Page 41 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“He’s not dead, but he will be if we can’t get him to a hospital.” Ethan ran a hand through his hair, dislodging tiny pieces of ice that hadn’t had time to melt yet. Which seemed impossible. The maze had been an hour ago—a year. Everything was happening in slow motion and Maggie felt herself go numb. Like she was still out there, wet and disoriented and too cold to feel a thing, which was better than feeling everything. It was the only way she could think, and thinking trumped feeling any day.
She looked around Eleanor’s office—at the notebooks on the shelves and the computer and the old record player that had seemed like such a clue a few hours before, but now Sir Jasper was unconscious and Eleanor was...
Eleanor was missing. Eleanor might be dead.
“Is he having a heart attack?” someone said.
“Well, it looks like a stroke—”
“Ew.” Cece cringed. “Looks like he was kind of barf-y.”
“It’s poison.” Maggie knew it. She just did. “Is his heart too slow or too fast?” she asked but no one answered. “Kitty? His heart rate! Is it—”
“Too... too slow,” Kitty said.
“It could be foxglove?” Maggie tried to think. She was desperateto remember. “Maybe monkshood?”
“What’s that?” the duchess asked.
“Wolfsbane. Some people call it...” Maggie was too busy racking her mind for anything she’d ever learned about poisons and antidotes and— Charcoal. “James, is there any activated charcoal in the mansion?”
“I’m not sure, but if it pertains to poisons, there is a good chance that Ms. Ashley has it. In fact...” There was a light in his eye, as if he’d just remembered something, and then he bolted for the stairs.
“Now see here,” Rupert was saying. “I don’t see any reason to jump to any conclusions. That man doesn’t look poisoned to me. If you ask me—”
Maggie’s gaze flew to Ethan’s. She didn’t know why. She didn’t even want tothinkabout why! But—
He was the guy who takes the bullet. And he was looking right at her.
“Everybody out. Now.”
“See here, Wyatt.” Rupert puffed his chest out. “I don’t know what makes you think you’re in charge, but I demand—”
“You want to make demands?” Ethan spun on him. “Go right ahead. But make them downstairs. Now out.”
Maggie was aware, faintly, of people moving. Leaving. Heading downstairs or, in Nanny Davis’s case, back to the children in their playroom. But Maggie was still glued to her spot by the door. She couldn’t look at Sir Jasper. In fact, she was very pointedly looking anywherebutat Sir Jasper, but Maggie couldn’t just walk away. Eleanor had last been seen in that room. Sir Jasper might still die there. And Maggie—
“That goes for you too.” Ethan’s hand was a sure, steady pressure on her waist. “We need to figure out how we’re going to get him to a hospital if we can’t call out.”
“I know.” But Maggie didn’t move.
“Maggie?” He was so much bigger thanshe was, but it didn’t make her feel small. It made her feel safe. “Maggie?”
“I know, all right? I know! It’s just...” In the next second, she was airborne and the scene was upside down and the office was growing small behind her.
“Put me down!”
“No.”
She banged her hands against the small of his back. “Put me down.”
And then he did, tossing her off his shoulder and pressing her against the wall before glancing toward the stairs as if to make sure no one else could hear. “Listen to me.” Hands were in her hair then, as gentle and as soft as his voice as he said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Sir Jasper was poisoned and someone shot at me and Eleanor is missing. Eleanor is missing and she’s out there and...” Something about the sure, steady weight of his presence gave her the strength to say, “It’s not a test.”
Maybe it was the trauma or the jet lag or the cool, dim shadows of the hall, but Ethan’s eyes turned the color of midnight. “It’s not a test.”
Chapter Thirty-One
