Alex moved at once.
The healer arrived carrying her bag and a guarded expression. She examined the vial beneath the window, scraped a trace of residue onto a clean dish, and mixed it with water. The cloudy streak that formed made her mouth tighten.
“What is it?” Connor asked.
“This is a preparation, me Laird, made to weaken,” she answered. “The base was medicinal once. It has been concentrated beyond any honest use.”
“Be precise.”
She looked at him then. “In small amounts, it would cause nausea, cold hands, dizziness, and faintness. More could cause confusion or death.”
Connor gripped the table. “Can it pass from one person to another?”
“Nay.”
“Could it resemble an old illness returning?”
“To someone who had suffered one before, aye.”
His lungs expanded for the first time since Violet had fallen against him in the market.
She was not dying.
The healer packed her instruments while Connor stared at the vial. “Angelica root may have settled her stomach for a time. It couldnae, however, remove the cause.”
“And John’s fever?”
“Unrelated, me Laird. It was only an ordinary fever. The bairn is well now.”
Connor’s knees trembled. He braced one hand against the table and lowered his head for a breath. Violet had blamed her own body. She had left John because Lachlan had taught her to fear her own touch.
Moira entered when summoned. At the sight of the vial, she pressed one hand to her apron.
“Did Lachlan ever give Violet a drink?” Connor asked.
Her brow creased. “Once in the nursery. He said I was needed below and asked another maid to bring her a cup. I thought he was trying to be useful. I should have seen it,” she whispered.
“Nay.” Connor straightened. “It was me fault. I let him stay here.”
He gave orders without raising his voice. The vial was wrapped and locked away as evidence. Lachlan’s chamber would be searched again, every seam opened. A written account from the healer would also go to Alex’s men in England.
Then Connor turned toward the door. “Saddle me horse.”
Alex glanced at him. “MacBain?”
“Aye. ‘Tis time to bring me wife home.”
Connor grabbed the vial and took it with him when he left the study. It weighed almost nothing.
At the courtyard steps, he closed his hand around the box and understood with sickening clarity that Violet had run from a disease she had never had.
But no more.
30
Violet watched as Hamish declared himself the winner of a game she wasn’t even aware they had been playing. He stood in the middle of the family room with a wooden sword held above his head, while his defeated opponent, a stuffed bear, lay beneath a chair.
“The bear had no weapon,” Violet said.
