Sweet Madness: A Veiled Seduction Novel (26 page)

A light scratching was the only warning before the door opened a few inches. A maid entered, pushing the door open wider with her hip since she carried a large tea tray in her hands.

Penelope turned her body half away and dashed her tears with her hands as discreetly as she could. As she was busy righting her appearance, she heard the click of the metal tray meeting wood as the maid set it down on the table just inside the door.

Penelope tamped down her irritation with the girl. The poor maid was just doing her job. She had no way of knowing that she was interrupting a discussion on which Penelope’s future happiness precariously hung.

With her back to the room, the maid said, “Here you are, m’lord. Just the way you like it.”

It wasn’t until she turned with the steaming cup that she seemed to notice Penelope’s presence. “Oh!” She hastily dipped her head into a bow, snatching the cup she’d been offering to Gabriel close to her chest. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know you had a visitor. Should I fetch another cup from the kitchen?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, thank you, Janey. Lady Manton will be leaving shortly.”

Penelope’s heart squeezed. No, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not until she’d convinced him to come with her.

The maid glanced awkwardly between her and Gabriel, still clutching the tea. She started to back out of the room, cup in hand. Penelope wondered that she didn’t just give it to Gabriel as she’d intended. “I’ll—I’ll just come back later, then.”

Tiny hairs rose on the back of Penelope’s neck. Why had the girl stammered? She could be the nervous sort, or embarrassed to have come upon her master with a crying stranger. And yet . . . She narrowed her eyes on the maid, trying to see her face as the girl turned away.

“Wait,” Penelope said impulsively. Both Gabriel and the maid looked up at her in surprise, and she flushed. She was probably making a fool of herself, but something seemed wrong here.

She looked more closely at the maid. There was something familiar . . .

“You were in the parlor the other night,” Penelope recalled. “You held the compress on my wound after I fell,” she said, remembering where she’d seen the girl.

The maid’s cheeks pinkened, and she dropped her eyes to the floor as if embarrassed to be singled out. The girl gripped the teacup nervously. “Yes, m’lady.”

“Thank you for your aid,” Penelope said, and she swore a flicker of guilt flashed over the woman’s face. Odd.

This was the same maid who’d given Gabriel the brandy he’d drunk just before his episode, too, wasn’t it?

Her mouth went dry. Gabriel hadn’t had an episode for weeks until he’d come back here . . .

Her eyes dropped to the teacup that the maid still held close to her, the one the woman seemed to think better of giving to Gabriel in front of Penelope. Could it be?

No. No. Liliana had said it was
possible
for Gabriel to ingest something that accounted for his mania, but she’d never unearthed what that substance might be. And besides, he’d had episodes both at his home and Vickering Place. Who would be able to slip him something in both places . . . ?

Penelope gasped, her eyes flying back to the maid. Of course she’d seemed familiar. Penelope had thought it was because of the other night, but now she remembered where else she’d seen her. “Miss Creevey?”

The maid flushed.

“Forgive me for not recognizing you before,” Penelope said, trying to mask her astonishment for social embarrassment, so as not to alert Miss Creevey of her suspicions. “I didn’t recognize you in your uniform.” Or outside of the hooded cloak she’d been wearing in the garden of Vickering Place.

“I wouldn’t expect you to, m’lady,” Miss Creevey mumbled.

A million thoughts flew through Penelope’s mind at once as she scrambled to put them together. Gabriel had said he’d found the mad widow’s sister a position sometime last year. He just hadn’t mentioned it had been in his own household. He must have installed her in his country house in Birminghamshire, so that she could be near her sister.

His episodes had started nine months ago . . .
at home in Birminghamshire
 . . . episodes that, she’d said from the beginning, seemed strange and unlike any madness she’d ever seen.

But then what was Miss Creevey doing here in London? Maids didn’t typically travel between households unless specifically assigned to one of the ladies of the house. Could she be lady’s maid to Gabriel’s mother, then? Or . . .
Amelia?

How she came to be here wasn’t what was important right now, however. Penelope’s gaze fixed on that teacup as Miss Creevey glanced back at the door, clearly wishing to leave.

Dash it all. Everything in her screamed that there was something in addition to tea in that cup. But how could she prove it?

“Well, if that is all, m’lord, m’lady,” Miss Creevey said, preparing to escape.

