She’d told herself she couldn’t trust her heart to lead her to the truth, but all this time, she’d been wrong. Her heart whispered Gideon was innocent, and, at last, she would allow herself tolisten to it.
Someone had poisoned Lady Cassandra, but it hadn’t been Gideon. Whoeverhaddone it had escaped justice thus far, but they wouldn’t escape forever. Cecilia would makecertain of it.
“I’m off to bed. Mind you eat the rest of your dinner.” Mrs. Briggs nodded at Cecilia’s plate, then pushed her chair back from the table. “Good night, Cecilia.”
“Good night, Mrs. Briggs.”
Cecilia sat in the darkened kitchen for a long time after Mrs. Briggs left, trying to fit the puzzle together from the pieces Mrs. Briggshad given her.
Never seen anyone so ill…frail and weak… broth andspearmint tea…
Cecilia’s brow furrowed, her mind lingering over that last thing. Spearmint tea. The plant she and Isabella had found in the kitchen garden, the one she’d thought was some variety of lavender. It smelled strongly of spearmint.
Ill for months…poison…spearmint tea…
Perhaps the plant wasn’t lavender, after all, but something far more sinister. Could Cassandra have been poisoned by a plant growing in the kitchen garden? One with leaves that could be brewed into a tea?
She rose from her chair and passed through the arched doorway of the kitchen and down the corridor into the entrance hall. It was silent, without a soul wandering about, and the door leading into the courtyard and the kitchen garden beyond it beckoned to her.
Once she got a few sprigs of the plant, she could look it up inCulpeper’s Complete Herbal. She’d seen a copy of it on a library shelf when she’d gone in to fetchThe Mysteries of Udolphoto read to Duncan and Amy the other night. It would take some searching through the illustrations to find the plant, but find it she would.
But first, she needed to make a trip to thekitchen garden.
Except she’d told Gideon she’d stay inside the castle today. If one chose to quibble over words, it wasn’tdaytimeany longer, darkness having fallen while she and Mrs. Briggs were talking, but that was splitting hairs, indeed. Whatever Gideon had thought was a threat during the day surely became much more so at night. That was always the way with threatening things. They thrived in darkness.
Was the White Lady truly a threat, though? Gideon must think so, or else he wouldn’t have warned her to stay inside the castle, but despite having pretended to be a ghost and frightening Edenbridge out of their feeble wits, The White Lady hadn’thurtanyone.
Still,it was a risk.
Cecilia bit her lip. She could put off the task until tomorrow, but it was already snowing. The plants she needed could be buried by morning. Even if she did manage to get to them, they might look entirely different after languishing under a heavy snow, and she’d no longer be able to recognize them inCulpeper’s Complete Herbal.
It was the work of a few moments only. It would be the quickest thing in the world for her to dash out the door and through the courtyard to the corner of the kitchen garden, snatch up a few stalks of the spearmint-scented plant, and dash backinside again.
Cecilia straightened her shoulders, her mind made up. She’d known there’d be risk before she’d agreed to come to Darlington Castle. She wasn’t without her own resources, nor was she as easy a target as sheappeared to be.
Only the dim light from the entrance hall lamps followed Cecilia out the door and into the courtyard beyond. Dear God, it was cold, and the sharp, dry scent of snow tickled Cecilia’s nose. Thick clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring the moon, and Cecilia sent up a quick prayer of thanks that she and Isabella had spent so much time in this garden, or she might have found herself wandering around in search of that plant until shefroze to death.
As it was, she knew just where to find it.
She hurried through the gate and down the gravel pathway toward the opposite corner of the garden, wincing as the icy ground penetrated the thin soles of her shoes. By the time she reached the lavender patch her toes were half-frozen and her fingers clumsy with cold, but she pushed as much of the woody stalks of lavender aside as she could and searched with both her eyes and hands until she found…yes, there it was, growing up against the high stonewall behind it.
Cecilia was just reaching down into the clump when a strange noise made her go still. It sounded like the crunch of footsteps running over the gravel pathway, but when she turned and peered into the gloom behind her, there was nothing.
She shook her head, grimacing. All this talk of ghosts was frazzling her nerves.
Still, the sooner she was back inside, the better. She reached down again, took ahold of the plant as close to the root as she could, and plucked up a few stalks, the scent of spearmint thick in her nose as she shoved them into the pocket of her apron.
She turned back toward the garden gate, but before she could take a step, she heard the sound again. Footsteps on gravel, running faster this time, what sounded like the muted creak of an iron gate opening, and then—
Cecilia froze where she stood, the crash of the gate slamming shut echoing throughout the garden.
There was no time to stop it, no time even to cry out. By the time Cecilia realized what was happening and ran for the gate, it was already closed. She grabbed the latch and shook it desperately, but it didn’t move, and a quick glance at it confirmed the sick suspicion twistingin her stomach.
Whoever had slammed the gate closed had latched it from the outside. Of all the doors in this blasted castle that were meant to be secure, this had to be the only one that actuallywas.
Cecilia whirled around and ran to the opposite end of the garden where there was a high wooden door set into the stone wall, but it was locked, just as she’d known it would be, and so was the door leading from the garden intothe stillroom.
She turned back to face the garden, her gaze darting this way and that in the darkness, searching for an escape, but it was no use. The wall had been built to keep animals out. It towered over her, as did the arched gate at the front, which had been set intothe stone wall.
