Page 10 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER TEN

Kissing Morna was coming home and rejoicing and all the wondrous emotions rolled into a sense of lightness that spread out from Graham’s middle to engulf his whole being. His mind was so much sparkling jubilation, his heart sang paeans, while his wits danced clear to John O’Groats and back.

And his body knew damned well what sort of dance should come next.

For long moments, Graham simply marveled. He and Morna had kissed a few times years before, clumsily, sweetly, and without guile. Morna had been working on her strategy since then, ambushing him with a hand around his waist pulling him closer, then sliding that hand down over his bum.

She tucked in, leaving nothing to the imagination, and all the while, she plundered with lips and sighs and—ye gods—her tongue.

“Mercy,” Graham whispered, easing his mouth away. “Cease fire, Morna, please, or I’ll be begging for what I haven’t earned.”

She muttered something, which gave Graham an excuse to whisper against her temple. “Didn’t catch that. My ears are buzzing.” No exaggeration.

“I said you would not have to beg.”

“Wheedle?”

She shook her head, and Graham gathered her close and put his chin on her crown.

One moment, they’d been arguing about safety and runaway coaches. The next… “Morna, you have resorted to unfair tactics.”

“Then I am done and through fighting fair with you, you wretched bounder.”

Never had the term been so laden with affection. “At this rate, I will soon be done and through with thinking straight. We must be sensible.” Nothing sensible was happening behind the falls of Graham’s riding breeches. He took a step back and led Morna by the hand to an old chest topped with a folded Stewart plaid blanket. The red was faded, but the wool was still thick and soft…

Down, laddie. The intensity of Graham’s desire baffled him. He’d learned years ago to control himself, to think of menacing icebergs the size of Edinburgh Castle, of hard labor and exhaustion that went on for years. Dull, sad, boring realities that doused a conflagration of physical yearning down to a flickering notion.

With Morna, he was eyeing the lock on the door and entertaining disrespectful thoughts toward the royal tartan.

She took a seat on the chest and tugged Graham to the place beside her. “I’ve missed you, sir. Here.” She tapped her heart. “I told myself I was infatuated and I’d outgrow such nonsense. I told myself my feelings were unreciprocated, because no other theory explained how easily or thoroughly you set me aside that long-ago summer.”

“If I reciprocated your feelings any more intensely, your skirts would be around your waist, and St. Didier would have to thrash me into next week.”

“No, he wouldn’t. You told Peter I was more than capable of sorting you out, Graham. If you persist with your plan to once again abandon the castle, this time to draw enemy fire, I will decamp for Edinburgh and become a fashionable poet.”

She’d do it too. Morna was a talented writer, and she did not issue idle threats.

Graham kissed her knuckles, earning himself a whiff of roses. “I cannot keep you safe in Edinburgh and also manage matters here at the castle, Morna.”

“Such a pity. I cannot keep you safe if you are determined to martyr yourself once more in the Clan MacNeil tradition. I will not lose you again, Graham, most especially not to your muddleheaded notions of honor. We fight together, or you can go back to selling your spices and complaining about parrots.”

The whole time she lectured him, she stroked her fingers over his hand.

“You are so brave, Morna MacKenzie.” So damnably, relentlessly brave. She would banish him from her heart and take up poetry. In a week flat, Sir Walter would find himself with daunting competition.

Or so Morna would have Graham believe. The cherishing caress of her fingers suggested the plan might cost her a few regrets.

“If I’m brave,” Morna said, “then I must get my courage from the local whisky, because the same shortcoming afflicts you sorely, sir.”

She proposed a shift in tactics—from Graham protecting his family, to Graham and Morna protecting their future and their family.

Which left no choice, really, given the alternative. So simple and so terrifying. “You ask a lot, Morna. I can’t lose you either.”

She slipped an arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “Are we agreed, then? You are not to go off on the high road alone, taking unnecessary risks, plotting and scheming without consulting me?”

Not so fast, Miss MacKenzie. “We are agreed that neither of us will go off alone, taking unnecessary risks, plotting and scheming without prior mutual consultation, correct?”

