“Good idea. Cool and damp tonight.”
When she emerged, she clipped the lead on Louie’s collar and said to Dr. Marsland, “By the way, I’ve already given Lady Celia tonight’s sleeping draught.”
“Ah. Good.”
“Yes. Very diligent is our Anne,” Lady Celia said. “As diligent as Nurse Horlick, and she doesn’t even snore. Smells nicer too. Nearly as nice as Dr. Finch.”
They all shared a smile at that, and then Anne took the dog outside.
When she returned a short while later, she found Dr. Marsland sitting in the bedside chair Anne had recently vacated and Lady Celia lying with eyes closed, snoring lightly, in a deep sleep aided by laudanum.
Anne said, “I will just put away my things, and then I can sit with her again.” She again carried the chimney lamp into the dressing room and set it on the shelf beside the medicine bottles while she removed her shawl and tugged off her gloves.
By the light of the lamp, she noticed something was different. What was it? She looked closer. The digitalis bottle was where she had left it. But the laudanum bottle stood at an angle and was also full. It had not been full earlier—she had already given Lady Celia three doses from that bottle. Someone had been in there.... She knew the housemaid periodically came in to tidy up, but this felt different, like an invasion.
She stepped back into Lady Celia’s room, bottle in hand. “Dr. Marsland. Did you put this laudanum in the room I use? This is not the same bottle that was there before.”
“I brought a fresh one.”
“But the other was still half full.”
“I thought it a wise precaution. After the ... digitalis incident.”
“How so?”
“You will recall that I replaced that bottle straightaway. In case the physic itself had been tainted or wrongly prepared somehow by the druggist. I decided it would be wise to do the same with the laudanum.”
Conflicting emotions surged through Anne. Embarrassment that he felt he had to take precautions due to her presumed mistake. And unease at the thought of him, of anyone, going into her room without her knowledge. She said, “I wonder if I ought to keep the medicine in a locked case. Have you one to spare?”
“I don’t. Surely that’s an unnecessary precaution.”
Anne was not so sure. Perhaps she ought to ask Buxton to find a key so she could lock her doors when she stepped out.
A few moments later, Dr. Marsland rose. “Well. Now you’re back, I will take my leave. Good-night, Miss Loveday.”
Had he really come over to deliver a bottle of laudanum because of the digitalis issue, when the existing bottle—which Lady Celia had had no adverse reaction to—was stillhalf full? Or had he another reason for coming to Painswick Court that night, and the medicine had merely been his excuse?
Curiosity nagging at her, Anne let herself into the other dressing room and knocked softly on Rosa’s door.
A moment later, Rosa opened it, already in her nightclothes, book in hand. “Is something wrong?”
“No, I just want to go downstairs for a moment. Could you keep your door open until I return and listen for Lady Celia? She seems to be sleeping peacefully, but just in case?”
“Of course.”
“Need anything while I’m down there?”
“Hmm ... milk and biscuits?” Rosa suggested with a grin.
“Good idea.”
Anne tiptoed out into the corridor. Miss Fitzjohn’s bedroom door was ajar and her room dark. Anne crept as quietly as she could down the stairs without aid of a candle, hoping she would not trip and fall. Reaching the main level, she tiptoed along the passage until she neared the parlour, firelight and quiet voices revealing that her suspicion had been correct.
Katherine’s voice and a man’s low baritone.
But as she drew closer, she realized she had been wrong after all. It was not Dr. Marsland in a tête-à-tête with Katherine.
The man’s voice belonged to Mr. Dalby.
