toward the door. For the last few mornings, the razor opened his skin in a dozen small cuts, and the arsenic in the lather entered his blood, and neither her husband nor his valet had any idea.
Sarah had been in and out of these rooms her entire life. Having grown up in this house, she had been given the privilege of accessing any part of the house. She could have easily entered Henry’s room while it was empty and replaced the cake of soap which his valet would not have questioned.
She hurried to the landing.
“Kit.” He turned at the foot of the stairs. “Send a carriage to my mother. Now. Tell her Henry has been poisoned with arsenic. She will know what to bring.” Her voice was unsteady. Her legs trembled. “Tell the driver this is a matter of life or death.”
Kit turned to go, but she stopped him. “Find Sarah Baker. Find Mrs Garrick. Make certain neither of them leaves this house.”
“And Vexley?”
“Him too. Send someone to his lodgings. I want him here within the hour.”
Cranbrook appeared on the landing beside her. She had removed her gloves. Her face was white, but her voice was iron.
“I have sent for Dr Bainbridge.” She looked at Kit. “I will find Baker and the cook. You send for the Duchess’s mother and fetch Vexley. Go.”
Kit went. Cranbrook disappeared. Violet heard the front door open and close twice, heard hooves on the gravel, heard a carriage pull away.
She went back into the bedroom and called out to Mrs Greer.
“I need egg whites. Six of them. Beaten into a glass of cold water. And five jugs of boiled water, cooled. Now.”
Mrs Greer ran.
She then closed the door. Henry had not moved.
His breathing was shallow, rapid, his chest barely rising under the damp shirt.
She pulled the covers back over him and tucked them around his shoulders.
She found a cloth in the washstand, soaked it in cold water, and laid it across his forehead.
She changed it when it grew warm. She changed it again.
She sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand. It was hot and limp in hers. She pressed it between both of her palms and held it against her chest.
“Stay,” she said. The word came out broken. “You do not have my permission to leave.”
He did not respond. His breathing stuttered. She pressed his hand harder against her heart and kissed his knuckles.
The tears came without warning. They fell down her face and onto his hand, and the sound that came out of her was ugly and raw and did not belong to a duchess.
She pressed her forehead to his knuckles. “Stay,” she said again.