He did not. And neither, it seemed, did she. Her breath caught and held, and while everyone in the room strained to hear his lordship’s inhale, they heard nothing but the pounding of their own hearts. At least that’s what Lucas heard until Diana’s body forced her to draw breath.
She did with a choking kind of gasp. And then the valet spoke gently into the silence.
“My lady, perhaps you should go into your room. I’ll clean up here.”
“But I don’t understand,” she said. “He was fine earlier. He said he felt better. But this…” she gestured to the bed. “This is wrong!”
He concurred with that. He could tell by Diana’s reaction that this was not the normal course of her husband’s illness. But the valet didn’t understand what she was trying to say.
“I’ll take care of it, my lady,” he said. “You may rely on me.”
She shifted such that she was gripping her husband’s hand. “I don’t understand,” she said to his thick knuckles. “He was sitting up. He drank his tea.”
A discordant note sounded in Lucas’s thoughts, but he couldn’t isolate it. For all that he did nothing but stand by the door, his senses were filled with her distress. He couldn’t ease her pain. He couldn’t even go to her side and hold her. That wasn’t his place. The best he could do was stand guard at the door and protect her from harm. But even as he scanned the shadows again, his mind churned over what she had said, sifted through his memories of the evening, and finally—slowly—he remembered something important.
“You said the tea had gone off.” He looked at Diana. He could tell she hadn’t understood what he said. “His tea. You told Tina to have it thrown out. That you would order more in the morning.”
She nodded, though it was clear she didn’t comprehend. “Yes. He said it was too sweet. That Mama had probably doctored it with something to help him.”
“Your mother?” That didn’t make sense.
She straightened up. “She’s always talking about special herbs and teas. Thinks the right leaves will cure anything.”
Or kill. He looked at the sheets with clearer eyes. This wasn’t normal sickness. This was the result of poison.
“Where?” Lucas rasped. “Where is the tea kept?”
“Belowstairs, in the kitchen with all the other tea. Why?”
Lucas didn’t wait to answer. He was already rushing down the stairs. He heard her call after him, but he had to get that tea. He wasn’t an expert in poisons by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew some basics. Simpson was just coming up, no doubt, after dispatching a footman for the doctor. Lucas dodged him and headed straight for the kitchen, where anyone could have gotten into the tea.
He hauled open the cabinet, but the special tin wasn’t there. Likely already thrown out by Mrs. Hopkins. He knew where the garbage was kept, and sure enough, the tin was there at the top of the rubbish. He pulled it up and pried open the lid. There were white crystals like sugar in the tea, and when he sniffed, he smelled nothing beyond the usual scents. But the tea leaves were strong, and many poisons didn’t have a scent.
He pulled up a bit of it on his finger and tasted it. Sweet, but not like sugar. There was a metallic tang to it that suggested something more sinister. He set down the tin and watched as the butler came into the room, followed closely by Diana.
“What are you doing?” she asked as her gaze took in what he held.
“Send for the constable,” he said. “I think that’s filled with arsenic.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lucas wanted tohelp her. He saw her shock and pain, then watched with admiration as she took control of her home despite the way her voice shook, and her hands trembled. She ordered the cook to provide food and strong tea for the staff just now rousing in the middle of the night, and for the people who would soon arrive. She commanded the poisoned tin to be set back in its customary place for the constable to see and then went to her bedroom to dress for the arrival of the Watch.
He could do no more than order a man to be sure the tin remained in its place without tampering by anyone, and he sent another to rouse Elliott and his wife. Though Diana would likely object, they would provide support for her where he could not. Then he climbed the stairs and stood guard outside her bedroom door while he stewed over what to do.
He was a soldier, not a constable or barrister. He knew Geoffrey was the murderer. Indeed, now he understood why the man had left so easily earlier. He’d practically crowed victory when he’d heard that Oscar was upstairs drinking tea. He’d known his father would soon be dead from poison, and most would assume that Oscar’d finally succumbed to his illness.
After identifying the enemy, a soldier’s job was to eliminate the problem with lethal precision. Indeed, the urge to find Geoffrey and slit the bastard’s throat was burning in his gut. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible because he wasn’t in the middle of a war. This was London, on a night already filled with violence. He doubted Diana could handle another incident without breaking, and his job, first and foremost, was to protect her. He couldn’t do that if he was off killing Geoffrey while she faced the constable and Oscar’s other children alone.
So, he remained outside her door while frustration coiled in his gut. Fortunately, the Watch arrived with speed and the constable soon after. They met him down in the front parlor. Diana led the way with Lucas a half step behind, ready to spring into action, though there was no immediate danger anywhere.
The constable was a dour man with a square jaw. Simpson led him upstairs to view the body—only partially cleaned. With the help of the doctor who arrived soon after, the man agreed with the determination of poison and also helped identify the additive in his lordship’s tea as arsenic. All good, but then the night took on an appalling twist.
“So you were at a party when his lordship was poisoned?” the constable asked as they returned to the parlor. “And who gave his lordship his tea? It was your mother, wasn’t it? At your direction?”
Diana answered with the poise expected of a lady. She remained calm and, though her hands tightened to white where she gripped them in her lap, she did not react to the man’s increasingly hostile tone.
That was left to Lucas as his temper finally broke. “Those are some very specific questions, sir. Where did you get this information?”