She made him wait, but that was as it should be. “We are agreed.”

The moment was right for more kissing, sweet, slow kisses that both soothed and aroused. Graham took the initiative, which apparently surprised Morna, but she was soon into the spirit of the undertaking, imperiling Graham’s sanity and making him so very glad to be alive.

He was mentally exploring the notion of hefting Morna into his lap when an unwelcome thought intruded.

“Saddle,” he muttered against her lips.

She wiggled closer. “Kiss me.”

“Morna, darling, Peter and Lanie will soon be back and expecting…”

Morna kissed him, and Graham’s command of basic English went flying. He retaliated with a glancing caress to her breast, which inspired her to panting.

“We must stop,” Graham said, single-syllable words being barely within his grasp. “Peter and Lanie will come.”

Morna nodded. “Right. Blast and botheration.”

They stayed like that, breathing together, frustrated, pleased, and yearning, until Graham rose and drew Morna to her feet.

“I’m sending St. Didier to Edinburgh,” Graham said. “The nature of his errand of record is sentimental and has nothing to do with old business or accidents.”

Morna dropped his hand and brushed at her skirts. “He told me. He’s to retrieve some item from the shops that you did not want to entrust to the mail. I don’t mean to trample your privacy, Graham. Lanie and I will still whisper in corners, and Brodie and I have a limerick competition going. He’s better at it, also very naughty. I inspire him to greatness, or so he claims.”

I love you. The words popped into Graham’s head, courtesy of a heart that dealt in eternal verities and courage, even when some sense was wanted. Morna was putting aside a moment limned in glory, rolling up her sleeves, and planting both boots firmly on the ground. Her tone of voice was the usual brisk, pragmatic flow of words Graham associated with her, but a softness lingered in her eyes, and that hand brushing at her skirts hinted of shyness.

Bless this contradictory, dear, unstoppable woman. Graham kissed her cheek. “You grab the bridle and saddle pad. I’ll take the saddle. The horse is already groomed.”

She took down the bridle, fetched a clean saddle pad, and paused at the door as Graham hefted the saddle over his arm.

“You mean it, then?” she asked, all careful diffidence. “You won’t disappear on me again?”

“I mean it, Morna. I won’t disappear.” The promise made him uneasy, but the prospect of Morna larking about Edinburgh’s narrow, busy streets on her own… Not to be contemplated.

Morna’s hand was on the door latch when the door opened from the other side.

“Oh.” Peter looked from Morna to Graham. “Getting the gear together. Right. Lanie will be down to the stable directly. She’s mad keen to try riding double. She went to find a pair of Morna’s riding boots.”

“Let’s saddle up True,” Graham said, carefully avoiding Morna’s eye. “You can try his paces while we wait for Lanie.”

He sidled past Morna through the door, forcing Peter to move along ahead of him. Graham nearly dropped the saddle, though, as Morna delivered a discreet pat to his bum before exiting the saddle room herself. She passed Peter the bridle and saddle pad, then went sashaying on her way.

“Are you and Morna arguing?” Peter asked, watching her go.

“Working out some agreements,” Graham said. “Morna is a talented negotiator.”

Peter snorted. “Next, you’ll be trying to woo her with talk of icebergs and spiders. Take her out on a hack when we get a mild afternoon.”

“Excellent advice, assuming my horse is free to accommodate me.”

Peter smacked his arm, and Graham went about saddling True. All was far from right with the world, but Graham was right with Morna, and that mattered a very great deal.

“D’ye fancy Auld Reekie?” Uncle Brodie asked, interrupting St. Didier’s reading for the third time.

St. Didier had sought the light in the library, and Uncle Brodie had come prowling along about a quarter hour later, just as the MacNeil clan history of the wars for Scottish independence was getting interesting.

Kidnappings, midnight raids, spies, and mad gallops, all with a dash of sleeping with the enemy and disappearing to France in the face of gale-force winds. Heady stuff.

Brodie, by contrast, seemed to be a common variety of busybody bachelor. “I do enjoy Edinburgh,” St. Didier said. “The city doesn’t sprawl quite the way London does, and the company is varied.”

