Saffron put her hand to her temple. Now she had done it. She sank back into her seat and braced herself.
Elizabeth stomped into the room and slammed the tea tray on the table. Hands on her hips and color already high, she stalked toward Saffron. “Saffron Everleigh, have you lost your senses? You let me think this was an accident!Youpoisoned yourself? Intentionally? On purpose! By your own hand!” She was ramping up into a full blown, one-sided row, her voice climbing to a shriek. “You know they have people to help people like you, darling—psychiatrists! Find a Freud man next time! Honestly, I sometimes wonder if you’ve spent too long in hot greenhouses.” Elizabeth rounded on Alexander now, glaring at him. “What did you do? Egg her on? Did you need a test subject or something?”
Alexander looked at her stonily. “Of course not.”
“Eliza!” Saffron snapped, shocked by her friend’s rudeness. It was one thing to shout at her, another to yell at Alexander when all he’d done was help. She got to her feet and crossed to Elizabeth, her voice low, though it would be impossible for Alexander to miss her words. “He had nothing to do with it. Besides, if he had put me up to it, he hardly would have called you up to tell you that I was ill.” Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “I took the toxin that the police think Mrs. Henry was given at the party.” Elizabeth gasped, but Saffron pressed on. “I was doing an experiment to see if it would cause the same side effects. I took a very small dose and wrote everything down so I could show the police. They think it was Dr. Maxwell, Eliza. I can’t let him go to prison!”
Elizabeth scowled at her. “Do you really think that Dr. Maxwell would want you to put yourself at such risk for him? The man who has been like a father to you wants you lying on the floor, poisoned?” She took a few angry paces, then turned sharply back to Saffron, her anger and volume flaring again. “And what would have happened if you had given yourself even a bit too much? You could have gone into a coma yourself! Or died! What precautions did you have in place? Who did you tellbefore you took the stuff? And what about Mr. Ashton? You could have died right there, and then what would have happened to him?” Saffron bit her lip. She hadn’t thought about that. “He would have a dead woman that he wouldn’t be able to explain away to a doctor or police. He would have been arrested too.” Elizabeth shook her head, one hand on her temple. “It was a stupid thing to do.” With that, she left the room.
Saffron stood frozen, looking after Elizabeth as her words reverberated in her head. The full depth of her recklessness finally occurred to her. She’d thought it was enough to have the journal, but that felt like a paltry assurance of her safety now. She’d been paralyzed andrefused a doctor. How could she have been so stupid? Tears welled and fell without her interference.
Behind her, the clink of china sounded as Alexander busied himself with tea. He pushed a hot cup into her hands without commenting.
Saffron patted her eyes dry with the sleeve of her jumper and took a sip of tea. She hesitated to look at Alexander. If he did look at her with censure, she would deserve it. She hadn’t thought for a minute of the consequences for his tangential involvement in her experiment if something had gone wrong.
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Knowing what I did about the xolotl vine, I thought it would be all right. I was thinking only of my own ideas. It never occurred to me that it would have put you into a terrible position should I have needed a doctor or … or if something worse had happened.”
Alexander nodded stiffly. “Let’s not make it a habit.” He stood up. “I should be going.”
Saffron was caught off guard by this abrupt departure. “Please, I …” She swallowed the lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away. “Dr. Maxwell has always been the only one at the university who supported me.” Maxwell’s face came into her mind, enraged as she cried to him about what Dr. Berkinghad done, the very events she’d described to Alexander a day ago. Shame washed over her again. Her voice broke. “I can’t let him be blamed for something he didn’t do.”
“And if you had died in his office, after consuming the very plant you were trying to prove didn’t harm Mrs. Henry, Dr. Maxwell would have been blamed. He’d have been even worse off.” Saffron flinched at the cold words and the even colder look Alexander gave her. “I’m glad you’re all right. I’ll see myself out.”
Elizabeth had very little sympathy for Saffron and her woes. She slammed around the kettle and frying pan early the next morning, awakening Saffron from fitful sleep.
Elizabeth, as was her wont, went to elaborate lengths to ignore Saffron, turning her whole body this way and that as Saffron walked around the kitchen, avoiding her face entirely. Saffron was used to this tactic, although her friend hadn’t deployed it since the time Saffron had ruined a beautiful silk scarf Elizabeth had lent her six months ago. Elizabeth would forgive her. They had been friends far too long for this recent episode to end their friendship.
From there she progressed through glaring while frying eggs, muttering while eating them, and finally to huffing as they did the washing up. Elizabeth always cracked after huffing.
“Elizabeth,” Saffron began after a particularly loud sigh, “look, I know I did a very stupid thing—”
To her amazement, Elizabeth let out a great sob, letting a soapy plate sink back into the dishwater and splashing water over their dressing gowns.
“Eliza, what on earth—!” Saffron set the dish she was drying down and swept her arms around Elizabeth.
“Y-you are so stupid, Saff!” she choked out, wiping her eyes. “You are! How could you poison yourself? Not after thosedreadful berries you ate. You were sick for days. Your parents thought you were going todie!”
Saffron was overcome again with guilt. Of course Elizabeth would remember the time she’d eaten berries of one of her father’s specimens as a young girl. She had indeed been sick for a week, and the doctor had been uncertain of her fate for the first day or two. Saffron barely remembered the incident, apart from resolving to avoid eating things off her father’s plants in the future.
Saffron squeezed her friend’s waist. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. It was terrifically idiotic.”
“I just don’t want to see anything happen to you. You’re practically my sister. We’ve been through life and death together! How could I explain to your mother how I let it happen? Can you imagine how I felt when Mr. Ashton called?”
Saffron sighed and rested her forehead against Elizabeth’s heaving shoulder. What would her mother have said when she heard her only child had died of a self-administered poison? After the ordeal of her father’s death, Saffron didn’t know if her mother could handle another. Losing her husband had nearly killed her. The thought filled her own eyes with tears. “I really am terribly sorry, Eliza.”
Elizabeth wiped her tears forcefully away, wriggling out of Saffron’s embrace.
“I’m feeling much better, pretty much back to normal really,” Saffron said with a watery smile.
“Lovely.” After a long interval of sulky glances at Saffron, the table, and the stove, she said, “What didAlexandersay when I stormed out? Did I scare him off?”
Saffron made a face at her and sat down to the table. “No, I think I did that myself. I apologized, then he just left.”
“Skittish, is he?” Elizabeth brought the kettle to the table. Her tone turned businesslike. “Dear, have you had any sort of conversation with him? Set anything up yet? Stepping out?”
“Certainly not! I’ve known him a week, Elizabeth.” Granted, he’d examined her bare arms and legs at length yesterday, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Elizabeth that. She might faint from excitement. Excitement over nothing more than a passing interest. It would be hardnotto be interested in Alexander Ashton. His intelligence and academic accomplishments were attractive, yes, but he’d been kind. He hadn’t shied away from her when she’d described Dr. Berking’s actions, but in fact had defended her on more than one occasion. And, apart from his reaction to the obvious misstep in her planning with the xolotl experiment, he seemed to be a level-headed sort of man. That his dark eyes were rather captivating was an added bonus.
Elizabeth gave her an arch look.
