His face darkened at the reminder, but he didn’t say anything, so I continued, “Someone invited him, and it must have been to some purpose. It’s hard to imagine that either Laetitia or Crispin would require stimulants at this happiest of occasions.”
Christopher snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past Crispin, honestly, but I heard his reaction when he saw Rivers. I don’t think it was him. Do you suppose it was Cecily who asked him to meet her here, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She might have done. Mightn’t she?
“Or she might have picked the pennyroyal herself. It grows wild, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it does.” It was a weed of sorts, wasn’t it? Or a wildflower or something like that. I added, “Although I don’t know whether it grows around here. I’m sure it doesn’t in London. What’s more likely is that she contacted Rivers and he gave it to her as an oil or something like that, and she mixed it with the tea to make it easier to drink.”
“Or used the tea as a chaser,” Francis said, “after she downed the oil.”
“And you think she would have done this here?” Christopher asked. “Now?”
And that was a point, wasn’t it? Cecily had a home, or so I had to assume. She might have a flat in London, the way Christopher and I do, or she might be living with her family somewhere, the way Crispin, and Francis and Constance, still did. Either way, she had somewhere to go, where there was more or less privacy. Why would she come to someone else’s house—and someone else’s engagement party—to take something to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy? Surely something like that would be better achieved behind closed doors at home?
I meant to say something about it, but before I could, there was a gurgle from the bed. For a moment, caught up in the discussion, I had almost forgotten that Cecily was lying there, and now I turned back to her in chagrin. How could I have been so callous as to discuss this with her lying just a few feet away? What if she had heard us, and been distressed by it?
But when I faced the bed, it was to see Cecily’s body seize, and arch up from the mattress like something out of a horror story. A rattling gasp came from her throat, and her eyes were wide-open and staring at the ceiling.
For a second she held there, body bowed, before the tension broke and she flopped back down onto the bed in a heap, quite asif someone had cut the strings of a puppet. I waited for her chest to rise in another shallow inhalation?—
And waited?—
And waited?—
“She’s gone,” Francis said. His voice sounded peculiar, although it could have been my ears and not him. There was a buzzing I recognized as a precursor to feeling faint. Next to me, Christopher stared, eyes wide and horrified.
I turned to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, as much for support for myself as to support him. After a second, he returned the favor: wrapped both arms around me and buried his face against my shoulder. He’s a couple of inches taller, but not so much that my shoulder is inconvenient.
“Excuse me,” Francis said distantly. I raised my head to watch him walk out, but he didn’t turn to look at me.
“We should go after him,” I said into Christopher’s tweed-covered shoulder. “I don’t think he should be alone.”
“I don’t think I want to be alone, either.”
I nodded, cheek rubbing against the tweed. “I know you don’t. Nor do I. But I’m sure this must bring back bad memories for Francis. How many men do you suppose he saw die in the trenches?”
A shudder passed through Christopher, from shoulders to feet. “A lot.”
I unwrapped my arms. “Go after him. I’ll stay here and wait for Constance to come back. And then the doctor. You go and make sure your brother is all right.”
He stepped back and nodded. “What about you, Pippa?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said steadily. Beginning with Christopher’s late grandfather, Duke Henry, in April, and ending with poor Flossie Schlomsky a month ago, I had seen more than my fair share of dead bodies in the past few months. Nothing like Francis and the War, of course, but for peacetime, more thanenough of them. And this couldn’t in any way compare to that nightmarish trip through London in June, in the back of Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza, with Freddie Montrose’s dead head in my lap, his blood soaking through the towel and into my clothes. “At least I only have to sit beside the bed and wait this time.”
Christopher nodded. “If it becomes too much, shut the door behind you and wait in the hall. Or in your own room.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said and gave him a nudge towards the door. “Go. Be with Francis.”
“I’m sure he would rather have Constance.”
“And he can have her, just as soon as she comes back here and tells me what’s going on. I’ll send her down to you. But in the meantime, you go and sit with him. He’ll probably want a drink.” And someone to drink with.
“I wouldn’t mind one myself,” Christopher said, with a final glance at the bed. He headed for the door. “We still have to talk about what happened earlier.”
“Outside, do you mean?”
He nodded.
