Page 46 of Vengeance in Venice
“Not clams.” The doctor took a large bottle from his bag and began to decant some of it into a smaller bottle. “Two drops ofthis at bedtime and you should sleep until morning. I will come back in a week if you don’t send for me before. Are you eating properly?”
“Yes,” she said, though in fact she wasn’t sure. “What did the foreign lady eat?”
“Nothing, apparently.”
She frowned at him, interested in spite of herself. His face was carefully expressionless. Clearly, he did not want to talk about it, but he was troubled, worried.
“Is what she didnoteat something you should report to the police?” she asked.
Deliberately, he thrust the little bottle of sleeping draft across the table to her. He said nothing, yet some emotion flickering in his eyes caught at her breath.
In spite of herself, she leaned forward. “Who is this lady?”
“The Englishwoman. Signora Grey.”
Her blood seemed to surge. Without intending it, she was on her feet. “No. I cannot allow it. Will she live?”
“I hope so.”
“But she has no one to nurse her but servants. I will go to her.”
“Signora, is that wise?” he blurted.
She stared at him. “Meaning if she dies, I will be under suspicion for two murders?”
He blushed painfully. “I know better. Besides, I see no reason for Signora Grey’s illness to be connected to your husband’s death.”
Except by me. “I have to go. Thank you for the medicine. Go home and sleep.”
She was already walking away. But at least her brain had cleared. She knew the risks to herself, to her reputation, but in truth, she did not care.
Half an hour later, she strode into the Palazzo Zulian, at her most imperious. She did not even wait, following the servant directly upstairs to the sick room.
“Signor, Signora Savelli—” the servant began.
Elena brushed past her. “How is she?”
Constance Grey was deathly pale, almost one with the pillow cases that surrounded her, apart from her bright red-gold hair. Her eyes looked bruised, the lids like scribbled-on paper, and she lay so still that Elena was afraid she was already dead.
From the chair beside the bed, Solomon Grey stumbled to his feet. “She is asleep.”
His appearance was almost as shocking as his wife’s. The urbane, handsome man, whose personality had so easily commanded her drawing room, had shrunk. His golden-brown skin looked gray, his clear, melting brown eyes distraught with more than exhaustion. Much more. Even recognition seemed to take time to register.
“She was poisoned,” he said harshly.
It might have been an accusation. “Where? When? Who was there? How could it have happened? The doctor told me she ate nothing.”
He blinked. He was in no condition to consider causes and culprits. His whole being was concentrated on his wife’s recovery. Elena’s heart contracted and seemed to swell, breaking through the fog of her own misery, for right now, his was greater. She had never seen such fear in a man, even during the siege. That had been a different kind of fear. This, she had no name for.
But her words reached him. She saw them register. Yet still he stared at her. “Go home, signora.”
His suspicion did not even hurt. She understood it perfectly. “I am the last person in the world to hurt her. If she dies while I am here, nothing can save me.”
The woman on the bed stirred, as though their voices had disturbed her. Abruptly, Grey sat down on the edge of the bed and took his wife’s hand. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Sol.” It was little more than a sigh, a croak, but incredibly, the woman’s beautiful mouth twitched into something approaching a smile. Even now, his mere presence made her happy.
Elena’s heart ached. Not with resentment but with loss.
