Page 118 of Summer of Sacrifice

Friends would take some time to get used to.

“It’s all right.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work. “When you returned to Bellvary, then, he took a turn for the worse?”

Cal nodded. “He reverted quickly to the state he’d been in since right after we arrived at Whitehall for the Summer. He was fairly stable until Hearthmas when it all went to Hades.” He ran a hand over his jaw. She knew well that tell of his intellectual frustration mingled with unease. “By Gôthi Brigid’s Day, he was gone.”

This time, it was Seleste who reached across the table. She squeezed his intertwined hands and he smiled sadly at her. “I’m so sorry, Cal.”

“He was not the best father this realm has ever seen, but he was my father and a good man.”

“He was. How do the girls fare?”

A hint of brightness shone in his eyes at the mention of his sisters. “They miss him, but they’re blossoming. Brilliant little fiends.” He huffed a small laugh. “Their governess is rubbish, but it seems you taught them how to teach themselves. They learn in equal measure to their running wild.”

A lump formed in Seleste’s throat as she blinked away tears, electing only to nod. She squeezed his fingers again and let go. “I’m afraid we need to discuss something else entirely unpleasant before we can move on.”

He tilted his head to one side, brows furrowed with curiosity, but he said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“I would warn you to brace yourself, but I’m inclined to think you have already had thoughts that mirror my own.” She took a deep breath. “I heard your mother and Dr. Pollock speaking in private the night of the Summer’s End party.”

“Do elaborate…”

“They were discussing whom I could only assume was your father. Dr. Pollock insisted it was impossible that his health was improving. Your mother seemed almost frightened of him. Dr. Pollock, that is. But also very eager to please him.”

Cal looked away toward the window and its view of the blue sky from their vantage point at the table. After several moments, he finally spoke. “You’re right. I did have similar suspicions about my mother. I worried she was involved somehow, if only because she continued to insist he wouldn’t get better as if she could possibly know such a thing with absolute certainty. Then there was her vehement refusal for him to undergo surgery.”

He tilted his head back, looking up at the wooden ceiling of their cabin. “My mother is no idiot, but she isn’t slick enough to enact something like this on her own if she’s involved, so I never gave it a lot of thought.”

Seleste steeled her nerves. She hated confrontation, hated causing discomfort to anyone, especially Cal, but to help him, she had to lay it all bare. “But she is impressionable enough to become ensnared in someone else’s scheme.”

She watched as anger flushed his cheeks, followed swiftly by resignation before he exhaled a long breath. “Yes.”

A woman married into the upper echelons of High Society and desperate to remain there in the aristocracy’s good graces. It was why the countess had pushed Seleste away, why she was leery of accepting her in the first place. Why she’d bucked against Seleste teaching the girls, and why she loathed that her son wanted to be a surgeon.

“Do you have any idea what motive she or Dr. Pollock might have had if they are connected to this? Were they—” She’d said enough difficult things aloud. Perhaps that one could wait.

“Having an affair?” Cal finished for her anyway. “I never had any reason to think so until this conversation.” The air deflated in a woosh from his lungs again. “Now I’m worried it was so. She’s been sullen and morose since his death. Even more than after my father’s.

“Motive is trickier. I’m only just beginning to really dig into the family documents and estate decrees. Everything was left to me, for the most part. The girls will receive their dowries when they marry—archaic nonsense that is. Rather, their husbands will.” He sniffed derisively. “And my mother’s stipend remained the same.”

“And her dowry?”

“It bled into the estate the moment they married, and his will made no mention of it returning to her upon his death. I suppose it is, for all intents and purposes, mine now.”

No obvious motive, aside from wanting to please her secret lover’s wishes if Dr. Pollock was to blame. But he’d been the next to perish…

Seleste scribbled furiously in her notebook. Eventually, she looked up again, only to find him looking at her longingly, a deep sorrow shrouding him. Heart stirring, she licked her lips subconsciously, and his eyes tracked the movement, his countenance shifting from anguish to arousal.

It was suddenly very stuffy in the cabin, and Seleste rose to peer out the window again.

“You connected your father’s illness with arsenic when things went downhill around Hearthmas?”

“No,” he clarified. “It wasn’t until the next person died. Pollock.”

She turned to face him again, forcing her attention to stay on his eyes. “You’ll have to connect the dots for me, Cal. There is a lot of conjecture here without more details.”

“To explain that, I’m afraid I must back up.” He turned in his chair to face her. “In the Autumn, I officially began my studies to be a surgeon, under the tutelage of Professor de Montfort and his colleague, Professor Ludwig.” He watched Seleste’s brows rise. “As you know, I’ve been studying on my own for years and sneaking into any lectures or surgical theatres I could for as long as I can remember.”

Seleste nodded. “Of course.”

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