Scorned By Him, Cherished By His Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Vestry

Henry is alive, hiding and wary. Lydia proves her tonic is clean and they ally. A carriage waits at the chapel door.

The vestry of Saint Clement's was a stone room at the back of a chapel, smelling of wet wool and candle smoke.

A man in a plain brown coat opened the door before I knocked.

He was the Barrington steward, and he had carried my trunk up these stairs once, years ago, when Roland moved me into the house.

He did not say a word.

He took my trunk from my hands and stepped aside.

A man sat at a table by the small fire with a blanket across his knees.

He was thinner than I remembered, and the black hair at his temples had gone grey.

But the dark blue eyes were Henry's, and they were fixed on me.

"Close the door, Lydia," he said.

His voice was rough, as if he had not used it much.

"You are dead," I said.

"Not quite," said Henry Barrington.

I stood where I was and did not go to him.

On the table beside his elbow stood a brown bottle with a paper label.

The label was in my handwriting.

"Sit," he said. "Please. I have a question, and I would like to see your face when I ask it."

I sat on the stool across from him.

The steward set my trunk by the wall and left us.

"Eleven months ago my ship went down," Henry said. "Fishermen pulled me out of the water, and my steward found me. I was sick for months afterward, and I thought it was the cold in my lungs."

He turned the bottle with two fingers.

"Then I noticed I was sicker after every bottle from this house. My wife's maid sent them to the fishing village, all through the autumn."

My mouth was dry.

"That is my tonic," I said. "Willow bark, ginger and honey."

"My steward gave a spoonful of this to a rat," Henry said. "The rat's heart slowed for an hour and then stopped."

He pushed the bottle across the table.

"Whose hand wrote the label, Lydia?"

"Mine."

"Who kept foxglove in a locked cabinet in the east room?"

I looked at him.

"Me," I said. "I use a drop of it for old men with swollen ankles. It slows a heart that beats too fast."

"And a heap of it stops the heart altogether."

"Yes."

"So you see my difficulty," Henry said quietly.

I saw it very well.

I picked up the bottle and held it to the firelight.

The stopper was sealed with red wax, and a twist of green thread was wound round the neck.

"I tie every bottle with blue thread," I said. "Blue, with a double knot, so my father's clerks can tell mine from the apothecary's."

I turned it in my hand.

"This is green, and it has a single knot. I did not tie this."

"A careful thief would copy the thread," Henry said.

"A careful thief would not know about the thread, because I never told anyone but the maid who comes for them."

He said nothing, so I knelt and opened my small trunk and took out my herb case.

I had packed it first that night, before my gloves or my brush.

I took out willow bark, a knob of ginger, a jar of honey and a tin cup.

The steward had left a kettle on the hob, and I filled the cup.

Henry watched me do it.

My hands were steady because they had done this a thousand times.

When it had steeped, I poured it into a clean glass and drank half of it where he could see.

Then I held out the rest.

"Drink," I said. "Or tell me I am a liar, and I will go to my father's house and not trouble you again."

He took the glass.

His fingers were cold, and there was a long white scar over the left wrist where the rocks had cut him.

He drank it all.

"It tastes like the one my mother made," Henry said at last, very low.

He looked at the glass, and something in his face eased.

"Someone put foxglove in your bottles after they left your door," he said. "Someone who knew your hand well enough to copy a label."

"Someone in the house," I said.

"Yes."

"You think it is Roland."

"I think it is someone who dined with us tonight," said Henry. "Tell me what happened, Lydia."

So I told him.

I told him what Cordelia had said to me at the door, word for word.

He listened without moving, but when I reached Cordelia's hand on mine his jaw tightened.

"She asked you to stay in her rooms," he said.

"Yes."

"Do not go to them."

"I did not plan to."

"Good." He drew the blanket higher. "I need you, Lydia. I need someone who can tell me what is in these bottles and who can keep my life a secret for a few weeks."

"And what do I have in return?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Roland's seat at the Treasury sits on my signature," he said. "I can take it from him."

"I do not want him to lose his seat," I said. "I want him to lose it in front of the people he shamed me before."

"Then we want the same thing."

The steward knocked once on the door and put his head in.

"My lord," he said, very low. "There is a carriage at the chapel door."

Henry went still.

"Whose?"

"The Barrington crest, my lord. And the lady is getting down from it."

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