“We don’t put on airs, ye mean. The man with initiative and some sound ideas can earn the respect of all, while the strutting peacock wins universal contempt, despite his fancy dress and lofty manners.”

Which did not explain why the likes of Sir Walter Scott himself showed slavish adoration of the Regent, the biggest peacock of them all, though His Majesty’s gait was more of a waddle than a strut.

“Agreed.” St. Didier turned a page in hopes of appealing to Brodie’s manners. “Edinburgh Society is a refreshing change from some of the company farther to the south.”

“I spent many a fine hour in that company,” Brodie said, taking up the cast-iron poker from the hearth stand and attacking the fire. “Many a fine hour. Of course, we didn’t insist on ceremony to such a ridiculous degree as you young people do in these modern times. A handsome lad whose sister was married to an earl was welcome everywhere. Now, the London hostesses want to count his teeth and see his ledger books before they’ll admit him as a guest.”

Balding, white-haired Brodie hadn’t seen the inside of a Mayfair drawing room for at least twenty years, but he spoke as an expert observer. He finished making a racket with the poker and replaced it on the hearth stand.

“Do you miss London?” St. Didier asked, running a finger down the page of his book as if trying to recall the spot where he’d been most recently interrupted.

“Indeed, I do. Always so much to do, so much to see. My loyal correspondents keep me informed, though. London has a Philharmonic Society now, made up of the best musicians, and I’m told the performances are sublime. The Royal Academy exhibitions are unparalleled displays of artistic talent, and one finds more wit in the London Society pages than in all of Edinburgh’s dreary poets and philosophers combined.”

The London slums were also unparalleled, the stench of the Thames far from sublime, and the London skies nigh perpetually dreary with coal smoke.

“Shall you journey back south with me?” St. Didier asked, though he was being a bit unkind, baiting the former great man of the world, bachelor-beyond-compare, and international authority on everything fashionable.

“One is tempted,” Brodie said, opening each drawer of the library desk and banging it closed in succession. “One is sorely tempted. When might you be departing?”

“My itinerary is uncertain. Scotland in springtime is not to be missed, but the lure of the London Season is strong too.” Dunhaven’s habit of semi-prevarication was apparently contagious.

“I might consider a jaunt south, but for the fact that Graham has so recently returned. One doesn’t want to appear disloyal, nipping off to the blandishments of civilization just as the family scandal takes his place as the earl. Whatever else is true, Graham has served his penance for killing my sister, and he is owed the appearance of deference, if not actual respect.”

“You think he administered an excess of medication to his grandmother?” Graham himself was very certain he had not.

“What other conclusion can one draw when the lad confessed at the first opportunity, and the old earl—as stubborn a curmudgeon as ever wore plaid—permitted the boy to be sentenced? I had my differences with the previous earl—vociferous, entrenched differences—but he allowed the law to take its course, and in that decision, I must support him in memory.”

St. Didier gave up on MacNeil family history, added a square of peat to the fire, and watched the flames blaze up.

“You don’t think John, for instance, might have offered the countess an extra cup of tea and added a dose of patent remedy in a semi-inebriated fog? Might Miss Morna MacKenzie—a prodigiously busy woman—have failed to measure a dose accurately? Could Graham have been protecting another party by pleading guilty?”

Brodie went to one of the tall library windows and struck a contemplative pose, hands behind his back, gaze on the park rolling away from the formal gardens.

“You don’t understand the nature of the Scot, Mr. St. Didier. We are honest to a fault. If Graham said he was responsible, he was responsible. We take our honor seriously here, unlike some other places I could name, where chivalrous words fall from every pair of masculine lips while a determined blind eye is turned on the lame soldiers begging in every church doorway.”

Brodie apparently read more than the Society pages of the London penny press. “I can assure you, no beggars darken the door of Mayfair’s houses of worship.” Perhaps the ultimate irony, that the most prosperous, when displaying their piety, were spared the sight of those who’d sacrificed limbs and eyes to safeguard that wealth.

