Page 8 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I would have handled matters differently now,” Dr. Ramsey said, regarding Graham impassively. “Your lordship.”

The form of address still jarred, though Ramsey’s use of the honorific came off as belated rather than disdainful.

He wore his dark hair brushed straight back and a trifle long, the same as he had when Graham had known him previously. He was still trim, handsome in a severe way, and kitted out as the perfect gentleman-about-town. He’d half risen at their arrival and offered a stiff semblance of a bow, then returned to his seat. At his brusque gesture, the tea shop serving maid brought over a laden tray.

Ramsey was a good-looking devil, and he now enjoyed that phase of adulthood between dashing young manhood and distinguished middle age. Graham’s senior by only a few years, in fact, which came as something of a shock.

Ramsey had been quite young when he’d attended Grandmama—about Peter’s present age, would be Graham’s guess. Graham came to that conclusion as he assisted Morna into a chair and took one himself. The hard little seats begged for cushions that would encourage patrons to linger over a second pot.

“You would have handled matters differently.” Morna pulled off her gloves and laid them in her lap. “Is that a confession or an apology?” The civility in her tone would have frozen the North Sea.

“An apology, certainly,” Ramsey replied. “I was newly fledged as a physician, full of the latest medical advances and full of myself. I had landed the plum job of personal physician to a titled family, and then the countess expired on my watch.”

“You pointed fingers as loudly and convincingly as you could,” Graham said, pouring out for Morna and adding honey to her tea. When Ramsey made no effort to see to his own serving, Graham poured him a cup as well.

“I wanted justice for her ladyship.” Ramsey took a delicate sip from the fussy little cup. The table was near the back of the shop, a quiet location, though at this midmorning hour, the establishment hadn’t much custom.

An old fellow sat up front, reading a newspaper at the windows. A tidy young lady of apparent African extraction moved from table to table, placing a single daisy in a plain vase of green glass on each one. Her long apron sported embroidered daisies on the bodice, and the teapots all bore the same flower.

This very shop would have thrived madly in Sydney.

“You wanted justice for her ladyship,” Morna said, stirring her tea in a fashion Graham could have called ominous. “Do you delude yourself that justice was achieved?”

Ramsey set down his tea cup and gave Graham a slow perusal. “I had and have my doubts.”

“Did you share those doubts with the sheriff’s man?” Graham asked.

“I might have mentioned that the cause of death did not implicate anybody in particular.”

“Balderdash,” Morna spat. “The countess died in her sleep, and Dunhaven was the last person responsible for handling her medication every evening. The circumstances alone convicted him, and you did nothing to prevent that.”

“Somebody sent her ladyship to her reward, Miss MacKenzie. To you, the countess was likely ancient and frail, but you were a robust girl without much experience of illness in the elderly. I tell you, her ladyship had a strong heart. Her pipes were in good order. Her mind was alert when she wasn’t dosed to manage the pain. Rheumatism is a cruel disease in that it debilitates the joints and senses, while leaving the rest of the patient well enough to endure great suffering for years.”

When Ramsey was agitated, the impenetrable phonetic thicket of the Aberdeen dialect bordered the edges of his diction.

“You’re from a large family?” Graham asked.

Morna looked at him as if he’d just volunteered for a return voyage to the Antipodes.

“One of ten,” Ramsey said. “Ten living. Four others failed to thrive.”

And those four others had likely sparked Ramsey’s interest in medicine. “How many siblings are you supporting?” Graham offered Morna the plate of sweets, which included two French chocolates along with shortbread in flower shapes and an assortment of brown and pink macarons.

She waved the plate away.

Ramsey was a good physician but a poor thespian. He clearly considered personal questions rude. “I’ve put two of my brothers through medical training. The third is making good progress with his studies. My older sisters are married. The younger two bide with me.”

The weight of the world had been on young Dr. Ramsey’s shoulders. Of course he’d pointed fingers. His family’s survival had likely depended upon it. Oh, the irony.

“Tell us what you can recall about the specifics of her ladyship’s circumstances,” Graham said. “We know it was a long time ago, and you’ve treated many patients since, but I assure you, I did not knowingly poison the woman who’d been like a mother to me.”