If she left with that cup, Penelope would never know if what her instincts were screaming was true. And Gabriel would forever think he was mad.

She raced to the maid and snatched the cup from her, spilling a bit on both of their wrists.

Miss Creevey gasped as Gabriel gave a startled, “Pen!”

But she paid neither of them any mind. She tipped the teacup to her lips and gulped, quite noisily. The warm, sweet milky taste splashed over her tongue, flavored with a healthy dose of brandy. To mask the taste of whatever else was in the drink?

When she’d finished it all, she looked up. “Sorry.” She gave a fake smile and a shrug. “Thirsty.”

Both Gabriel and Miss Creevey were looking at her as if
she
were mad. Well, with any luck, she soon would be. It had come upon Gabriel very quickly the other night in the parlor.

Miss Creevey, she noted, looked more than stunned. She looked nervous as she backed the rest of the way to the door and slipped away.

No matter. If what she thought was about to happen did, they’d have plenty of time to catch Miss Creevey and figure out who she was working for. Gabriel’s rotten brother and his wife, no doubt. Maybe even in collusion with Allen.

Gabriel whirled on her as the door closed. “What’s gotten into you, Pen?” he asked, half appalled, half bemused, if his expression were to be believed.

“I just wanted some tea,” she said lightly.

“Obviously,” he said, his lips twitching.

“Did Miss Creevey often prepare your tea when she visited you at Vickering Place?” she asked. Lord, it was getting hot in here. Penelope tugged at her bodice, wishing she’d worn something easier to get out of.

“Yes. No one pours a cup like Janey. She even smuggles in a bit of brandy to top it off with, now and again. At least I’ll have her visits to look forward to when I’m sent back,” Gabriel was saying, but he sounded very far away.

Oh. My. Her skin prickled mercilessly. Penelope scratched at her arms. When she looked down at them, she cried out. Hundreds of ants scurried all over her, engulfing her bare flesh in a wriggling mass of black.

Gabriel blanched and ran to her. “Pen?”

No. No.
It is just some sort of drug
, she tried to remind herself, but panic was quickly overtaking her senses.
I’m not really seeing ants
. But her throat closed and her heart rocketed. They certainly looked real, and her skin was crawling. And, Lord, she was thirsty. So thirsty. And the light brightened unbearably, causing her to squint against its harshness.

Gabriel’s hands cupped her face, and he tipped it up to his. “Pen, what is it? Oh Christ!” he cried. “What is wrong with your eyes?”

“Your madness,” she whispered. And that was the last thing she remembered.

“Y
ou knew it was drugged, didn’t you?”

Gabriel’s voice floated and echoed, reverberating and washing over her. Penelope struggled to open her eyes. When at last she got them slitted just a bit, she let out a cry and slammed them shut again. Dear Lord, she hurt everywhere.

“I suspected strongly,” she said, pushing the “S” sounds around a tongue that felt two sizes too big and dry as dust.

“Christ, Pen,” he muttered. “You do realize there was more than enough poison in that cup to send a grown man into a fit?”

Drugged. Poison. Even through all of the aching pain, her heart soared as she realized she’d been right. Gabriel wasn’t mad. And more important,
he
realized it, too.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” came Liliana’s worried voice somewhere off to her left. She cracked her eyes open again, very, very carefully—and only enough to make out her cousin’s profile.

Penelope groaned. Her stomach rolled and her head pounded mercilessly. She let her eyes slip closed again. “Yes, well, I don’t feel so lucky right now.”

She heard the dripping sounds of water, like a rag being dipped and squeezed out, and then coolness touched her forehead. Penelope sighed with relief. Liliana must be wielding the rag, because Gabriel had both of her hands in his, squeezing so tightly she wondered if he meant to ever let go.

She hoped not.

“What time is it?” she asked, trying to get her bearings. She opened her eyes again to help with that. As they began to adjust, it got easier.

“Nearly noon,” Liliana answered her. But that didn’t make sense unless— “You were gone from us for more than a full day.”

Which meant— “The hearing?” It was scheduled for ten thirty tomorrow—er, today. How strange, to have lost hours she would never get back.

“Once presented with the evidence,” Gabriel said, “Edward withdrew his affidavit. And before you ask, no, Miss Creevey was not poisoning me at the behest of my brother, or even Amelia.”

