The Royal Rakes: Waking Up With A Rake Part 12

"You don't despise me?" he asked, tight-lipped.

"You vex me sorely sometimes, Rhys," she said softly, "but I could never despise you."

"Don't be too sure of that."

Once she learned his true reason for being at Barrowdell, she'd despise him with no effort at all. Ever since Maubeuge, it seemed he'd been faced with one winless choice after another. What to do with Olivia was only the latest in a long string of s.h.i.+te-covered crossroads.

He could destroy her or watch helplessly while Alc.o.c.k used him to destroy his family. He thought he'd made the right decision, but now, with her slim hand tucked trustingly in his elbow, he wasn't so sure.

"Believe me, I know my own mind," she said, blithely unaware that she ought to run from him, shrieking all the way. "Though you may try to hide it, I think you're a good man."

For her sake, he almost wished he was.

The gravel path ended at the ornate wrought-iron door of the hothouse. He opened it and ushered her into the shelter, out of the bl.u.s.tery wind. Warm, moist air, rich with loam and earthy scents, washed over them. He helped Olivia out of her pelisse. Then he removed his garrick and hung both of them on pegs near the door. Another garment, a much patched but serviceable great coat, was already dangling from one of the pegs.

"Mr. Weinschmidt?" Olivia called out. When there was no answer, her brows drew together in a frown. "I'm so behind on the repotting, I sent him ahead to start on the Dactylorhiza fuchsii. He ought to be here. That's his coat."

If Mr. Weinschmidt was there, they should hear him puttering away with a trowel. The hair on the back of Rhys's neck p.r.i.c.kled. The hothouse was too quiet.

"Mr. Weinschmidt? It's not like him to wander off." Olivia walked down the aisle between high benches laden with pots and seedlings. She tugged off her kidskin gloves as she went. Then she halted as if she'd run headfirst into an invisible wall. "Oh!"

Rhys hurried in front of her and saw what had stopped her so suddenly. A white-haired fellow was lying on his side on the hard-packed earth, his back curved like a question mark, his lips tinged with blue. His unseeing eyes were turned toward the iron girders overhead.

"Oh, Mr. Weinschmidt!" Olivia dropped to her knees beside him.

"Careful. Don't touch him." Rhys crouched beside her. "I'm no expert, but this death has the look of poison about it. Put your gloves back on."

To Rhys's relief, she obeyed him without question.

"Poison? But why would anyone want to hurt Mr. Weinschmidt?" A sob broke her voice. "He's been with the estate forever, a sweet old German who never harmed anyone or anything but aphids."

Olivia's chin quivered, but she didn't go to pieces or keen hysterically like her mother would have if confronted with a dead body. Rhys could have kissed her.

He removed his gloves.

"If it's not safe for me to go gloveless, why-" Olivia began.

"Because I'll be careful and you might not be." He felt her stiffen beside him so he hurried to add, "Your concern for my safety is duly noted and appreciated."

He leaned over Mr. Weinschmidt and pa.s.sed a hand over the old man's face to close his sightless eyes. Now, with the exception of the bluish tinge about his mouth and the general graying of his flesh, the little German looked as if he might have fallen into the light sleep of advanced age, albeit in a rather contorted position.

"His flesh is still warm," Rhys said. "He can't have been dead long."

A whiff of spirits wafted up from the body.

"He was a drinker," Rhys observed.

"I wouldn't say that. Oh, I know he hides a bottle of schnapps here in the hothouse behind the date palm. My mother has a firm policy against the help imbibing, but it was an open secret between us. Mr. Weinschmidt might tipple on occasion, but only if his rheumatism is plaguing him. You don't think the schnapps killed him?"

"No, but it may have made him less cautious than he should have been." Rhys studied the body, looking for a wound but found none. Poison still seemed the most likely cause of death. "Did he always work here in the hothouse?"

"For the last few years, yes. Mr. Weinschmidt was here even before Papa bought Barrowdell. He used to be the head gardener. He's the one who designed the maze." Her voice was flat and curiously impersonal, as if she were trying to push out as much information as she could without letting herself feel anything about it. "He wasn't strong enough for regular gardening anymore, but he didn't want to retire completely. He has no family, no place to go, so Papa kept him on to help me in the hothouse."

"What did you say he was repotting?"

"Dactylorhiza fuchsii. Common spotted orchids. We intend to plant them in a marshy bit of land this spring to see how quickly they colonize. Mr. Weinschmidt is really keen on the project and...I mean, he was keen on it." Her eyes filled with tears again, but she swiped them aside, obviously determined not to let her feelings stop her from answering his questions. "Lots of plants are poisonous if you ingest them, which I'm sure Mr. Weinschmidt knew. This species of orchid isn't poisonous to the touch."

"Then something else must have touched him."

Rhys carefully uncurled the man's balled fist and found an inch-long thorn imbedded in the fleshy part beneath his thumb. He draped his handkerchief over his fingers and pulled the thorn out. Then he stood and checked the potting soil on the nearest bench. Using his pocketknife, he stirred the dirt and found five more similar thorns mixed into the loamy soil. He spread out his handkerchief and lined them up, six miniature spikes on the white linen.

