Page 61 of A Fearless Heart
“I am not,” Gabe told her flatly, refusing to let her retreat into that mental shell where she’d spent so much time. “You know exactly what I mean, Cady. Tell me what you did with it.”
He could see her pulse fluttering at her neck, and the way she tensed, as if about to run. He lowered his voice. “Did you hide it in a safe place, Cady? You weren’t able to destroy it, were you? You must have thought about how valuable it was to science, and how rare. You couldn’t just whip up another batch. It would take a year for the plant to bear fruit again. So you tucked it away somewhere on the estate.”
“It’s not on the estate,” she whispered.
Ah, progress.“Then where? I thought you avoided leaving the grounds.”
“I haven’t left the grounds for months.”
He frowned. “Then where did you take the poison?”
“Ididn’t take it anywhere. I gave it to someone with strict instructions to take it to sea and spill the bottle out over the ocean.”
“What? I don’t believe you. You don’t have any servants left who could fulfill such an order, and you don’t trust anyone else to do it.”
“I trust one person.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
She lifted her face to his, revealing terrified eyes. “My brother.”
Chapter 22
“You made a deadly poisonand then just gave it to your brother?” Gabe asked, obviously trying to control his expression.
“I didn’t justgiveit to Trevor,” Cady objected, feeling unmoored. “It was only after I decided that it was too dangerous to simply sit around here, particularly considering what people say about me! Don’t stand there and tell me what I should have done differently. If I’d kept the bottle and you found it when you started snooping around, you’d have stolen it and disappeared.”
He looked caught out, but only for a second. Then he said, “I thought you haven’t seen your brother for years.”
“Not as much as I’d like.” She looked out the window suddenly, and her voice was tight when she said, “And not at all since my father died.”
“You two didn’t have a falling out, did you?”
“Never!” Cady said. “But my father and he did. Trevor swore that he’d never set foot on the family grounds again.”
“So what happened? If he doesn’t come here, when did you give him the bottle? How did he get to Calderwood with no one else noticing?”
“The truth is that Trevor did come back a few times. But his visits were secret from everyone but me. There was a little cottage in the woods where, in time past, a gamekeeper lived. When Trevor had to stay overnight, he stayed there. He’d have food readied for him in the village, and he’d eat meals there like he was having a picnic. Anyway, at night, he’d come to the main house and use the passageways of the heating system to get into my private garden.”
“When was the last time he came here?”
“My birthday. Last June. He even brought a little cake for me. It got smashed on the way, but it tasted good.” She felt tears prickling along her eyelids.
“Is that when you gave him the bottle of clephobine?” Gabe’s attitude grew more gentle, as if he knew she was near the breaking point.
“Yes. I gave him precise instructions for disposing of it, and when he wrote to me about a month later, he promised he’d done it just as I asked. Trevor always keeps his promises to me.”
“I’ll have to talk with him,” Gabe said with a frown.
“Why? I just told you what happened.”
“No, you told me what you believed happened. Not the same thing.”
“Trevor isn’t a liar!”
“Lower your voice.” He glanced at the door, and Cady realized that if anyone was passing in the hall, they’d hear her arguing despite supposedly being alone.
Quietly, she said, “Please keep Trevor out of this. He has enough on his plate.”
