Edmund swallowed. “I would have wed you had I known about the child in time, but I was travelling. And once it became too late, I saw no reason to—”
“No reason,” she repeated.
Edmund’s hand went to his forehead and rubbed side to side. “I supported the boy. Despite you denying me his presence, I provided for him the best way I could.”
Sarah tilted her head as if she was confused.“I wanted us to be together as family. I wanted to motivate you. Is that so wrong to want what is best for my son?”
“But to kill? How many duchesses were you willing to kill before you realised how futile it was?”
Sarah looked away, returning to Edmund a moment later. “As many as necessary.”
His hand flew to his mouth, a gasp leaving his lips.
“Why the duchesses? Why not Henry.”
A crease formed between her eyebrows. “To make room. For myself.” She looked at Edmund. “I loved you completely, Edmund. I wanted what was best for you. Don’t think for a moment it was easy on me. It wasn’t.”
Edmund lowered his shaking hand. “What do you mean?”
“Well… Catherine was a strong swimmer.”
Henry exhaled. His breath came out ragged. Violet’s hand found his on the back of the chair and held it.
“And Harold?” Violet’s voice held a tremor.
Sarah looked directly at her. She said nothing.
Edmund made a sound, wretched and airless, and rose to his feet. Kit followed him out. Henry heard his cousin’s footsteps in the passage, unsteady, then gone.
“Let us go home,” he said and stood, his hand on the chair for support. Violet rose with him and took his arm.
“Hatchett.”
The Runner nudged Poole. They collected the chair for easier passage. Henry led Violet toward the door. Violet’s hand was on her belly. At the threshold, his wife turned.
Sarah sat alone at the bare table. Her hair was loosely pinned. Her back was still straight. She looked at Violet.
“Your boy will be well cared for,” Violet said. “His father will be at his side. We shall make sure of it.”
Sarah held her gaze. Then said gently, “I know he will.” The corners of her mouth slackened. “It’s a shame I didn’t know about your condition sooner.”
Henry heard Violet inhale sharply. He turned her away from Sarah and led her out of the gaol. They left her in the yellow light.
Chapter thirty-eight
His Mother’s Hand
Violet
Violet went to the stillroom on a grey afternoon, when Henry was sleeping and the house had at last stopped holding its breath. She had been tired since yesterday. A low ache behind the small of her back she had not had before persisted, but she had refused another day in bed waiting for her body to settle. The stillroom had been waiting for her for too long.
She had been avoiding it. She could admit that now, standing in the doorway with the cold key in her hand. It was the room where the poison had been measured out jar by careful jar, in a hand she had once admired. It was also hers now, and she did not intend to keep a room in her own house that she was afraid to enter.
She opened the windows. Then she set to work. She went along the shelves slowly, reading every label, setting the harmless things to one side and the dangerous to the other, the way her mother had taught her before she could read the words themselves. It was steadying work. By the time she reached thehigh shelf she had stopped flinching at the handwriting. The receipts were there in a clothbound folio, and she took it down and sat with it on the stool by the bench and read for the better part of an hour without moving. Every measure was recorded. Every margin was noted.
She had never met Henry’s mother. She felt, turning the pages, that she was being introduced, and that she would have liked her a great deal. But the folio held only receipts. Formulations and dosages and drying times, and nothing at all of the woman who had written them. And a woman who wrote this carefully did not set down only her recipes. There would be more of it somewhere.
Violet entered the hidden room. The Runners had taken what the magistrate required and left the remainder, and she had resolved to catalogue every item with her own hand, because she would not grant Sarah the satisfaction of a room Violet could not bear to stand in.