Penelope’s muzzy brain tried to work that out. “Then why?”

She felt, more than heard, Gabriel’s sigh. “She blamed me for her sister’s madness.”

What?
The lingering effects of the drug must be affecting her hearing, too. “But that makes no sense.”

“To a sane person, no. But after spending an afternoon interviewing Janey, Allen assures me she is not well.”

Penelope frowned. “‘Not well’ is slightly easier to accept than ‘pure evil,’ I suppose. But how could she blame
you
for her sister losing her mind?”

“Allen thinks that in Janey’s mind, I’d all but admitted my fault. I blamed myself for Lieutenant Boyd’s death, as you know, and told her and her sister as much when I found them in their desperate straits.

“It was my trying to make amends that damned me the most in her eyes. She decided that I wasn’t telling the entire truth, that I must have done something horrible to her brother-in-law to make me feel guilty enough to pay for his widow to be placed in an expensive sanatorium and to have provided for his children. Apparently she didn’t think I should get away unpunished.”

Anger, swift and true, sang through her veins. “And the best punishment for your good deed was to suffer the same fate as her sister?”

“That seems to be the right of it.” Gabriel’s lips twisted wryly. “A cruel sort of irony, that.”

When she thought of what that woman had cost Gabriel. What she’d almost cost
her
 . . . “What’s to become of her?”

“I’ve arranged for Janey to have a room at Vickering Place, with her sister,” Gabriel said. “
With
the caveat that Allen stop the more barbaric remedies and be open to new ideas for treatment.”

Of course he had. Gabriel’s heart for those who’d suffered because of wars was one of the reasons she loved him so. Still. “It’s better than she deserves,” she grumbled, her anger slow to die. Perhaps she’d feel more charitable when she wasn’t still suffering the aftereffects of the woman’s madness. Which brought to mind— “How did she do it?”

“
Datura stramonium
,” Liliana answered.

Penelope shot her cousin a glance. Ever the scientist, Liliana practically
thought
in Latin. “In English, please.”

Her cousin had the grace to blush. “It’s an herb,” she explained. “Otherwise known as Jamestown weed, so named because of an incident in the seventeenth century when a company of British soldiers accidentally got its leaves mixed into their salads.

“It is said those poor souls got enough of a dose that their mania lasted almost eleven days before they came to their senses, after which none of them remembered a thing. She got it at the Apothecaries’ Garden here in London when she would go pick up medicines for the household.”

Penelope grimaced, still jittery and weak because of this noxious weed. “There is medicinal value in this?”

“Apparently. I am told it is used in very mild doses to treat asthma, as well as an analgesic during surgery and bone setting.” Liliana made a moue of distaste. “However, given its hallucinogenic properties and high toxicity, I myself wouldn’t attempt to use it on anyone. Which is probably why I’d never studied it in any depth and was therefore unfamiliar with all of its effects. I
am
sorry I missed it.”

Penelope shook her head. “Don’t be. As you say, you can’t know everything,” she said with a weak smile that Liliana returned.

Her cousin stood carefully then, levering herself out of the armchair beside the bed.

Gabriel let go of Penelope’s hands, rising to stand as well.

Liliana reached down and stroked Penelope’s cheek. “Yes, well, you are through the worst of it now. Therefore, I shall leave you two to talk, but I will be by this afternoon to monitor your recovery.”

Penelope nodded her thanks, closing her eyes as Gabriel escorted Liliana out of the suite.

She may have dozed for a moment, because his voice startled her.

“What made you try the tea?”

Gabriel hadn’t returned to her bedside, but rather stood a few feet away. And unless she was mistaken, he sounded angry.

She blinked. “A feeling. At first. But it made me take a closer look at Miss Creevey.”
Thank God
she’d listened to her instincts this time, even though she’d been plagued with doubts and guilt when she’d thought she’d been to blame for Gabriel’s supposed relapse. If she’d given in to her fears . . . if she hadn’t trusted her gut feeling— She shuddered, unable to even think about that. “I knew if I didn’t do something drastic, we might never know the truth.”

“Pen,” Gabriel said then, his voice low and scratchy.

She peered across the distance at him. Since her pupils were still so dilated, Gabriel appeared sort of smoky and washed with light, but she could not miss the stricken look on his face.

