“Poison?” Rachel blanched, but she recovered quickly. “But—Madeleine—if the herbs were poison—they came from your uncle.”
“I know that,” Madeleine said, though she hadn’t really begun to think about the implications.
“Well, you can’t go back there! It’s too dangerous! If he’s the kind of man who would send you poison, what will he do when you show up on his doorstep?”
Madeleine didn’t know. But if Uncle Joseph intended something for her, he would have to do it to her and nobody else. She wouldn’t let Thomas, Rachel, or Henrietta be harmed by this. She couldn’t bear it.
She pushed past Rachel and ran for her room so that she could grab a few things and put them in a bag. She would be out of her and back at her uncle’s estate by nightfall.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-FIVE
Consciousness waxed and waned. Thomas felt as if his mind was drifting in and out of a fog. It was as if he no longer knew where he was—he hardly recognizedwhohe was. All he registered was this strange floating feeling.
He couldn’t feel anything. Or perhaps he could—but the sensations were numbed. There was a weight on his body. A blanket?
His mind drifted and then returned.
It was a familiar sensation. He had felt that way once before after he had been stabbed. But that wasn’t what had happened this time. There was no lancing pain in his gut to return his mind to clarity.
Besides, he couldn’t have been stabbed this time. It made no sense. Who would have stabbed him? There had been no enemy nearby.
He had been at breakfast. That much, he did remember. He had been with Madeleine. Laughing. Drinking tea. Happy, because she realized that she could be with him after all, that they didn’t need to hold themselves apart from each other. And because her herbs had worked and she had gotten a good night’s sleep. Her nightmares hadn’t plagued her the previous night, and he could see that that was making her happy. It felt as if everything was finally going to be all right.
What had happened then? After they’d smiled at each other over the table after he had embraced her in the foyer. What had come next? Had they left the dining room? Gone somewhere else? Had the day progressed from there?
He didn’t remember.
He tried to sit up, but it felt as if a weight was on top of him. He was too weak to move his limbs, and he certainly couldn’t have sat upright. He was having trouble opening his eyes. He couldn’t move more than a little bit at a time. He frowned, wondering what was going on.
Fighting hard against the force that threatened to keep him buried in his own subconsciousness, he opened his eyes and squinted at his surroundings.
He was in his bedroom. He recognized the way the light fell through the window more than any of his surroundings in particular. He wouldn’t have guessed that he could recognize his room this way, but it felt like home to him, and that was a relief, even if nothing else was. He could see figures, dimly, over by the door, and he knew at once that none of them were Madeleine. He would have recognized her; he was sure of that. Where had she gone?
The people at the door were whispering. He strained to hear them. He could make out several voices, but he wasn’t sure who any of them belonged to—at least, at first. As time went on, however, he began to recognize them.
“Are you sure he’s all right?” That was his mother’s voice. Hearing her only made Thomas feel more anxious. She sounded worried and upset. It was his duty to take care of things for her so that she didn’t have to worry like that. Why wasn’t he being included in this conversation?”
“Yes, as I said, he will be fine.” An unfamiliar voice. A man. Who was he? What was he talking about? The presence of a stranger made Thomas uneasy. “In higher doses, that toxin is lethal. Had he had more than a single sip of the tea or ingested the herb in higher concentration, he would probably be dead right now. But if he only took one sip before collapsing, as you described, then I’m confident he’s going to be fine.”
“What should we do?” That was Rachel. But Rachel was just a child. This sounded like a serious conversation, one that she ought to be kept out of for her own well being. And if Rachel was here, where was Madeleine?
“He should be given plenty of water to drink to rid him of the toxin,” the man said. “I would think that within a couple of days, it will be gone from him. But he won’t be himself until then, so you’ll want to caution him to stay in bed until his body is fully rid of the toxin. He mustn’t try to get up or do anything strenuous, or he could make himself worse.”
Toxin. That was poison.
He had been poisoned?
It would make sense, given how he was feeling—as if he was in the grip of a prolonged illness that had laid waste to his body. He felt too tired to ever get out of bed.
Butpoison?
Who would do such a thing?
For a moment, his mind went to his kitchen staff—they certainlycouldhave done it since they had access to all his food, and he had heard tales of gentlemen being poisoned by angry servants—but it was impossible to imagine them doing something so horrible. They couldn’t have. They were good people, and they had known him since he was a child.
But then, who could it have been? Who else had such access to him?
Who wouldwantto poison him?
