Page 30 of The Tart's Final Noel
Verity panicked at the suggestion and explained all Minerva had told her about the children’s home.Before she fetched them, she added to discourage the drawing, “Their mother seemed to be very isolated, with only neighbors visiting.I don't think she had a family or visited Town, so the children are unlikely to be recognized.”
She couldn’t help preening like a proud mother when she brought them out and the ladies exclaimed over how well the towheaded pair performed their courtesies.They admired Lynly's quilt as well.The girl beamed when Clare told her she had learned to sew almost as well as her mother, who was one of the best seamstresses in the sewing room.
Elsa produced a package of sweets, and Verity sent the beaming children back to their room.
“Mistress or not, their mother did a fine job of raising them,” Clare Huntly declared as the others gathered hats and gloves and said their farewells.“Despite what Meera tells us, I cannot believe anyone meant to kill such lovely children,” she whispered to Verity alone.
Verity slapped her hand over her mouth to smother an inappropriate exclamation.Perhaps she had misunderstood?“Meera thinks what?”
Clare lingered behind while the others clattered out.“I shouldn’t have said that, but...if there’s any possibility she might be right, you and Rafe need to know.”
“What did Meera say?”Verity asked in terror.She had complete confidence in the apothecary-physician’s knowledge.Meera’s advice had been invaluable too many times.
“She only had a few candies to test,” Clare warned.“She needs to examine the...nanny...further.But she thinks those little pills contained opium.”
Opium.Verity tried to remember what she knew of opium but it only had to do with laudanum and Chinese pirates.“For putting people to sleep?”
“One candy might have done that,” Clare acknowledged.“But a whole tin?Opium overdoses kill.We have no way of knowing if the tin contained three candies or thirty or if all of them contained the drug.We might be scaring ourselves for nothing.They could simply be an apothecary’s formula to put distraught children to sleep and meant to be taken only one at a time.”
But in Gravesyde, they had learned to look for the worst of human nature.Trying not to shiver, Verity watched the ladies depart, then raced back to be certain the children were safe.If they hadn’t already eaten their sweets, she might have taken them away, terrified they’d been poisoned—byLady Elsa!She was losing her mind.How did mothersdothis?
If the children had been the target of those pills...shedefinitelyneeded to keep strangers away from them.Her instincts had been right from the first.
But the news about the children must be all over the village by now.
In a panic, she sent Rob in search of Rafe and began securing the inn against intruders.Rafe had just strengthened the outside shutters.She’d grown up in a dangerous area of London.She knew how to lock shutters and prevent windows from opening.
Once she had done all she could, she stayed with the children, hiding her fear while helping the girls sew and cut quilt squares while Daniel read to them from his favorite book.In her waistband under her bodice, Verity tucked a knife from the kitchen.She’d brought in a poker from the pub hearth.She pulled her chair in front of the bedchamber door—until Rafe attempted to open it, and she had to move away.
Being the understanding man he was, he admired the quilt, congratulated Daniel on his reading abilities, and left Rob in charge of whittling pegs for clothes hooks, before steering Verity into the hall and closing the door.
“What?”he instantly demanded.
When Verity explained about the opium, he understood at once.Cursing, he pulled her into his embrace, hugging her close until they both calmed to some degree of sensibility.
“I will not believe anyone would deliberately poison young ones too innocent to harm a soul,” he stated, as if reassuring himself as well as her.
Verity had had more time to think, and her own experience drove her thoughts down dark pathways.“Daphne has stopped talking for a reason,” she reminded him.“Minerva says she was most likely frightened by someone or something, so she has already been harmed.It sounds as if the nanny was ordered to take them to an orphanage, where they’d be lost forever to any family they might have.No one has come looking for any of them.They were meant to disappear.”
They were meant todie—by opium poisoning and a carriage accident in the dead of night, that no one would investigate.
Someone wanted those two precious childrendead.Verity had tried and tried to think of any better outcome to all they’d been through, and she couldn’t see it.She read a lot.She had a good imagination.She might just be conjuring bogeymen out of whole cloth.But even Clare had assumed the worst.
Rafe rocked her back and forth while he worked through her horrible conclusions.“If you are right, or if it’s even one of many possibilities, we need to take them to the manor.We can’t guard them here, with strangers going in and out at will.”
“I can’t abandon them!”she cried, tears crowding her eyes as she thought of sending them away.“They’ve lost their mother, their home...We’re all they know.”
“I can’t take chances with you, either,” he said firmly.“You’ll go with them.Pack your trunk.Let’s settle you at the manor, then I’ll figure out how to keep the inn running without you.If scoundrels come looking, I want to be prepared.Where are our guests right now?”
She’d been with the ladies and the children and had no idea.Which was his point.She couldn’t be everywhere at once.He waited for her to accept it.A whole host of men roamed the inn and grounds and any one of them could be a killer.
Verity wiped hastily at her tears, her mind racing over all the things she must leave behind and undone.This was to be her first Christmas in her new home, with her new husband.She didn’t want to leave them.
She hadn’t left her old home when she should have, she knew, but she hated being disrupted from the comfortable routine that made her feel safe in a world gone mad.Rafe shouldn’t have to manage everything all on his own.She had staff who needed orders, Kate’s children who needed care...
“Will anyone really come looking?”she asked in desperation.
Grimly, Rafe shook his head, destroying her hopes.“Minerva and Paul told everyone in Stratford that the children are alive.If we are right about the opium—if anyone wanted them dead—they will know their plans failed and come after them.”
