a good light. “If he can eliminate you as a suspect, it will move him closer to whoever did this, won’t it? And you can go on with your life.”
Tears suddenly filled Pippa’s green eyes and she ducked her head. “My life doesn’t really matter. Ras destroyed every single thing I dreamt of, everything I hoped for. I know that, I’m working hard to accept it. But there won’t be any going on with my life. Only creating something new, if I’m lucky.”
Celeste stepped toward her. Pippa was being evasive about the entire situation, of course, but Celeste could feel her deep pain. It was right there on the surface, and all she wanted to do was take it away. She wrapped an arm around Pippa’s shoulder and was happy when she sagged against her. For a moment they stood that way, Pippa drawing deep breaths while Celeste squeezed her shoulder and tried to pour every bit of strength she had into her friend.
“He isn’t a bad man, is he?” Pippa said at last.
“Who?” Celeste whispered.
“Owen Gregory.”
Celeste sucked in a breath. “He isn’t. He is decent, Pippa, so very decent. He genuinely cares about the truth and I think he would do everything in his power to protect us if he could. We can trust him and his motives. I may not know anything else, but I know that.”
“You are truly under his spell,” Pippa breathed, leaning back to look at her. She shook her head when Celeste took a breath to respond. “Oh, don’t argue, it will only be a tiresome exercise for us both. You trust him and I trust you.”
She squeezed Celeste’s waist and then pulled away to cross to the fireplace. She stared into the flames for a moment, drawing a few long breaths. Celeste allowed her that moment to compose herself before she said, “One easy way to take yourself from the list of suspects is to tell me where you were the night Erasmus was killed.”
“Murdered,” Pippa corrected as she faced her. “Let us not sugarcoat what happened. I try not to think about what Erasmus must have suffered. I don’t know much about arsenic, but I’ve been told most poisons are not pleasant deaths. He must have been…” She caught her breath. “Afraid. No matter what I think of him, no matter how much I have grown to hate him, I cannot think he deserved that kind of end.”
Pippa’s eyes had filled with tears again, and Celeste turned her face. She had not allowed herself to picture what his final moments had been like. Now she did, and it felt like someone had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.
“No, no one could deserve that,” she whispered.
“But you asked me where I was that night,” Pippa continued. “And hope that it will absolve me of being the monster who would let another person die in such a fashion. I have no good answers. I came to London seeking him, angry at him for…for betrayals he committed that aren’t even related to his multiple marriages. That certainly gives me motive. As for alibi…”
Celeste held her breath, waiting for the answer. She found herself leaning closer, hands clenched.
“I have none,” Pippa whispered. “I was alone that night in a room at an inn that I let before the truth came out and Abigail so kindly invited me here. It was busy there, I doubt anyone saw me go up to my room. And it could just as easily be said that no one might have noticed if I slipped out to poison a man who shattered all our lives. I can tell you the truth, that I didn’t do it. But Mr. Gregory will need more than my word. The word of a woman who had every conceivable reason to take revenge.”
Celeste’s heart sank. Here she had hoped to free Pippa from the suspicion that had to be heaped upon her. But she hadn’t. Her inability to explain why she’d come to London, her lack of alibi, all of those things were very good reasons to keep her on the list.
And yet Celeste believed her when she said she was innocent. Pippa’s strong reaction to the mode of Erasmus’s death, her passion about his not deserving such an end, felt like a suggestion of innocence.
Just not the kind one could prove. It was a feeling, nothing more. And Owen might not accept that. Certainly no other man in her life had ever taken her