And she understood. He wasn’t angry. He’d witnessed her in the throes of an episode, as she once had him. And it had terrified him.

“You knew what would happen if you drank that tea. You’d seen me—” His voice broke. “But you did it anyway.
For me.
”

“Gabriel—”

“No one else would have done what you did. Nor could they have. You
saved
me, Pen. You and your intuition and your faith and your damnable stubbornness . . .” His eyes drifted closed for a long moment before opening again to pierce her with an intense stare. “I can’t thank you enough. I—” Gabriel’s throat worked violently, but he seemed unable to say anything more. He didn’t have to.

“I’d do it again,” she whispered.

He came to her then and took her hand in his. “So would I,” he said fiercely. “I would suffer
all
of it again,
and more
, if it meant that in the end, you would be mine.” He pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her skin. Fervent. Reverent.
Eloquent.

For that one precious kiss told her more than a thousand words.

“I love you, Pen.”

Well, it
was
still nice to hear the words, she decided as joy infused every part of her.

In this moment, she could feel nothing but happiness and a deep, deep gratitude. They’d both been given another chance at life, and they’d both been brave enough to take it.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” she said, unable to govern the smile that spread across her face. “Now, will you please get in this bed and hold me so that I can tell you how very much
I
love
you
?”

He did. And she kept good to her word, proclaiming her love for him with whispered words and gentle kisses. It was all she could manage in her present exhausted state. But it was perfect.

Sometime later, she lay against him with her head cradled in the crook of his arm, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

“You do know what today is, don’t you, love?” Gabriel murmured.

She looked up at him sleepily and shook her head.

“The twenty-seventh,” he said with a grin. “Thankfully, we did not have to endure a hearing, but I do
believe proving that I am
not
mad qualifies as success. Which means . . . you promised to marry me today.”

Penelope groaned, dropping her head back to his chest. She didn’t think she could manage to get out of bed right now, much less—

Gabriel laughed, a low rumble beneath her cheek. “You’re lucky I understand what you are going through right now, or my feelings would be very hurt.” He dropped a kiss against her hair to let her know he was teasing. “I
suppose
I shall have to give you a reprieve, at least long enough to have a proper wedding dress made.”

“Let me guess,” she said with a yawn. “A yellow one?” As much as she felt the color no longer suited her, she would wear it for Gabriel gladly, because it seemed to mean so much to him to see her in it.

“I don’t think so,” he said thoughtfully.

“What?” She tipped her head back to look at him once more, curious as to what he was thinking.

“I always loved you in yellow, in life and in my imagination. It is the color you wore in my mind’s eye whenever I thought of you. A color of sunshine and optimism, of enlightenment and happiness—and I will always see you that way.”

She’d known that, which was why his answer surprised her so.

“But it is also the color of unrequited love,” he said quietly. “It felt safe, imagining you in yellow, because it reminded me that you could never be mine. First, because you were the wife of my cousin. But later, because despite how very much I wanted you in my life, I could never tell you so. Not when I had nothing to offer but a life of madness.”

Tears pricked her eyes. She’d never realized the depth of his feelings for her. It humbled her to know that he’d loved her for so long and that he’d kept his feelings locked away inside of himself to protect her.

“What
would
you have me wear to our wedding, then?” she asked tenderly.

“I should like to see you in red,” he decided, his gaze roaming her face. “That is the color of passionate, courageous, all-encompassing love. And
that
is how I see you now.”

He cupped her face in his hands and took her lips in a kiss.

“Courageous, am I? And passionate, you say?” she teased when she could speak again. She rather liked the vision of herself that he painted for her. She’d never really thought of herself as either. But looking back at the past months—truly the past
years
, at least since Michael had died—she had to admit she’d been both. And she couldn’t see herself ever going back to the woman she’d been before.

A thought struck her then—an irreverent one, to be sure, but also one she couldn’t resist saying aloud. “You know, some people say that the equilibrium of the mind can be dislodged by a surplus of passion.” She mimicked Mr. Allen’s pompous nasally tone. “‘It is a
well
-documented cause of insanity.’” She smiled at Gabriel as she cocked a brow. “Are you certain
you
want to take the risk of a life of madness with
me
?”

Gabriel stole her breath with another kiss before whispering in her ear, “Oh yes, Pen. For it would be a life of sweet, sweet madness, indeed.”