Opening salvo, David thought, mentally saluting.
“I am not a diminutive, pregnant, grieving widow,” David said, hefting the teapot, “home alone and completely without defenses, and”—he offered his host a smile—“because I am in desperate need of a cup of tea, I will treat that remark as facetious. I gather Dr. DuPont has already called upon you?”
And there’s your answering fire.
“He left a card while I was from home,” Amery replied. “Do try the cakes. Cook quite outdoes herself.”
“You will be interested to know Dr. DuPont will no longer be attending the countess.”
Amery blinked, once. Countess—of Greymoor, of course.
“That is,” Amery said as he reached for the teapot, “alas, no longer my concern. You are rather fond of your sugar.”
“I am fond of all things sweet, Amery,” David said, helping himself to a cake. “Including my sisters. When someone tries to poison a member of my family, fatally, I might add, then I take it very much amiss, as does Greymoor, as does Heathgate.”
Amery settled back in his chair, his expression unperturbed. “I have been convicted of attempted sororicide by a jury of my betters, then?”
Rather than offer a snide retort, David considered a tea cake draped in lavender frosting. “I cannot speak for Heathgate and Greymoor, but as for myself, all I can convict you of is failing to keep Astrid safe, as your brother failed to keep her funds safe.” And her heart. “In Greymoor’s hands, she will be physically and financially out of harm’s way. The match thus has my support,” David said, popping the tea cake in his mouth.
The flavor of the frosting was lavender, and the cake itself a buttery little decadence of which Amery’s cook had every right to be proud. David poured himself a second cup, the blend being a stout black without a hint of delicacy.
“Has it occurred to you, Lord Fairly, that the countess herself is perhaps the source of the danger to the child she carries?”
David inhaled the fragrance of his tea before adding two sugars. Greymoor had divined this line of reasoning, but when Amery presented it, it didn’t sound as far-fetched as it ought.
“We did suspect that was your agenda, Amery.” David gestured with the pot, a serviceable piece of blue Jasperware that was out of place in the brown, cream, and green room. “More tea?”
Amery held up his cup, and conversation paused while David poured steaming-hot liquid to the very rim of the cup in his lordship’s rock-steady hand.
“Thank you.” Amery sat back. “You suspect I am trying to impugn the state of the countess’s mental health?”
“We suspect you, or somebody, is laying a trail of evidence that will make Astrid appear either dangerous or mentally incompetent. And of course”—David helped himself to two more cakes—“an incompetent mother is by definition a danger to her infant child. Lovely blend, by the way. From Twinings?”
“I enjoy my tea,” Amery responded, his brows knit. “And Twinings’s shop has the advantage of proximity. So you don’t believe a pregnant woman who would toss herself down a flight of stairs—or ingest dangerous herbs when she knows she’ll be home alone—doesn’t wish harm to her child?”
Douglas’s expression suggested they were touching upon the variability of the weather in spring.
David closed his eyes to again inhale the fragrance of his tea—the brew was slightly abrasive, and yet, had a peculiar appeal—also to marshal his wits in the face of such sangfroid.
“Let us consider, my lord,” David said when he put his teacup down. “We have two hypotheses to explain the known facts. You have seen a grown woman, one of particular grace, come head over heels down a flight of stairs, risking serious injury to herself and possible injury to her child. You also have the doctor’s word that the poisons that found their way into her body could have caused the child’s death, if not hers as well. You reach the conclusion the danger is directed by the mother toward the child. I see the situation differently.”
Amery chose a few pretty tea cakes, his focus appearing to be on whether chocolate, cream, or pink frosting was most worthy of his notice. “Do tell,” he murmured, selecting the cake with pink icing for himself.
Heavenly angels, the man was amazing. Amery bit into his confection and munched away, the picture of domestic contentment.
“I see that my sister,” David said, “a woman whom I know to have been honorable under all circumstances to date, suffered a serious accident in the Allen household. As a man whose own late spouse was once in anticipation of an interesting event, I am well aware the child in the womb is, in fact, safer than the woman who carries it. Astrid could have knocked herself into a coma and very likely not have harmed her child. She would, as Dr. DuPont suggested, have to have been crazy to attempt such a stunt to rid herself of the child.”