“Nobody thought you had,” Ramsey replied. “Her husband was vocal on that point. You’d made a mistake, been forgetful or careless, but your actions were by way of an accident.”

Morna’s eyes took on a particular gleam. Graham passed her a chocolate macaron. She took it and put it on her plate.

“Grandpapa would still say the same if he were sitting at this table,” Graham said. “The charge was involuntary manslaughter.”

“Why plead guilty if you did not commit the crime?” Ramsey asked. “When I doubted your culpability, I found that guilty plea all the evidence necessary to quiet my uncertainty.”

As had the sheriff’s man. “I assumed,” Graham replied, “that whoever was responsible had also intended no harm, and of all the possible suspects, I was the one best suited to surviving transportation. Of that, I am certain.” Grandpapa had been, too, albeit reluctantly.

“But you aren’t sure who you were protecting,” Ramsey said, starting to reach for the plate of sweets, then apparently thinking better of it.

“The situation is worse than that.” Morna spoke quietly. “Dunhaven looks to assure himself that the death was, in fact, accidental. Otherwise, you, Dr. Ramsey, have enabled a murderer to roam free while an innocent man took on a fate that has killed many a hardened criminal.”

“Surely, you don’t suspect me.” Indignation, or possibly worry, had again shaken his polished diction from his grasp. As a young physician, he’d likely been terrified the titled family would throw him to the wolves of justice.

“I do not suspect you,” Graham said. “Grandmama liked you, and Grandpapa respected you. You were conscientious regarding her care and confident of your medical knowledge. You had no motive for putting an end to such a post and every reason to hope her ladyship struggled along for many years.”

“As we all did,” Morna added. “But you insisted that the countess had been killed.”

“She was,” Ramsey said. “We’re taught to keep thorough notes, and I’ve reviewed her ladyship’s case often. I examined the remains carefully at the time. Her mouth was bone-dry, lips and fingernails had a bluish tinge, pallor of the face was marked, and the younger Miss MacKenzie, who often sat up with the countess, claimed her ladyship had been snoring, which was unusual. Miss Lanie had lost most of her eyesight, and I would trust the hearing of the nearly blind over the vision of the sighted any day.”

“You think Miss Lanie heard a death rattle rather than snoring?” Graham asked. Did Lanie realize what she’d heard?

“Possibly. The poppy can ease us away from pain, but it also slows respiration. In cases of an overdose, the breathing becomes too slow to adequately exchange the air in the lungs or clear the throat. Taken with the other symptoms and the fact that I had witnessed her ladyship sleeping quietly on many occasions—no snoring—I concluded that an excess of the poppy ended her days. I’ve seen an appalling number of similar cases since and am confident of the cause of death.”

When holding forth medically, Ramsey’s accent was all genteel education and drawing-room tweed. He fell silent as the daisy-bearing maid placed a flower in the vase at the center of the table, then moved off.

“I cannot tell you more than that,” Ramsey said when the serving maid had departed. “An overdose resulted in the countess’s death. You’ve suggested two possibilities—murder and negligence. I must remind you of a third.”

“Suicide,” Morna said, suggesting the theory had occurred to her previously. “Which would require that the countess exhibit a degree of selfishness foreign to her nature. She was too fond of her family, even of her reprobate brother, to do that to us, and if she had, she’d have penned a note to ensure no nonsense ensued of the exact variety that did follow.”

“She could not pen a note,” Graham said. “Grandmama could no longer hold a pen.” Which begged the question: How could Grandmama have uncorked a bottle of patent remedy, poured herself a large dose, replaced the cork back on the bottle…?

“Her ladyship’s death was no suicide,” Morna said more firmly. “She loved us, and we kept her comfortable. We relied upon her, all of us. The old earl was lost without her, Lanie inconsolable, and John… Before he lost his grandparents, he was better. Not as untethered. After that…”

After the earl and countess died and I left. “Ramsey, we thank you for your time. You’ve mostly confirmed what we already knew. Is there anything else you believe relevant to the situation?”

Ramsey took his hat from an adjacent chair, a fine beaver with an exquisitely curled brim. “Miss MacKenzie, I understand your protestations. You loved the countess, and she was very fond of her family, as you note. She loved you all enough to come to meals, though holding a fork or spoon was most uncomfortable for her. She had you trooping through her apartment like some Edinburgh at-home that lasted from noon until night every day.

