Page 93 of A Devilish Element
A shiver of horror ran through Eliza’s slender frame as she repeated the repulsive word under her breath. Her gaze shot to Jem’s face as he peeped over his fingertips. “The noose he was holding over you was your relationship with me?”
Jem chewed his tongue, then covered his face again, clearly unable to face her. “You might have held your tongue, Ludlow.”
“Jem, tell me.” She pulled his hands away from his face.
“I’d wriggled free of him, but then he saw how I looked at you, and that was enough for him to know he could demand my compliance. Eliza, the truth of the matter was irrelevant. He knew only of my infatuation. That I cared for you. All he had to do was make a few remarks in a select few ears and you’d have been stripped of your reputation… ostracised. Your sisters too. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“And why did you not appraise me of this threat?”
“Because as we have already established, I am a fool. I meant to come clean about my situation and how I felt when I followed you down here the other morning, but then you said what you said, and I agreed to what I agreed. Eliza, I meant to do whatever I could to make you happy. I was not about to ask you to wed me, the only way I could actually have protected you, when you’d just explicitly stated you never wanted to be shackled by wedding vows.”
“You meant to ask for my hand?” Her incredulity made her voice turn shrill. “But aren’t you just a penniless tutor dependent on his uncle’s goodwill?”
“Yes, but I wondered if maybe that didn’t matter. That perhaps you were willing to overlook it, given that you hadn’t wed Joshua Rushdale, when I was positive that you would have done, and he has all the funds you could want. I’d like to clarify, that I didn’t expect you to accept. I was ready to be let down. Resigned to it even.”
“So, when I offered an alternative, of course you grasped it. But then that enabled Linfield to get his clutches on you.”
He bowed his head and nodded. “You said it, we men always muck things up.”
“Ahem,” Bell cleared his throat. “I believe we were discussing poisons and murder. If you’re both done proclaiming, might we get back to that?”
They both levelled him with their glares.
Jem tugged on his cuffs. “Perhaps don’t blurt out facts that are irrelevant to the investigation if you don’t wish us to discuss them.”
“And we’re not done,” Eliza snapped. “Did you really mean to propose?”
“I know. I know I’m a fool, and it’s not the future you want.”
“But you truly meant to ask?”
“Oh, good grief and damnation!” Bell resumed Eliza’s search of his shelves. “Kunckel’s pills, right? Evidently as elusive as brains in the sight of love. They’re not here.”
“Well, they were. I saw them.” Eliza shadowed Bell’s traversing of the shelves.
“Maybe you’re mistaken.”
“I’m not. I clearly saw them. It was when I came down to mix the remedy, and Mrs Honeyfield… Wait! That’s it, she picked the bottle off the shelf, and I told her it wouldn’t relieve her toothache, but she was loathe to relinquish them. Do you remember, Jem?”
“I don’t think I saw any bottle,” he said, semi-choked on emotion, and evidently still stuck on their possible futures.
He tried to catch her eye, but Eliza refused to be drawn in by a soulful plea. Now wasn’t the moment; they had to concentrate on the task at hand.
“I do recall you speaking to her, but I couldn’t say for certain what about.”
That was right, he’d stayed hidden in the other room, while she’d stepped through to speak to the housekeeper, lest they were witnessed together, and rumours arose. They may as well not have bothered since everyone seemed perfectly apprised of their attachment.
“She must have come back and taken them.”
“Wait, you’re proposing the housekeeper’s responsible?” Bell scoffed. “Why the devil would his housekeeper wish him dead?”
She didn’t have the faintest clue. “Did you not say just a few minutes ago that everyone in this house likely had a motive to murder him?”
Bell confirmed his words with a tilt of his head. “I did say that, but I was referring to the guests, not the servants. They’re irrelevant. Only Linfield’s valet has been with him any length of time, and he is well compensated for his troubles. The rest are recent additions to the household. You may as well say some rogue ventured in off the moors and did for him, or the elusive Cedarton white lady.”
“Why should the length of service matter? And how can you declare them irrelevant? They are here among us when others refused to be.”
“Perhaps they’re just not so given to superstitious twaddle,” Bell suggested.