"This looks like the same sort of thorn that was worked into the padding of Molly's saddle," he said. "About the same length and shape."

"I never saw that one." She crowded close to peer down at the thorns. When she reached to touch one, he caught up her hand and held it fast.

"I think we have to a.s.sume whatever poison killed Mr. Weinschmidt is coated on those thorns."

"I'm wearing gloves," she said testily, but she lowered her hand. "They do seem a bit s.h.i.+ny. I have no idea how to determine what sort of poison it might be. However, I do know plants." She squinted at the thorns. "That's curious. We have hawthorns and several types of brambles here at Barrowdell, but these aren't from any of those. I've never seen their like here at all."

"So someone brought them on the property specifically for this purpose," Rhys said. "If we knew what sort of thorn they are, where they come from, it might give us a clue about the person to whom they belong."

"There's a book in Papa's library that might help. But I need to take at least one of the thorns with me so I can compare it to the ill.u.s.trations in the text."

"We'll take them all." Rhys carefully folded the handkerchief so the thorns would be padded by the linen and put it in his outer jacket pocket. "And the small pot of soil they were mixed into, just in case we missed one. We don't want anyone else to be poisoned."

Olivia's slim shoulders quaked. "I don't think it really hit me before. Someone is trying to do harm to us here at Barrowdell."

Not us. Someone was trying to harm her. Whoever put the thorns in the potting soil wasn't after the little German gardener. At least she took the threat seriously now. He put his arms around her and she came willingly into his embrace.

A dedicated rake would have made the most of the situation. She was afraid. She was vulnerable. She was ripe for a panicked taking.

Instead, he held her until she stopped trembling, wondering what was wrong with him. Then he planted a soft kiss on the crown of her head.

"I think it best if we allow the rest of the folk here at Barrowdell to believe Mr. Weinschmidt died of natural causes." He stooped to arrange the body into a more relaxed position, as if the old gardener had fallen due to apoplexy or a stoppage of his heart instead of twisting in toxic agony.

"That way whoever did this will feel safe from discovery." She nodded in perfect understanding. "They won't see the need for caution."

"You, however, must be cautious."

"I'm spending time with you, aren't I?" She grimaced at him. He recognized it as an attempt to be flippant about the fact that someone had laced the soil she was going to work with poisoned thorns. "I'd be a fool to be other than cautious."

Olivia and Rhys trudged back to the manor house and reported Mr. Weinschmidt's demise to Mr. Falk, the estate steward. He concurred that the old gardener had gone to his reward suddenly while doing the work he loved.

"And what mortal can ask more than that?" Mr. Falk had said and efficiently made arrangements for the body to be transported to town for burial in the little churchyard.

Unlike the uproar caused by Olivia's accident, the solitary death of one of the servants made little difference to the residents in the guest chambers or the family wing. Only Olivia had had much to do with Mr. Weinschmidt, and her mother didn't want her bringing up such a morbid topic, especially now when more guests were arriving for the house party almost hourly.

Nearly all the places at the long dining table were filled, and conversation was lighthearted and full of plans for the coming days. Only Olivia noticed that the footmen wore un.o.btrusive black armbands in honor of Mr. Weinschmidt.

No, that's not right, she thought. Rhys sees it too.

His dark eyes didn't miss much. While he laughed and conversed with the diners around him, Olivia caught him quietly taking their dinner companions' measures. She could almost see the questions turning in that handsome head of his.

They'd spent most of the afternoon in the library together, huddled over Professor Hargrave's Compendium of Noxious Plants. A good bit of the text was given over to a treatise on the Genesis-based origin of weeds and thistles as punishment for the Fall of Man. Investigating a suspicious death certainly confirmed the professor's insistence on the existence of evil in the world, but the part of the book Olivia found most helpful was the hundreds of detailed ill.u.s.trations.

On page three hundred and seventy, they discovered a picture that matched the type of thorn that had sent Molly into a frenzy and delivered the poison to Mr. Weinschmidt.

"The thorns are from Euphorbia milii, commonly known as the crown of thorns plant," Olivia had said. "The long vines are pliable, but the thorns are certainly not, and they grow in excess of one inch long."

"Not native to England, I a.s.sume."

Rhys hovered over her shoulder, a comforting, solid presence. When he was near, she could pretend this was simply an intellectual exercise, not a deadly serious search for clues about the person who was trying to do her harm.

"Professor Hargrave says they are native to the island of Madagascar."

Rhys prowled the perimeter of the library like a wolf circling a small herd. "That narrows the field a bit. All your father's friends from India would likely have stopped at Madagascar on the trip Home. Mr. Stubbs, Colonel Billiter, and the Pinkertons have just moved to the front of the suspect list."

Her shoulders slumped. "Why would someone do this?"

"Attracting the attention of royalty also attracts other sorts of attention."

