This Duchess of Mine(97)

She turned. “I’ll fetch it.”

“Wait! You can’t—”

She was gone. Elijah gritted his teeth for a moment and returned to his work. He was cataloguing the estate: going through it item by item. If Jemma wasn’t with child when his heart gave out, then his hairless, brainless second cousin would inherit. He needed everything to be as clear as possible.

An hour later, he was writing a letter, instructing his cousin in clear language about how to oversee crop rotation, when Jemma burst through the door.

“I have the piece. The doctor’s name is William Withering. I’m going to hire a Bow Street Runner to find him.”

He looked up. “A runner?”

“Why not? I’ve already sent Fowle to fetch one. Withering’s work is rather interesting, Elijah,” she said, sitting in a chair opposite him and waving the sheets in the air. “Withering extracted a medicine from a flower. If you take an overly large dose, it acts like a poison. But in small amounts, it seems to cause an irregular heart to change its pattern and…” Her voice died out.

Elijah laid down his pen. “He extracts this poison from a flower?”

“The market at Covent Garden!” She jumped to her feet.

“There must be many poisonous flowers that have medicinal properties. Do you remember what that old man was growing?”

“He called them Dead Men’s Bells.” She scanned the article again. “But Withering discusses a flower called foxglove or digitalis purpurea. I can’t tell from that.”

But Elijah’s tutors hadn’t drilled him in Latin for naught. “Purpurea,” he said, “means purple. And the flowers were purple.”

“Let’s go,” Jemma cried.

But Elijah stayed behind his desk. “I don’t want you to become hopeful.”

“I am not overly hopeful. I am determined. I will not sit by and simply wait for you to die next to me. I will not!”

When they reached Covent Garden, the flower stalls were closed.

“The market is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,” their footman said, after making inquiries.

“Stay with the carriage,” Elijah told him, walking after Jemma. She was moving through the stalls at top speed, heading for the place where the old man sold his flowers. He hadn’t had a proper stall; he’d simply put out a few buckets of flowers for sale.

He rounded a corner to find Jemma staring at the back wall where the man had sat. “There’s his stool,” Elijah said. “We’ll come back on Saturday and find him.”

“That’s three days.”

Elijah didn’t like the implication that he might not live three days, but he could hardly protest. Jemma turned in a slow circle and then set off, like an arrow free of its string.

He walked after her. The closed-up stalls of the market had a melancholy aspect, as if they had grown tired and shut their eyes for the night.

Finally he saw where Jemma was going. She had spied one stall with an occupant and was bending over the counter, talking to a little old lady wrapped in woolens.

“Do you know which gentleman I’m referring to?” he heard as he walked up.

“That’s not a gentleman!” the woman said with a gentle string of giggles. “That’s Stubbins. Ponder Stubbins.”

“Of course. Could you possibly tell me how to find Mr. Stubbins?”

She giggled again. “It does sound odd to hear a ‘Mister’ attached to Stubbins’s name.”

“Does he live close to the market?”

“Oh no,” she said. “You’ll have to wait for the market again. Just a few more days, that’s all. I’ll be here with daffodils, oh so many daffodils. And tulips. Do you like tulips?” she asked Elijah.

He bowed and said, “Good afternoon, ma’am. I do like tulips.” Though in reality he hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. Certainly his cook, Mrs. Tulip, had nothing flowery about her.

“I hope you don’t mind if I tell you something. I’m that old that I allow myself a leeway now and then! You look,” she said, leaning on the counter, “ezactly like my idea of a duke.” Giggles once again burst from her mouth. “Now isn’t that something for both of us to laugh about! As if a duke would be coming down to the flower market to find old Stubbins.”

He smiled at her and she actually turned a little pink. “My saints, but you’ve got a pretty face,” she added. “I always says to my husband that someday I’ll meet a duke. It’s our joke. The duke’ll take me away, see, give me a carriage with gold wheels to it, and make me his beautiful bride.”