“The young man,” he went on, “Peter, did much of his schoolwork by reading and reciting to her, and the old earl discussed every facet of his holdings with her morning and night. He wrote me a character at her insistence. She’d demanded that of him after I’d been treating her for only a few weeks. She was a woman of formidable character whose generosity of spirit meant much to me and my family.”

“We wanted her to be included,” Morna said. “She was the heart of the castle, and we all knew it.”

“Of course.” Ramsey tapped his hat onto his head. “What you cannot know, what I pray you never learn, is how vile the course of a rheumatic illness is. The pain never relents. With each passing season, it finds new joints and tendons to afflict. Vision and hearing can be affected. Memory becomes unreliable. The spirits sink. Winter intensifies the suffering, year by year.”

He took up a walking stick of plain polished oak with a contoured silver grip. “The poppy dulls the pain, but nothing truly eliminates it. The disease has no cure and little relief, and when it has stolen mobility and independence, it does not stop until it has also taken every bit of dignity and hope. The countess’s case was progressing. I made certain the earl knew what to expect, and he asked me to keep that information to myself. I’d already told the countess what awaited her, because that good woman asked me directly and deserved to know the truth.”

He rose slowly. “I saw the same monstrous ailment in my own mother. I can assure you, after a certain point, she would have ended her own suffering by any available means, had she been capable. You would not wish such an affliction on Lucifer himself.”

He bowed to Morna, leaning heavily on his cane, nodded to Graham, and departed with a slow, uneven gait. A painful, arthritic gait.

“The poor devil,” Graham muttered, pouring himself a cup of tea. “He’s not an old man.”

Morna bit into the chocolate macaron. “His family will care for him. They’ll know how if anybody would.”

“We knew how,” Graham said, mentally reviewing the conversation and finding nothing of note in the whole exchange. “No cure, he said, and he’s an expert.” Physician, heal thyself—if you can.

“No hope,” Morna added, “and Grandpapa had been apprised worse was to follow. He loved her, and she might have put him up to it, Graham. Grandpapa was fading too.”

Graham drank the tea plain, mostly because tea should not go to waste. He could not bring himself to sample the sweets.

“What we’re contemplating feels beyond wrong, Morna. They loved each other. They’d weathered decades and tragedies together, lost grown children—plural. We needed them. Not a reliable adult among us, and I include Brodie in that assessment.”

Morna patted Graham’s hand, stirred a skein of honey into his tea, and chose another chocolate macaron.

What occurred to Graham as he sampled a treat he didn’t want was that he needed Morna. She’d put the fear of belated repercussions into Ramsey and pried from him a disclosure he had doubtless never intended to share. She’d insisted on coming on this outing, then comported herself like Graham’s devoted henchman, prepared to guard him from even conversational menaces.

He recalled her wrapping her arms around him at breakfast, when he’d been nigh incapable of standing. Morna understood how the prospect of Peter and Lanie emigrating could loom like a worst nightmare, and a real possibility.

She was still his heart’s desire and his ally, a gift that consoled and amazed in equal measures.

“Ramsey’s mother,” Graham said, brushing crumbs from his fingers. “If Ramsey’s mother’s situation had been made known to the sheriff’s man, the whole matter might have gone very differently. Ramsey has a family to support, but he’s also a healer by calling, and he was young and from humble means. If suspicion had fallen on him, I might have won a Scottish verdict.”

Insufficient evidence to convict. Not the same as an acquittal, but for the accused, the result was still liberty.

“Grandpapa would not have left that stone unturned,” Morna said. “If he’d seen any way to keep you home, he would have moved heaven and earth to make it so.”

Graham drained the tea cup, abruptly ready to be quit of the cozy little shop with its forced daisies and fancy French sweets.

“Grandpapa would not have invented evidence against Ramsey.”

Morna dunked her sweet in her tea. “Would you have wanted him to?”

“No.” Well, probably not. “I thought Ramsey was a bit rude, making me pour his tea for him. He probably can’t trust himself even to hold a full pot.”

