Devoted to You

“Well, I shall call her Petunia then,” the dowager declared dismissively, daring anybody to argue with her.

Aidan didn’t care what the woman called his wife as long as Petal was around to hear it.

“Petal, can you hear me? Please, wake up and talk to me, darling,” he pleaded gently.

Desperate to at least hold her, he ignored the presence of everyone in the room and climbed onto the bed. Gathering her into his arms, he held her close while he waited for the doctor to arrive.

“Why do you think the magistrate needs to be involved?” Jerry asked when a tense and nervous silence had settled over the room.

The dowager sighed and perched on the edge of a seat next to the bed.

Jerry studied her carefully and leaned forward, sensing there were secrets.

“You know something about Alice’s death, don’t you?”

The dowager chose her words carefully.

“In my position, one has to be careful about casting aspersions on anybody, Jeremy. But there are a few things about Alice’s death that just didn’t sit too well with me.”

“How so?” This was the first Jerry had heard of it.

Although they had discussed the circumstances around his late wife’s demise, not once then, or at any point during the intervening years, had the dowager ever mentioned having suspicions about his late wife’s death.

“Alice was on her own the afternoon she fell down the stairs. Right?”

Jerry nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t there, but the staff assured me that she had been writing letters all afternoon. I had no cause to question what they told me because there was a stack of envelopes on her bureau waiting for the post.”

The dowager nodded. “Well, I have reason to suspect that she was pushed down the stairs, and that she didn’t fall as it is claimed.”

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Silence fell over the room. Aidan continued to stroke his wife’s hair, wishing she would wake up and tell him if this was the case.

Jerry slumped backwards in his chair. “Why did you not saying anything before?”

“I have no proof,” the dowager replied bluntly. “However, now that an identical incident has occurred to your wife, Aidan, I firmly believe, and nobody is going to tell me otherwise, that someone killed Alice, and has attempted to kill Petal.”

“Who?” Aidan and Jerry spoke in unison. Their demand was sharp in the silence of the room.

“I don’t know,” the Dowager said firmly. “I do believe that nobody should leave this house until they have accounted for every second they have been in this house while Petal has been alone. Now, I have just arrived, Edwards has already gone home, and Hornsby isn’t even in the county. Besides, Hornsby wasn’t around when Alice was alive so we have to assume that she is innocent.”

“The servants,” Aidan whispered.

He landed a menacing look on Jerry that made him shift warily.

They both knew that the only servants who had worked in Jerry’s house when they had left the Dowager’s were Rollo, Mrs Kempton, and two of the footmen: Burton and Hogworthy. Burton had just been sent to fetch the magistrate.

“If he doesn’t come back, then the magistrate will have to send a search party out to find him,” Jerry murmured.

He hated having to think about his fateful marriage on the best of days. It always darkened his day. However, he swiftly pushed the dread to one side and focused on Aidan and Petal while he thought over who had been in service at the time of Alice’s death.

“Why would you have reason to believe that someone may have killed Alice?” Jerry countered.

“I came to see Alice a few days after you left for London, Jeremy. She said that she wasn’t feeling too well. I told her she should send for the doctor and get herself checked over; that she might have a fever or something. She said she would think about it, but she was sure it would all be alright in time. The next day she was dead.”

“Why would that give you the idea that someone had tried to kill her?”

“Because I took tea with her, my dear,” the Dowager reported. “When I got home, I took ill as well. I started to tremble. I couldn’t keep anything down and, when I did stand up, the room moved around me so ferociously that I was sick. I was perfectly fine until I had tea with Alice. The following day I was back to normal.”