in the same way she knew Daniel Brixton would always protect her.
She knew it down to her very soul.
Since she’d arrived at Darlington Castle, she’d told herself time and again she needed to use her wits, as Georgiana did, to rely on her talents, as Emma did, and to be strong and brave, as Sophia was. She’d told herself her heart was untrustworthy, too prone to sentimentality to be relied upon. Too soft, too apt to romanticize a man like Gideon who, for all his darkness, was lost and grieving, and beautiful in his vulnerability.
She’d told herself she couldn’t trust her heart to lead her to the truth, but all this time, she’d been wrong. Her heart whispered Gideon was innocent, and, at last, she would allow herself to listen to it.
Someone had poisoned Lady Cassandra, but it hadn’t been Gideon. Whoever had done it had escaped justice thus far, but they wouldn’t escape forever. Cecilia would make certain of it.
“I’m off to bed. Mind you eat the rest of your dinner.” Mrs. Briggs nodded at Cecilia’s plate, then pushed her chair back from the table. “Good night, Cecilia.”
“Good night, Mrs. Briggs.”
Cecilia sat in the darkened kitchen for a long time after Mrs. Briggs left, trying to fit the puzzle together from the pieces Mrs. Briggs had given her.
Never seen anyone so ill…frail and weak… broth and spearmint tea…
Cecilia’s brow furrowed, her mind lingering over that last thing. Spearmint tea. The plant she and Isabella had found in the kitchen garden, the one she’d thought was some variety of lavender. It smelled strongly of spearmint.
Ill for months…poison…spearmint tea…
Perhaps the plant wasn’t lavender, after all, but something far more sinister. Could Cassandra have been poisoned by a plant growing in the kitchen garden? One with leaves that could be brewed into a tea?
She rose from her chair and passed through the arched doorway of the kitchen and down the corridor into the entrance hall. It was silent, without a soul wandering about, and the door leading into the courtyard and the kitchen garden beyond it beckoned to her.
Once she got a few sprigs of the plant, she could look it up in Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. She’d seen a copy of it on a library shelf when she’d gone in to fetch The Mysteries of Udolpho to read to Duncan and Amy the other night. It would take some searching through the illustrations to find the plant, but find it she would.
But first, she needed to make a trip to the kitchen garden.
Except she’d told Gideon she’d stay inside the castle today. If one chose to quibble over words, it wasn’t daytime any longer, darkness having fallen while she and Mrs. Briggs were talking, but that was splitting hairs, indeed. Whatever Gideon had thought was a threat during the day surely became much more so at night. That was always the way with threatening things. They thrived in darkness.
Was the White Lady truly a threat, though? Gideon must think so, or else he wouldn’t have warned her to stay inside the castle, but despite having pretended to be a ghost and frightening Edenbridge out of their feeble wits, The White Lady hadn’t hurt anyone.
Still, it was a risk.
Cecilia bit her lip. She could put off the task until tomorrow, but it was already snowing. The plants she needed could be buried by morning. Even if she did manage to get to them, they might look entirely different after languishing under a heavy snow, and she’d no longer be able to recognize them in Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
It was the work of a few moments only. It would be the quickest thing in the world for her to dash out the door and through the courtyard to the corner of the kitchen garden, snatch up a few stalks of the spearmint-scented plant, and dash back inside again.
Cecilia straightened her shoulders, her mind made up. She’d known there’d be risk before she’d agreed to come to Darlington Castle. She wasn’t without her own resources, nor was she as easy a target as she appeared to be.
Only the dim light from the entrance hall lamps followed Cecilia out the door and into the courtyard beyond. Dear God, it was cold, and the sharp, dry scent of snow tickled Cecilia’s nose. Thick clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring the moon, and Cecilia sent up a quick prayer of thanks that she and Isabella had spent so much time in this garden, or she might have found herself