Morna munched her macaron, gaze on the old man reading his newspaper by the window. “Did we learn anything, Graham?”

“We learned, once and for all, that Grandmama’s death was not an accident. We learned that Ramsey entertained the possibility of her committing suicide, but told no one when that theory might have kept me from transportation or exposed him to suspicion. We learned that his position was more precarious than we’d known, because he watched the same disease kill his mother. I learned, not for the first time, that you are very fierce and very dear.”

Morna dusted her palms together. “One could say the same about you, were the surrounds not so public. Where is this cigar shop, and will I scandalize all of Edinburgh by visiting it with you?”

So fierce and dear, and shy . That hadn’t changed, and the knowledge warmed Graham from the heart out.

“You will scandalize all of Scotland, so let’s be about it, shall we?”

She beamed at him and even let him tie the ribbons of her bonnet, which was so much foolishness Graham nearly forgot his hat. Morna further gilded his morning by taking his arm when they joined the throng on the walkway.

The tobacconist’s establishment was only a short distance away, but the going was slowed by more wheeled conveyances filling the street and more shoppers on the walkway. On the corner, some of Graham’s joy drained away. Ramsey, across the intersection and only two dozen yards ahead, made slow, bobbing progress, one hand on his cane, the other within balancing distance of the buildings to his left. The physician kept his head down, as if the oncoming pedestrians were so many winter gales buffeting him and not mere foot traffic.

“Do you think he told us the truth?” Graham asked.

Morna followed his gaze. “Yes, but not the whole truth. He’s protecting his family, and having had some experience with the type, he’ll choose family over the truth any day.”

The very same conclusion Graham had come to. The doctor had held back but had not precisely lied. “Are you scolding me, Morna?”

“More like admiring you.” She stepped off the walkway and half dragged Graham with her. He did not recall much about the transaction in the tobacconist’s shop, but he left the place having arranged for delivery of the specified merchandise to the MacNeil town house by the end of the day.

Perhaps by then he might have worked out just where and how to commence his courtship of Miss Morna MacKenzie, for nothing less than courtship would serve now, come fire, flood, or flaming arrows of misfortune.

“Greater devotion hath no swain than he who will go bonnet shopping with his lady,” Morna murmured, meaning every word. The bonnet shop was middling busy, though every patron other than Peter and Graham was female, and all of them had sent Morna envious glances.

Graham scowled. “Peter wore the same besotted expression when Lanie was choosing yarn, for pity’s sake. The lad has no dignity.”

Morna held a length of plaid ribbon against the fabric of Graham’s jacket. “I wasn’t referring to Peter.”

That ferocious MacNeil scowl became a grin. “You haggled with the tobacconist this morning, Morna MacKenzie. Stood right beside me and informed half the Grassmarket that Edinburgh has taken to condoning thievery within sight of the castle itself. I was touched, I tell you.”

And Graham had left the shopkeeper to defend himself, then paid the agreed-upon sum, winked at Morna before the gawping clerks and smirking male customers, and escorted her down the lane. A sweet moment.

“You think Peter is being devoted,” Graham said, bending near enough that Morna caught his heathery scent. “He’s stealing a march.”

Morna wound up the ribbon and chose another patterned in blue and green plaid. “He’s escorting her in plain sight, my lord. Nobody’s stealing anything.”

“Watch. He will tie the bonnet ribbons for her, adjust the curl behind her ear, smooth the lapel of her cloak. Half the patrons are in love with him, the shameless lout.”

The half that wasn’t already smitten with Graham, perhaps.

Morna did watch, and Graham was right. “Peter can’t court Lanie by making sheep’s eyes at her. They will likely never dance in a crowded ballroom, and they can’t race over hill and dale on horseback. This is how Lanie can be wooed, with small touches that delight her, and soft words, and time spent doing the things she cannot do alone.”

“Then you were wooing me in the tobacco shop, Miss MacKenzie?”

Graham’s mind had always worked like this—inside out and upside down, with unexpected insights. He was capable of humor so droll as to be almost imperceptible.

“Nearly plighting my troth, of course. When we attend a horse auction together, you will know yourself to be in anticipation of a formal engagement.”

