I Accidentally Slept With My Future Brother In Law novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Herbarium

Elinor tells Blanche everything, Blanche laughs with relief and names the sloe leaf under her glass, and the sisters make a pact, until the bells ring: the King has collapsed after his tea.

"Did you know?" he asked.

I took the chest out of his hands.

Lead lining. Green dust caught in the seams.

Under the brand, somebody had chalked a 2.

"We have one warehouse," I said. "On Quay Lane, behind the shop. I've carried the keys to every door in it since I was fifteen."

"Then who has the keys to the second one?"

I didn't answer.

There was only one man who held every key in Pellow and Sons, and he was laughing in the throne room.

"I've never blended the palace green," I said. "Father told me it came off the clippers sealed."

"And?"

"And the palace order was none of my business."

"And you believed him."

"I was twelve the first time he said it. He's said it every year since."

Alistair watched my face for a long moment.

Then he took the chest back, set it under the rug and closed the lid.

"I believe you," he said. "You spat that tea out like it had insulted your mother."

"It had insulted me."

Footsteps came down the gallery, and a woman's laugh, and then Father's voice, booming about barley prices.

Alistair stepped back into the far corner of the bay.

"Go first," he said. "I'll count to a hundred."

"Fifty is plenty."

"Not for me," he said.

I went out through the curtain before my face could do anything stupid.

Blanche and I had been given two rooms in the east wing with a connecting door.

By evening, her herbarium books covered the bed, the dressing table and most of the floor.

I stepped over a volume of mosses, locked both doors and sat down on the rug in front of her.

"I need to tell you something," I said. "And you're going to hate me."

"I could never hate you," Blanche said. "Try, though."

So I told her.

All of it, from the green on my fingertip to what I'd said yes to.

The man at the window in the cream and gold coat.

I didn't leave anything out, and Blanche did not interrupt once.

I've never been able to lie to Blanche. She just waits until I give up.

When I finished, she sat very still on the edge of the bed.

Then she put her hand over her mouth.

Her shoulders began to shake.

"Blanche, I'm so sorry."

She was laughing.

She laughed until she had to lie back across her pressed ferns, holding her ribs.

"Oh, thank God," she said. "Thank God."

"That's not the reaction I planned for."

"I didn't want him." She wiped her eyes with her wrist. "I never wanted him."

"Blanche."

"I've been praying for three weeks that he'd fall off a horse."

"Blanche!"

"Not badly. A sprain. Something with a long rest in the country."

I started laughing too, helplessly, with my head on her knee.

She stroked my hair the way she had when we were small and Father had been shouting.

"Was he kind to you?" she asked. "That night."

"Yes."

"Good," she said. "Then that's one thing tonight that's good."

I sat up, took the paper twist out of my pocket and unfolded it on her book.

"Tell me what this is."

Blanche lifted the magnifying glass on its ribbon.

She bent over the leaves for a long time, turning them with a hatpin.

"That one's tea," she said. "Poor tea. Dust, mostly."

She nudged a bright green leaf apart from the others.

"This isn't. See the edge? Fine little teeth, all the same size. That's blackthorn. Sloe leaf."

She tapped another.

"And that's ash. Look at the vein. Somebody's painted right over it, the color's flaking off the ridge."

"Verdigris," I said.

She set the glass down very slowly.

"The King's been drinking our hedgerow."

"With copper on it. In a chest with our brand."

Blanche looked at me, and the gentleness went out of her face.

"Then it's Father," she said.

"We don't know that yet."

"We know who keeps the keys."

She reached under her pillow and pulled out a folded copy of the contract.

Of course she had a copy. Blanche reads everything she signs.

"Clause nine," she said. "Any fraud in the Pellow supply to the crown voids the whole agreement. The loan terms, the barony and both betrothals."

"You read that while I was fighting my glove?"

"I read it three weeks ago, when he showed us." She smoothed the page flat. "I was hoping for a horse. This is better."

"If it's proved, Father hangs."

"If he painted leaves for a sick man's cup, he's earned it."

"And the porter? The girls in my blending room? The cook downstairs who pours whatever she's sent?"

Blanche was quiet for a moment.

"Then we make sure everyone knows exactly which room the poison came from," she said. "And which one it didn't."

She held out her little finger, the way we had as girls, sealing a secret over the nursery fender.

"We break the contract," I said. "We prove it, in front of people."

"And nobody hangs who didn't paint a leaf."

I hooked my finger through hers.

We slept in her bed that night, back to back, the way we used to.

At eight in the morning every bell in the palace began to ring at once.

I sat up so fast I knocked a book of ferns to the floor.

Running feet passed in the corridor.

Blanche flung the door open on a maid with her apron to her mouth.

"It's the King," the maid said. "He's collapsed at his breakfast. Right after his tea."

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