Scorned By Him, Cherished By His Brother novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Widow in the Square

I sent the footman to Barrington House at a run, with a line for the steward: Search the study. Touch nothing blue.

Then I took my herb case and walked into Market Square alone.

It was a Thursday, and the square was full.

Fishwives, clerks, apprentices and a man selling hot chestnuts stood in a ring.

In the middle, on the lip of the old fountain, stood a woman in grey mourning silk with her veil thrown back.

Cordelia had never looked better.

Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were wide and brimming, and she held a small brown bottle up in one hand where everyone could see it.

"There she is," she said, in a voice that carried to the chestnut seller.

The square went quiet.

"Good people, I am Cordelia Barrington, whom the King's gaol was kind enough to hold. I am here to tell you the truth."

"You are here to tell a lie," I said.

I stopped at the foot of the fountain, with my case in both hands.

"For a year my husband sickened," Cordelia said, to the crowd and not to me. "I nursed him. Every month this woman, Lydia Tindall, sent a tonic to our house, in her own hand, under her own label."

She turned the bottle so they could see the paper.

"And now my husband walks the streets again, thin and bewitched, and married to the very woman who put the poison in his glass."

A fishwife spat on the cobbles.

Somebody at the back shouted, "Poisoner!"

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