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“Ye look guilty now because your name is Cranfield.”
“God’s teeth.” He was right.
As they rounded the corner, a sliver of light shone out in the hall across from Lucy’s room. The door was open. Greer pulled her flat against the wall, and they returned around the corner.
“Who’s in my room?” she whispered. “We raced right here.”
“Who has a key?” he said softly.
“Any servant.”
“Damn. Stay here,” he said.
She let him take several steps around the corner and then followed. He frowned back at her, and she shooed him to continue.
Before the door, Greer surged forward. The door banged against the wall as he held his sword before him. She ran up behind, but the room looked vacant. Greer strode about, opening the clothes press and pushing back the drapes. “Search the room.”
She bent to look under the bed. “For a person?”
“For something that would send ye to the Tower with your sister. Something that may have been placed—”
“Under here,” she said. She had sunk all the way to the floor to lay upon her stomach, her petticoats swelling outward to settle around her. “There’s a pot like my jam.” Her words were strained as she tried to reach it, stretching her muscles in her shoulders and back. “But I didn’t put it under here. I can’t even reach it.”
Greer’s face appeared on the other side, and his long reach was able to grab the pot. They both pushed up, leaning on the bed across from one another, Lucy’s breath coming fast. He pulled the knotted leather string to remove the thin hide that capped it. “’Tis not jam,” he said and met her gaze.
“What is it?”
He looked back at Lucy. “Poison.”
“How do you know?” she asked, pushing to her feet to run around. She looked in the clay jar, but it was the label on the outside that proclaimed it ratsbane. The white powder looked identical to what was infused into the feathers on the fan Cordelia had given to the queen.
Several sets of footsteps sounded far down the hallway. Panic ripped through Lucy, making stars appear in her periphery. Before she could even think, Greer strode to the window that sat two stories off the ground, pushing it open.
Lucy watched his shoulder and arm rotate with such power, and he sent the clay jar hurling out into the night to fall somewhere in the manicured gardens. He quickly pulled the window closed and straightened the drapes just before Walsingham and several guards filled the doorway.
“Lucy Cranfield,” he said, “I am under orders to search your room for dangerous substances.”
She plopped down on the edge of her bed, her breaths shallow. Was the pot the only damning evidence placed in her room?Holy Mother Mary. She swallowed. “Of course, Lord Walsingham.” Should she say her door was open when they returned? Would that look like she was casting blame?
The guards filed in, pulling back her blankets and squeezing all her pillows with their thick hands. Greer came up to stand next to where she sat, and she stood, nearly throwing herself into his arms. But that would show a definite attachment and might implicate him too.
Walsingham didn’t question his appearance there. Which was fortunate since Lucy’s mind was clenched in anxiety and unable to formulate any stories, believable ones or not. She was like a bird caught in the gaze of a stalking cat, waiting for the teeth to bite into her.
One of the guards ran her wrapped gift over to Walsingham, who quickly pulled the ribbon exposing the soap she’d purchased as a gift for the queen. “What is this?” Walsingham asked.
“My New Year’s gift for the queen. Her favorite scent in soap from…Which I purchased for her.” If she told him she’d gone to the apothecary, he might question the man who could reveal they were asking about poisons. Lord, where else could she have gotten it. All the names of the vendor carts and little shops had vanished from her mind like smoke caught on a breeze.
He studied it as it balanced on the wrapping. Could the assassin have poisoned her soap as well as Cordelia’s fan? Walsingham held it out to her. “I would see you smell and touch the soap, Lady Cranfield.”
“Someone could have added poison to it like they did to Lady Cordelia’s fan,” Greer said, coming closer.
Would dying of poison be better than being imprisoned and executed? “I don’t see anything,” Lucy said and gingerly touched the sides of the blocky cake.
“Without your gloves, milady,” Walsingham said.
None of Elizabeth’s ministers had seen the scars across her right hand. She took a settling breath and pulled off the left glove.
“Both gloves, milady,” Walsingham said.
