with a new rose garden on the south lawn. He calls it “Cassandra’s Rose Walk,” in my honor, he says, and there are ever so many of my favorite white roses planted there…
May 1793. My beloved friend, the most wonderful news! I am with child. My heart is overflowing with gratitude and joy, and Gideon is ecstatic…
June 1793. I woke this morning to Gideon’s lips pressed to my belly, a good morning kiss for our child, he says.
July 1793. Isabella’s birthday has arrived! She is two years old today. Gideon intends to give her the new foal as a birthday gift. He spoils her dreadfully…
Cecilia couldn’t help but smile at the joy in Cassandra’s words, the love flowing from her pen, but it wasn’t long after this delighted entry that things took a darker turn.
July 1793. Dreadfully ill today. Mrs. Briggs bids me not to fret, and says it means the baby is strong. Gideon ordered me to bed, and stayed with me until I fell asleep.
July 1793. I remain ill. The sickness grows worse with each passing day.
August 1793. I am too weak to leave my bed. My stomach revolts against all food but broth, and a painful red rash has appeared around my mouth and on my hands…
And, only a week before Cassandra’s death, this final entry, written in a feeble hand.
September 1793. Gideon weeps, and begs me not to leave him…
Cecilia closed the diary, slid it under the coverlet, and pressed her damp cheek to her pillow. She’d opened it hoping it would soothe her to sleep, but her chest had been aching since she read the first passage.
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the darkened ceiling above, her fist resting on her forehead, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Gideon had never been in love with Lady Leanora. That was nothing but another ugly rumor invented by the gossips in Edenbridge. Cecilia was ashamed she’d ever believed it to be true.
What a terrible wrong she would have done him if she hadn’t read these pages, not to have read in Cassandra’s own words how much Gideon had loved her, only to lose her and their son less than a year into their marriage—
Cecilia went still, Cassandra’s written words circling through her head, then she jerked upright in the bed and snatched the diary out from under her pillow. She paged backward to reread the passages written near the time of Cassandra’s death, wondering if she’d misread the dates.
May 1793. The most wonderful news! I am with child…
Then, in early July, barely a month after that, dreadfully ill today…
And again, later in July, the sickness grows worse with each passing day…
Finally, after more than a month of silence, in that shaky hand—
September 1793. Gideon weeps, and begs me not to leave him…
Cecilia let the diary fall into her lap, her head spinning.
She’d read it right the first time. There were only a few weeks between the time Cassandra discovered she was with child and when the first symptoms of her illness began. Then another three months had passed between the start of her illness and her death.
Three months, with the illness growing progressively worse over that time. Certainly, a lady might experience delicate health during a pregnancy, but such an extreme illness as this, that continued to worsen over a prolonged period of time?
It seemed…strange.
Cecilia flipped through the pages once again, searching each entry for a description of symptoms. Cassandra hadn’t recorded much aside from nausea, dizziness, and stomach pains. By the end of July, the entries had grown shorter, with many days passing between them, but there’d been one in August.
Painful red rash…
Rash? Cecilia had never heard of a rash being a symptom of pregnancy.
She closed the diary again, her hands shaking as she slid it back under the coverlet, her heart giving a sickening lurch inside her chest as she considered every word, every sentence the late marchioness had written. It was the cruelest twist of fate her life should have been cut so short, her joy in her unborn child stolen from her, and Gideon left alone.
A pregnancy, an illness that lasted for months, a red rash…
Or maybe it hadn’t been fate, at all. Maybe Cassandra had been sent to her grave by something far more sinister than fate.
Because it didn’t sound as if Cassandra had succumbed to a mysterious illness.
It sounded as if she’d been poisoned.
Chapter Twenty
Gideon couldn’t determine when it had happened, but sometime between Cecilia Gilchrist’s