exhausted, not quite asleep, but not truly awake.
She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard the clattering of hooves below. Two horses. Until the relief hit her, she hadn’t realized just how frightened she had been for Dan’s safety, riding alone across country in the dark while someone, perhaps Sergeant Owens at the tavern, still wanted to harm him.
Since she had warning of their approach, she made sure she had her shawl gathered closely about her when she rose to greet Dr. Gorman.
The man blinked. “Lady Juliet? I did not expect to see you here!”
“Oh, I’m staying with Mrs. Stewart for a few days,” she said hastily, “but it is Susan here who needs your help.”
“So I gather,” he said, placing his bag on the floor and taking the space Juliet had just vacated. He picked up her hand to take her pulse and felt the temperature of her forehead.
Betty lumbered up from her bed to supervise and answer the doctor’s questions, while he drew back the bedclothes and felt Susan’s stomach.
The girl whimpered.
“There was blood, you say?” Dr. Gorman demanded.
“A little.”
“What did she eat that the rest of you didn’t?”
“Nothing,” Betty assured him. “She did wolf the leftover mushrooms, which came down from upstairs. We didn’t eat any of those, but the family did.”
Juliet nodded. “The mushrooms were good. I’m sure it was not something she ate.”
“Hmm,” Dr. Gorman said. It meant nothing, and yet Juliet had the impression he did not agree. “I need to purge her. Perhaps your ladyship would allow me this space to work?”
Which was a polite way to dismiss her.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Stewart,” she said, and left the room, taking her stub of candle with her. “Oh, Betty, which chamber is hers?”
“Last door on the left, ma’am, opposite Mr. Dan’s.”
There was no sign of Dan in the passage. No doubt he had already fallen into bed after his hard ride to Kidfield and back, and it was almost dawn. After scratching softly at his mother’s door, she let herself in, calling softly, “Mrs. Stewart?”
A bundle on the bed reared up.
“It’s Juliet,” she said hastily, raising the candle to reveal herself. “The doctor is with Susan.”
“Oh, thank you.” Mrs. Stewart yawned and stretched and clambered out of her bed, crushed but still fully dressed. “What did he say?”
“He’s purging her. He seems to think it was something she ate, though apparently, she had nothing other people did not share.”
“It would just take one mushroom that was the wrong kind,” Mrs. Stewart pointed out. “One that no one noticed before they were all prepared and covered in sauce. Cook is old and no longer sees so well.”
Juliet nodded, frowning as something elusive tugged at her memory and her understanding.
“Go back to bed, my dear, and get what sleep you can,” Mrs. Stewart said kindly, thrusting her feet into bedroom slippers. “I’m so grateful for your help.”
Juliet followed her more slowly back along the passage. One mushroom that was the wrong kind. Or one deliberately inserted for Susan after the dish was returned.
Sergeant Owens at the tavern. Had he followed Susan back up the house after she’d been to see him? Somehow, she couldn’t actually imagine him sliding a poisonous mushroom into her food. Slapping her, perhaps, even shooting her in a fit of rage, but poisoning seemed…wrong for him.
Besides, it was Dan who had been shot at, and the theory that the shooter had been aiming at her in mistake for Susan seemed somewhat far-fetched.
She paused outside her bedchamber door, her hand gripping the handle as she recalled the progress of the mushrooms around the table. Like several of the side dishes to the main course, Dan had passed them to his aunt Hetty Ames, who took the first serving. They had come all the way around the table, and she could remember seeing the dish passed back to Dan. There had been more than enough left, for once, for one generous helping. Someone had not taken any. And neither had Dan, for he had pushed the dish aside untouched.
Blood sang in her ears. Had someone hoped to poison Dan? Someone who had sat between her—she had eaten the mushrooms and passed them on—and him? There had been no servants in the room. It could only have been Colin, his mother, or Mr. Ames.
Her breath caught.
No, this was foolishness, imagination run riot. It was more likely something dangerous had been spilled by accident into the leftover mushrooms in the kitchen before Susan had seized