“And I can assure you, Mr. St. Didier, that if Graham confessed to a misdeed—let’s not call it a crime—then Graham himself was responsible. I grant you, my sister’s sickroom would have made the Royal Mile look deserted by comparison, but Graham stepped forward out of honor, not guile.”

Hardly dishonorable to protect the weak from a perhaps fatal dose of judicial excess. “Do you recall the physician coming under suspicion? I, for one, cannot, but inquiries in that direction should have been made.”

Brodie rocked up on his toes, then settled back. “Dr. Ramsey was young, and in a physician, that is a fortunate characteristic because his education is right up to the moment. He was not some doddering old relic spouting Galen and Hippocrates. Had Ramsey been guilty of malpractice, he would have said the countess simply expired in her sleep. No scandal, no accusations. Her death would have been sad, but not entirely unexpected. Thus no suspicion should have been cast on the young physician. You were here at the time. You saw the tragedy unfold firsthand. Why pry into the past like this, St. Didier?”

Because you won’t let me read in peace, you old fusspot. And yet, only when the topic of the countess’s death had arisen had Brodie stopped making noise and behaving as the neighborhood’s most spoiled child. The topic mattered to him, perhaps because Graham’s supposed guilt sat ill with him too.

“I have no family worth the name,” St. Didier said, joining Brodie at the window. “I was fascinated by the sense that the MacNeils were loyal to their own, no matter the specifics of pedigree or provenance. Graham brought me home with him in part because I’d nowhere else to go that summer, and then to see tragedy descend from out of nowhere… I will not soon forget my first visit to the castle.”

The truth was, St. Didier would never shirk a sense of somehow being responsible for the whole sorry situation. If he’d been more observant, if he’d paid closer attention to the ailing countess, if he’d spent less time with his nose in books and more time watching the staff, the countess’s death might have been prevented.

Or Dunhaven’s transportation averted.

“Blessed Saint Andrew, that boy is daft.” Brodie was peering intently across the garden at the greening expanse of parkland. “They’re going to break their fool heads if they aren’t careful, and that is Graham’s horse they’re larking about on.”

A couple rode double across the park on a big, sturdy bay gelding, whose smooth, rhythmic canter would have done a rocking horse proud.

“They look to be enjoying themselves.” Miss Lanie was astride before Peter, her feet in the stirrups, her hands buried in thick, dark mane. Peter held the reins, his arms necessarily on either side of Miss Lanie’s waist.

“We all fret about our Lanie,” Brodie said. “Measles is a cruel disease, but it spared her hearing and some of her vision. She never complains. She missed the countess most, you know, being the youngest. The girl was lost for months after her ladyship’s death.”

Peter brought the gelding from a canter to a walk and turned the horse back in the direction of the stable. Lanie beamed, the horse plodded along like an oversized lamb, and Peter found it necessary to put the reins in one hand, the better to keep his free arm around Miss Lanie’s waist.

Such concern for the lady, and at a meek little toddle. “Peter is being a bit bold, don’t you think?” Of course, he was on home territory, and Miss Lanie was encouraging him.

“MacNeil men tend to boldness,” Brodie said, “and perhaps that appeals to Lanie. As a child, she was a fixture in the countess’s sitting room, curled in a chair much too large for her, or napping in a corner of the sofa. We always knew where to find her, and when the girl was so ill, the countess would read to her. Lanie became the devoted little nurse when her ladyship’s ailments worsened. Quite touching, really, and all a very long time ago.”

Lanie relaxed back against Peter’s chest, and St. Didier knew a pang of sympathy for the gallant cavalier having to deal with that temptation while on horseback. Boldness could extract a toll on a young fellow’s dignity.

“Miss Lanie was with the countess the night her ladyship died, wasn’t she?” St. Didier asked, collecting his book from the reading table.

“She might well have been, but you’re not to ask her, St. Didier. I forbid it in the name of gentlemanly discretion. Lanie was a child, and you must not upset her now, when she’s finding some happiness in life.”