“My heart throbs with hope. That is the MacKenzie tartan, if I’m not mistaken. Hard to tell with just a ribbon to judge by.”

Morna peered more closely at the length of satin in her hand. “I hardly recognize it.”

“We must remedy the oversight. The lighter colors flatter you, and one grows tired of the MacNeil’s darker pattern. If Peter doesn’t cease his—ah. A decision at last.”

Lanie had chosen a simple straw hat with a wide, slightly drooping brim. The various trimmings—ribbons, silk flowers, what looked to be a necklace of green glass beads—accompanied the millinery to the side of the shop, where a clerk ceremoniously boxed the lot.

“For the love of God and Scotland,” Graham muttered, “might we call the expedition a success and return to the town house?”

“You don’t fancy another sortie to a tea shop or gallery or glovemaker or—”

Graham passed Morna her parasol. “If you mention the jewelry store three doors down, Peter will faint with rapture. Let’s save that delight for the next fine day, shall we?”

Peter made the arrangements to have the booty delivered directly to the town house, and before Morna could ask how Graham knew the precise location of the nearest jewelry store, the party was once again on the walkway.

“I vow I am exhausted,” Lanie declared. “Peter, take me home. I am so peckish I could even walk past a new yarn shop.”

“Our Lanie is propounding a falsehood,” Graham said, offering Morna his arm and setting a course down the street. “She could no more ignore fine wool than I could ignore the scent of saffron.”

“Bakeries defeat me,” Peter said, bringing up the rear with Lanie. “Anything that combines fruit, pastry, and cream. Raspberries especially. What of you, Lanie? Have you a favorite treat?”

Morna listened while an earnest dialogue transpired about the merits of peaches versus raspberries and cherries. Graham smiled down at her and shook his head while they waited for the next intersection to clear.

Young love was sweet and a bit silly. What Morna felt for Graham was sweet and serious, but also warm and…

“Onward,” Graham muttered, stepping off the curb.

Because Morna was looking up at him, she saw the menace he had yet to perceive. “Graham!” She hauled him back just as a shabby coach and pair went racketing by at a hard canter. The horses’ hooves clattered on the cobbles as the vehicle nearly careened onto its side at the next corner.

“Damnation!” Peter yelled. “Graham, are you hurt?”

“Unhurt,” Graham said. “In future, I will make a greater effort to watch where I am going.”

“Distracted by the scenery,” Peter said. “Best be more careful, though. Wretched fool coachman was likely drunk in broad daylight.”

Graham appeared unruffled, but Morna nonetheless noted him looking over his shoulder more than once on the way home. She climbed the steps to the town house front door with a sense of relief out of all proportion to a simple accident—a simple near accident.

“Graham wasn’t careless.” Lanie spoke firmly as Peter helped her remove her cloak in the foyer.

“Not careless, perhaps, but a bit unaware,” Peter said.

“He wasn’t unaware either.”

Graham hung Morna’s parasol on a hook. “What do you mean, Lanie?”

“Edinburgh is like a symphony,” Lanie said. “So many sounds, and the tall buildings over in the Old Town mean the sounds bounce around from all directions. When we are out and about, I have to listen intently to keep my bearings. Half the sounds don’t make sense to me. Others I can figure out.”

Morna passed Graham her bonnet. “What exactly did you hear?”

“The cobbled streets are noisy,” Lanie said. “I like that. I can hear a vehicle coming and going. Horseshoes on cobbles make quite a racket. Wooden wheels have one sound, metal-rimmed wheels another. I could probably pick our town coach out of a herd of coaches if they all traveled along the same stretch of street.”

“Let’s step into the parlor,” Graham said, opening the nearest interior door.

The parlor was heated, also private. Peter led Lanie to the sofa, and Graham handed Morna into a wing chair and then tossed another square of peat onto the fire.

“You heard that runaway coach coming?” Graham asked, remaining on his feet.

Lanie nodded. “You muttered the word ‘onward,’ Graham, then a whip cracked. Horses that had been trotting charged into the canter—the change of gait is unmistakable—and you and Morna were nearly run down. I felt the breeze of the coach passing that close to us.”

Morna asked the obvious question. “You’re sure you heard the crack of a whip?”

