“Hello, Mama.” Violet kissed her cheek and stepped inside. “I know you are meeting with the Hampstead Botanical Circle shortly. I wanted your opinion before we arrived.”
“Sit down. Let us talk.”
Violet retrieved the twists of tea leaves from her reticule and set them on the table in the drawing room. She told her mother where they came from and her suspicions. Lady Thornwick remained calm as was typical. She picked up one of the twists, opened it and smelled it. “Rue,” she said. Another sniff.“Raspberry leaf.” Another sniff. A longer one. “There is a third thing. It was made to hide.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot place it.” She set the tea leaves on the table between them and sorted through them with her fingers. Violet recognised the gravity of that. In thirty years and several hundred preparations, her mother had not once been unable to place something. “This is for the Circle.”
“That is what I thought.”
Her mother’s bonnet for the morning was already dressed and waiting on its hook: small dark berries clustered at the brim, their leaves waxy and pointed, as though they had grown there. Violet looked at it, and then at her mother.
“Is the theme…”
“Poison,” her mother said. “Mrs Bickle chose it three weeks ago.”
They gathered their bonnets and reticules and stepped outside. They nearly walked into a crowd.
The carriage had gathered an audience in the time it had taken them to finish their tea in the kitchen. Four children from the row opposite had stationed themselves at the horses’ heads, not touching, but close enough to study every detail. Two women Violet recognised from the market stood at a slight distance, conversing in low voices while looking at the crest on the door. An elderly man she did not recognise at all had his hands clasped behind his back and was examining the nearside wheel.
The footman stood at his post and looked at nothing, as footmen in ducal livery were trained to do.
Her mother stepped out and took in the sight. “Well,” she said, after a moment.
“Yes,” Violet said.
Her mother descended the step, and the small crowd shifted to make room. She went straight to the nearer horse and raised her hand, and the animal dropped its nose to her palm.
Violet stood there watching, grateful she could give this moment to her mother.
Mrs Bickle’s house was the third along a respectable terrace and announced itself by the sound of animated disagreement audible from the pavement. Violet followed her mother through the front door and into a sitting room organised around the central problem of five women who, from Violet’s interactions with them growing up, each held strong opinions and were disinclined to concede the floor.
The bonnets were extraordinary.
Mrs Bickle had gone for monkshood—deep violet-blue flowers with their distinctive hooded shape, beautiful and absolutely lethal, arranged along the brim. Beside her sat Mrs Acklam, a small round woman who had dressed hers in foxglove bells, their spotted throat turned outward, trailing down one side like an afterthought.
Mrs Colston had chosen hemlock, white lacy clusters that looked innocent to anyone who did not know better, which was, evidently, the point. Mrs Finney had woven yew berries through the straw, their red arils jewel-bright against the dark leaves. Mrs Brindle, a tall woman whom Violet had only seen from afar, wore lily of the valley. They were so small, so pretty, so quietly catastrophic to a heart that did not know what it was consuming.
Together they looked like a garden that had decided to take matters into its own hands.
Her mother set the twists on the table. The room hushed immediately.
“Everyone, I have with me today Her Grace, the Duchess of Iredell.”
Some ladies rose from their chairs, curtseying with various depths and skills. Others applauded before following suit. All except Mrs Brindle did something to show their delight at having a duchess attend. Her mother held up a hand.
“You’ve all known Violet since she was a little girl. She needs our help. We must determine what is going into Her Grace’s tea.”
A gasp. Even from Mrs Brindle.
They passed the twists around, smelling and frowning and sorting.
Mrs Bickle produced a pair of spectacles from her bodice and brought the leaves close. “Rue,” she said, touching one of the small, rounded leaves.
“Agreed,” Mrs Finney said. “You can see the oil glands if the light catches them.”
“And here,” Mrs Colston separated a larger leaf with a pale, almost silvery underside, “raspberry. The serration is distinctive.”