Olivia didn't know why any of the guests should object to her possible match with the Duke of Clarence. But she also had no idea why anyone would despise her so otherwise. Surely she hadn't lived long enough or unpleasantly enough to have created an enemy so vicious.

"So we are no closer to finding the murderer than when Molly first bolted."

Murderer. The word slipped out of her mouth and made her situation real.

But each time she thought the word murderer, it seemed more and more like nonsense syllables, a meaningless growling in her mind. She couldn't let the truth that she was the target sink in. If she did, she'd never be able to sit sedately at her mother's long table and make ba.n.a.l small talk with those around her.

And wonder about the gracious smiles and sparkling conversation at the long table. Which of her father's friends from India was duplicitous enough to hide their secret disappointment at seeing her alive and well?

Chapter 16.

Babette hadn't been her usual cheerful self all evening. The maid was pensive and distracted. While she helped Olivia dress for dinner, requests had to be repeated several times before Babette leapt to do her bidding. Her maid usually wasn't the least clumsy, but she ham-handedly knocked over the bottle of expensive scent that had arrived earlier that day with a note declaring it came from the Duke of Clarence. The whole room smelled of spicy jasmine-a perfume Olivia thought too heavy for her to wear, in any case, so it was no great loss.

After supper, Babette was even more uncharacteristically quiet and fidgety as she brushed out Olivia's hair to prepare her for bed. Finally, Babette met her gaze in the vanity mirror.

"May I make to ask a question, mademoiselle?"

"Of course."

"Do you wait for-how you say?-the other shoe to drop?"

"What do you mean?"

"Disasters, they always come in threes, non? First, your horse, it bolts and you are nearly killed. Then your helper in the hothouse, poor Monsieur Weinschmidt, he dies most unexpectedly." Babette started to do up Olivia's long tresses in a braid.

"No, leave it for now." Olivia pulled her hair away from Babette's clever fingers and turned to face her directly. "What are you trying to say?"

"I am saying the third evil thing, it is bound to come." Babette's pale brows nearly met in a frown over her fine straight nose. "What will happen next?"

"First of all, disasters do not come in threes. That's nothing but an old wives' tale," Olivia said, her tone testier than she would have liked, mostly because the thought had occurred to her as well. Having Babette say it only made the threat more real. "And second, your theory requires there be a connection between my mare bolting and Mr. Weinschmidt's death when there is none."

"There is you, mademoiselle. It was your horse. And the old gardener, he was doing your bidding, non?"

"If you're afraid to serve me, I'll have you rea.s.signed first thing tomorrow-"

"Non, you must not think such a thing. It is my honor to be your abigail. Do not make to send me away. If I am afraid, it is not for myself." Babette crouched beside Olivia's chair so she could face her directly. "I fear for you, mistress."

Looking into Babette's wide eyes, Olivia was tempted to spill everything she and Rhys had discovered together, but he'd warned her to trust no one. So far, Rhys had focused on the houseguests, but he hadn't ruled out the possibility that the culprit had a willing ally below stairs. If Babette gossiped with even one of the other servants, news that the two tragic incidents were connected by some exotic thorns would circulate through the great house before Olivia snuffed out her lamp for the night.

And the guilty party might be warned.

"I'm not afraid," she lied. "Please ignore anyone who indulges in gossip or pointless speculation. You may leave me now."

"As you wish, mademoiselle," Babette said as she straightened the tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb and silver brush set on the vanity table before Olivia. She swanned across the room, imperturbable as always. But then she stopped at the door and turned back.

"If something makes a change and you do feel afraid, I wish you to know you may trust me."

"I know that, Babette." She hoped it was so.

"Bien." She reached for the doork.n.o.b but stopped again. "Before I am come to this house, I have another...employment which required...certain other skills."

"Besides being a lady's maid, you mean."

"Oui, just so." She shot Olivia a pointed look. "Skills that will help keep you safe, mademoiselle."

Olivia swallowed back her surprise, wondering what Babette could possibly mean. La Belle Perdu, Babette's former employer, was rumored to have been a French spy. Had she taught her maid some of the craft? "Thank you. I'll remember that."

As Babette slipped out of the room, Olivia wondered about her abigail.

Not many lady's maids had...certain other skills.

If Babette was afraid for her, it meant the folk below stairs had considered Olivia's riding accident and her a.s.sistant's sudden demise, put together the sc.r.a.ps of evidence, and arrived at the correct sum. None of the Symon's houseguests bothered to connect events.

Of course, Olivia and Rhys had taken pains to make sure they wouldn't. She could only imagine her mother's rants if Beatrice Symon suspected Olivia had been deliberately targeted both times.

For once, she considered that her mother truly did care for her, even if her means of showing it were overblown. Olivia turned down the lamp and wandered to the window. The frosty hills were bright under a three-quarter moon. But even with pinp.r.i.c.ks of light sparkling on the skiff of snow, Barrowdell presented a stark vista in the dead of winter with its barren meadows and naked woods s.h.i.+vering in the wind.

She wished her father would come home.