Brodie had no authority to forbid anybody anything, and his uncharacteristic vehemence convinced St. Didier of one thing: Even Brodie wasn’t certain of Graham’s guilt.

“You assure me Graham would not have pleaded guilty to protect Morna, Peter, John, or even the old earl,” St. Didier said, “but are you confident he would not have pleaded guilty to protect a young girl recently rendered blind and trying to be the countess’s best companion and supporter?”

Brodie shook his head. “Don’t be daft. Don’t be a foolish, arrogant, meddling Englishman. Lanie was and is all but blind. She would never have presumed to have handled her ladyship’s medications. Never.” He left the library, still shaking his head and muttering.

St. Didier tried to resume reading, but the medieval battles of Clan MacNeil had lost some of their luster compared to the family’s present struggles and recent past. Brodie vehemently protested the possibility of Lanie’s involvement in the countess’s death, but was he protesting too much, and if so, whom was he protecting?

Lanie’s yarn and knitting needles lay in her lap, and Eustace, in all his fat, black, feline glory, sat on the arm of her chair, purring loudly. To Morna’s eye, they made a picture of domestic contentment by the hearth in the family parlor—a deceptive picture.

“Peter says St. Didier is leaving for Edinburgh next week.” Lanie stroked the cat, who head-butted her hand shamelessly. “We were just in Edinburgh. If St. Didier had a burning need to see the sights, why not go with us?”

Since Lanie had slid off True’s back into Peter’s waiting arms two hours ago, Peter says had become the beginning of every other sentence from her mouth, up from the usual every fourth sentence of recent days.

“You and Peter must have spent your whole ride in discussion.”

“Hard not to, when one is sitting on the same horse. I’d forgotten, Morna, how glorious it is to be in the saddle. You tell a horse to go, and he goes. You tell him to go faster, and he flies. Peter says we can hack out as often as I like, and he’ll find us a big, draft-cross mount like True.”

Such longing infused those words. “Peter putting you in the saddle has made you think, hasn’t it?” Morna knotted off her blue thread and sorted through her workbasket for the white. “You are wondering what else you’ve left behind that you might revisit, despite your blindness.”

“I’m not truly, completely blind. When I play the pianoforte, I can see my hands. I could see True’s mane and Peter’s hands on the reins. He has lovely hands.”

More longing, more wistfulness. “Peter is a lovely man.” Not as lovely as Graham, not as fierce or substantial, but for Lanie, Peter would suit wonderfully. “If he’s waiting for me to be married off before he proposes to you, tell him he needn’t.”

“Proposes to me?” The yearning turned to caution. “No man wants a blind woman for the mother of his children, Morna. Peter is sweet and dear, and we’re friends—wonderful friends—but orange blossoms aren’t part of the bouquet.”

“Lanie, listen to Peter’s voice when he talks to me or Graham or Brodie, then listen to his voice when he talks to you. He is in awe of you, as we all are, but Peter holds you in very special regard.”

“What are you working on?” Lanie tried to cease petting the cat and got a lapful of feline in response. The beast settled right on top of the knitting and began kneading away.

“Graham reminded me that I haven’t done much work with the MacKenzie plaid. MacNeil colors are everywhere, but not so, our own. I’m trying to embroider the MacKenzie motto on a handkerchief as a practice project.”

“‘I shine, not burn,’” Lanie said. “Strange motto. I do like our stag’s head, though.”

The coat of arms belonged personally to the clan chief, whom Morna had never met. “Lanie, you mustn’t be afraid to dream. Peter loves you as a man loves the woman he wants to marry. At first, I thought he was merely infatuated. But his affection for you hasn’t waned or wavered, and if you could see how he looks at you…”

“And there you have it: I cannot see—how he looks at me or much of anything. I tell myself that’s simply my lot, and if I could see, then Peter would not read to me by the hour, but I don’t want his pity, Morna. I don’t want him taking care of me when I can’t take care of him.”

This conversation was long, long overdue and also well timed. “To whom does Peter confide his dreams, Lanie?”

“To me, by the hour. Steam and electricity and gas lighting and rail travel… Peter is nothing if not imaginative.”

