AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Four
On her wayhome, Griz stopped off in Covent Garden, where she had asked a few of the flower sellers about people buying Christmas roses from them yesterday. She described Sebastian Cartaret, even called him by name.
None knew the name, though one girl said, “I did sell Christmas roses to a man like that. Very smart nob, he were.”
“What color were they?” Griz asked, but the girl didn’t know and couldn’t tell her any more about the man, whom she couldn’t recall seeing before. In fact, the description fitted so many men that Griz was not even confident this had been Cartaret. Still, she bought some Christmas roses from the girl by way of gratitude.
“You want to be careful with them, my lady,” a familiar voice said in her ear. “Don’t let your little dog chew them—they’re poison.”
“Nell!” She turned to greet the young woman with pleasure. “You’re looking well.”
Nell wrinkled her nose. “Looking respectable, you mean.”
It was true that while her clothing was still brightly colored, it now covered her person.
“That, too,” Griz agreed. “Are you still helping out with the children round the corner? George and Jilly?”
“Cooking their Christmas dinner tomorrow and having it with them. And their father. He wants to marry me.”
“Do you want to marry him?”
Nell tossed her head. “Might as well if I can’t have your man.”
Griz laughed and thrust one bunch of the Christmas roses at her. “Merry Christmas, Nell! Compliments of the season to your new family!”
She left Covent Garden delighted for Nell, but at the same time, her words—they’re poison—had her itching to be home among her books.
Inevitably, as she marched up the lane, at last, flowers in one hand, violin in the other, her heartbeat quickened at the possibility of finding Dragan had returned in her absence. She could not resist glancing up at the Westleys’ house as she passed. Did she imagine the face darting back from the window?
Just as she had left the church hall, she had asked the vicar if he knew the Westleys, too. “He is a banker, I believe,” she told him, “and thrives well enough to have a house in Half Moon Street.”
But the Westleys were not, the vicar said, among his charity’s donors, so there was no connection there.
Griz hurried up the garden path and let herself into the house with her key.
“Dragan?” she called, but there was no sign of his coat and hat in the hall, no bags dumped at the foot of the stairs. She knew he was not there. There was nosenseof him in the air that felt suddenly stale and cold without him.
Comforted by Vicky’s enthusiastic welcome, she made a fuss of the dog before she went and found vases for her flowers and distributed them between the drawing room and the dining room. Then, she returned to the drawing room with a cup of teaand began to scour the bookshelves for botanical works.
Nell was right. The roots, stems, and leaves of thehelleborus niger—commonly known as the Christmas rose—were indeed poisonous. If eaten, they could be fatal for animals and could make a human very ill.
Griz sat back, frowning. She wasn’t sure this took her any further forward. She couldn’t imagine Cartaret eating leaves, which, in conjunction with some other illness, might just have made him ill enough to die. Nor could she imagine the respectable Mrs. Westley, for all the secrets she might possess, cramming them into his mouth and making him swallow them.
For one thing, such behavior would hardly make him smile.
If the smile were a smile.
Nor could she think of a motive. She knew of no connection between them, except that Mrs. Westley possessed a Christmas rose bush.
Why would anyone have placed a rose in his hand after his death?
Respect? Pity? Love? Guilt?
And what of the single white petal? What was the significance of that?
She imagined it spilling out of his mouth as he ate the rest of the plant and jumped to her feet, shaking her head with almost angry impatience.
The short winter day was drawing to a close. She needed to light the candles for another long evening without Dragan.