“Yes. The streets on the Old Town side of the loch are narrow and hilly, and cracking a whip in such surrounds makes little sense. Here in the New Town, where the streets are broad and flat, perhaps, but not outside the bonnet shop. I can safely say that is the first use of a horsewhip I’ve heard since we arrived.”

“I heard it too,” Graham said slowly. “I wasn’t paying attention. My thoughts were elsewhere.”

Peter casually laid an arm along the back of the sofa and very nearly around Lanie’s shoulders. “An accident,” he said. “Edinburgh is dangerous. We all know that, but Morna’s reflexes were sufficient unto the day. Would anybody like a wee dram to ward off the chill?”

Peter was shaken, as was Morna. Graham seemed merely preoccupied.

“I am famished,” Lanie said. “Peter, let’s raid the kitchen and get ourselves in trouble with the cook.” She found his hand, rose, and tugged him toward the door.

“Your willing accomplice,” Peter said, “particularly if biscuits, cheese, and cider are involved.”

Graham closed the door and took the other wing chair. “Lanie’s ears don’t lie.”

“Dr. Ramsey said he’d trust her hearing over the visual evidence from a sighted person. Who would want to run you down, Graham?”

“Run us down, though St. Didier and I experienced a similar incident in London.” He recounted a tale that could have been mere dockside mischief or an attempt on his purse—and life.

“I don’t like this,” Morna said. “People are killed by footpads and runaway coaches.”

Graham closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cushions. “More often, they are merely injured and frightened. I find my reaction includes a goodly dose of rage.”

And yet, his tone was deceptively calm. “Rage?”

“You were put at risk of death or injury, too, Morna, and that I cannot have. We will wrap up this jaunt to the shops sooner rather than later.”

A younger Graham who’d not literally traveled around the world would never have taken such a firm tone. “I want to argue with you.”

Graham patted her wrist without opening his eyes. “Have at it. I’m rusty, but still up to your weight, I hope.”

Rusty. Bah. “We just got here, and Lanie and Peter are blossoming. I haven’t bought half the books I want to add to the castle’s collection. Then too, John MacIver will disown me if I don’t bring him a fresh supply of fiddle strings and a new collection of airs.”

And yet, that coach had charged at Graham. He’d been on Morna’s right, positioned to take the impact if the carriage had struck them.

“Vicar will expect some fancy brandy from me,” Graham said, opening his eyes, “and I did want to visit the local spice shops. How much can you accomplish in a day, Morna?”

“One day? How will you explain this to Peter and Lanie?” They were so happy, so pleased to be away from the castle and indulging in the fashionable outings a couple enjoyed when courting.

Though she would never admit it to a soul, Morna had been enjoying the same pleasures with Graham.

“I’ve concluded my necessary business,” Graham said. “Our interview with Ramsey yielded little new information, and that was my primary motive for this excursion.”

So brisk. So sensible. “You could explain to Peter that a similar mishap occurred in London, and you are concerned that somebody resents your return.”

Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. “The situation is complicated.”

The welter of frustration and upset plaguing Morna coalesced into disbelief. “You cannot suspect Peter of wishing you harm.”

“I can’t, you’re right, but neither can I blithely confide in him. He will discuss every possibility and outlandish theory with Lanie, and they are so absorbed with each other that anybody could eavesdrop on them.”

Morna had eavesdropped on them, nigh daily. “I hate this.”

“I’m far from enchanted with the situation myself. Let’s plan on leaving the day after tomorrow. In the alternative, you could stay behind with Peter and Lanie, and I’ll return to the castle, but I object to that proposal even as I make it.”

“Certainly not. If you think I’ll leave you to make a journey alone on horseback along roads where any number of mischiefs could befall you, you are much mistaken.”

“I can hire a carriage, Morna. I don’t want to be the reason MacIver goes into a pout.”

“Heed me, Graham MacNeil. We travel together or not at all.”

He kissed her knuckles, then stroked the back of her hand. “I do so adore your scolds. We’ll travel together the day after tomorrow, then. Let’s tell the infantry at supper. They can raid every bakery in Edinburgh in the morning, but they’ll take two footmen with them wherever they go.”

Morna knew wheedling when she heard it. “As will you.”

“As will we .”