“To whom does Peter confide his troubles?”

Lanie scratched the cat’s chin. “He can’t very well rely on Brodie to hear him out, can he? Brodie isn’t quite mean-spirited, but his favorite topic of conversation is his own mythically marvelous past, his latest shrewdly bargained snuffbox purchase, and his own expert, completely uninformed opinions.”

“Peter could rely on me, on old John MacIver, on the vicar’s oldest daughter, on—”

“She fancies him,” Lanie said, hand going still. “Vera does. She told me as much. Said younger sons had to marry the daughters of gentlemen, and a vicar is a gentleman.”

“Vera Conroy has no more chance of marrying an earl’s heir than she does of becoming famous for her Italian arias.” The poor thing could not, as it was said, carry a tune in a bucket. “The point is, Peter turns to you for counsel, support, and inspiration. You know his favorite dishes and what foods he won’t touch even to be polite.”

“Can’t stand pickled herring,” Lanie said, shifting to the cat’s shoulders. “Tried it once and went howling from the kitchen. The old cook thought it was funny. I don’t miss her.”

What a memory Lanie had—for all things Peter. “I’d like you to consider a theory, Elaine Marie Margaret MacKenzie.”

“I’m listening.”

“Peter esteems you greatly, but he’s concerned that you regard him as a mere friend. He’s concerned that he hasn’t much to offer you and that you don’t need him.”

Morna waited for an explosion of disbelief.

Lanie’s hand went still on the cat. “Peter has means. I know he does. The old earl saw to it, and so did the countess. Graham has personal means too, Morna. Means other than the earldom.”

“The issue isn’t means, Lanie, it’s pride, tenderheartedness, and the certain knowledge that if a friendship is all you’ll grant him, then he’d rather have that than a bungled proposal and awkwardness.”

The cat switched his tail. Lanie ignored him. “You and Graham have discussed this?”

Luceo … I shine , or perhaps the sense was I am luminous . “More or less.”

“Morna?”

Morna set aside her embroidery. “Graham foiled an attack on the London docks, Lanie, and he’s concerned that the runaway coach was another attempt on his life.”

“Those horses did not run away, Morna. I know what I heard.”

The cat glowered at his negligent human, though Lanie of course could not see the creature’s displeasure.

“In London, Graham was with St. Didier, and we accompanied him in Edinburgh. Being Graham…”

“He’ll worry for everybody but himself. Will he banish himself again, Morna? Before, when Grandmama died, nobody explained to me what was going on. Then she was gone, and everybody was whispering, but nobody was talking . The next thing I knew, Graham was gone too.”

“I hated him for that,” Morna said, “but he was doing what he thought best.”

The cat dug his claws into the knitting and got summarily deposited on the carpet. “Being honorable. Why is it honorable when men do it but featherbrained when anybody else does?”

“Does what?”

“Make dunderheaded decisions all on their own? Women are headstrong or stubborn or unruly when they write their own pamphlets, run their own shops, or refuse the first offer of marriage to come along, but men are determined and persistent and independent.”

What would Graham say about that logic? The cat cast Morna a winsome look, which she ignored.

“Do you and Peter discuss men’s stubbornness?”

Lanie took up her needles and pushed the yarn around. “We talk about almost everything. I want to kiss him, Morna, but I don’t want to discuss it . I want to do it.”

“Then you simply tell him, ‘I would like to kiss you,’ and give him a moment to decide whether he wants to be kissed. Then suit your actions to your words.”

“What if I miss? I can’t see him when we’re that close.” Lanie wasn’t blushing. She was sorting tactics.

“I haven’t taken a survey, but I believe most people kiss with their eyes closed. Frame his handsome face in your hands, get your bearings, and trust Peter to lend a hand.” Or a pair of lips to go along with his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

“You make it sound simple.”

“Simple, yes, and sweet, too, I hope.” Not necessarily dignified, but that was part of the magic.

“I must think.” Lanie began knitting, finished six stitches, then stopped. “You know, there’s one topic Peter does not wish to discuss, ever.”

Money? Intimacies? His amatory forays at school? “Only one?”

“The night Grandmama died. I have some idea what happened, Morna, or what was supposed to have happened. I was with her at the time. But the details are fuzzy, and I keep thinking they matter. Peter says to set it all aside, that we must put it behind us. He says something like that at the merest mention of Grandmama’s death.”

Morna had not thought to discuss masculine pride, much less kissing strategy with Lanie, and had most assuredly not intended to bring up Grandmama’s death.

“What do you recall, Lanie?”

Lanie’s hands resumed moving with the steady competence of the seasoned knitter. “Grandmama’s room was always warm. I loved her, but I also loved that her apartment was the one place in the whole castle that was always warm. I could not read anymore, but I could listen to her tell me stories, and she loved to tell them. I often fell asleep in the wing chair while she regaled me with tales of how she and Grandpapa courted. She’d tell me about our own mama and papa and about when John and Graham were small.”

What a treasure trove. “I heard some of those stories. Grandmama knew how to spin a narrative.”

“I wanted to take care of her, as she had taken care of me, but all I could really offer her was my company.”

What would Graham have given for some company during his years of exile? What would Morna have given for an hour here or there with him, even if all they did was read to each other?

“Go on, Lanie.”

“The night she died, the tea tray came up, the same as usual. The blue pot, which I always thought was too plain. I had half a cup—tea usually keeps me awake, and I didn’t want to overindulge—and Grandmama had at least two. We left the final cup for her medicinal serving. Peter came by with her posset and some biscuits, but I don’t recall him leaving. I don’t recall much of anything, because I soon fell asleep. The next thing I knew, I could hear Grandmama snoring—she never snored—and all the candles had been put out.”

Lanie could perceive light. That hadn’t changed.

“You want to ask Peter if Grandmama was well when he left? Ask Graham if she had that last cup of tea?”

“I don’t recall Graham coming by, Morna, and he was nothing if not conscientious about serving Grandmama her medicine. She called it her nightcap.”

Getting liquid nourishment into Grandmama had been simpler than asking her to hold utensils. She’d started and ended her days with possets, mostly honey and cream with a dash of cordial and spices. Even holding sandwiches and biscuits had challenged her dexterity toward the end, and utensils had become all but impossible for her.

“Peter might not know anything relevant, Lanie. He might have tucked you in and gone on his way.”

“Nobody tucked me in. The chair was half turned toward the hearth for warmth, and I certainly didn’t need any candles to read by, did I? I was cold when I woke up, though, cold and uncomfortable.”

And Peter had told her repeatedly to leave the discomfort undiscussed. “Uncomfortable how?”

“I ached, and I wasn’t sure where I was—the fire had burned down to coals—and even the air felt wrong. Then I heard Grandmama and realized we’d both fallen asleep. I wandered across the corridor to my bed. Grandmama would not let me spend the night in her apartment, I think because she wanted to waken without me pestering her.”

“Grandpapa looked in on her every morning. She might well have wanted some privacy with him.”

“I woke the next day to Grandpapa shouting at the physician. Grandpapa never shouted unless he was displeased with King George or the nitwits in Parliament. I grabbed my dressing gown, thinking to tell him to lower his voice lest he wake Grandmama. He told me to go back to my room, and I knew then something was very wrong. His voice was so sad, Morna. Despairing. I hope I never hear such a voice again in my life.”

“Dr. Ramsey was certain Grandmama’s death was a result of too much medication, but you’re telling me you were fast asleep when Graham came by?”

Lanie finished her row and switched her needles. “ If he came by.”

“You should discuss this with Graham, Lanie.”

“Why? Peter says it’s all in the past, and he’s not wrong.”

Morna tried to resume her embroidery, but the needle had developed a mind of its own. If Lanie had been fast asleep when Grandmama had been served her fatal dose, then the investigating authorities would have been unable to convict Graham of the crime. No witness could place him at the scene or support the notion that he’d administered the last dose of medication.

He’d confessed and been transported for nothing. Whoever had sent Grandmama to her reward and Graham to the Antipodes had to know that.