The Wolf's Wife (The Wolf's Peak Saga Book 1) Read online

  The peppermint did help combat my nausea. I didn’t throw up after I finished it, and I was even able to stomach a few crackers. I downed some water, trying to rehydrate myself.

  The next few days were brutal. I was constantly alternating between shivering and sweating. Almost nothing stayed in my stomach. I switched between peppermint and a herbal tea, but it was never able to stay in my system too long. I could hardly keep anything down. Even water made me nauseous. Although Jasper kept assuring me that the baby was fine, I was starting to panic in my more lucid moments. How long could this poor baby survive in a feverish climate, without proper sustenance?

  Annabelle, Bridget, and Jasper traded off watching me. Jasper took nights, sleeping in bed beside me as I tossed and turned. Even when the others were on duty, he stayed in the room, sleeping on a chair if he needed to. Having him there comforted me, but I was growing concerned. He slept less and less, and it was beginning to show. His face was drawn and his skin was pale.

  “Seth is still here,” Annabelle said one afternoon as she sat down on a chair by the window. Daniel squirmed in her lap, and she set him on the floor. He teetered for a minute before walking over to my wardrobe and playing with the handles again. Annabelle had apologized for bringing him, explaining her nanny was on holiday. I told her it didn’t bother me. My consciousness was too hazy for me to even really notice.

  “Jasper has been too preoccupied to make him leave.”

  “Has he been a problem?” I asked. It was hard for me to focus on words. I was exhausted and couldn’t remember the last time I had managed to eat anything solid.

  “He’s been quiet so far,” she admitted.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I promised, working hard to pronounce each word. Everything slurred together.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving her hand. The door handle rattled. “Daniel, get away from the door.”

  He stepped back as Daisy pushed the door open. She carried a tray with a porcelain teapot and a teacup.

  “I’ve got more tea,” she said, coming over to the side of the bed. “Hopefully you’ll start feeling better soon.”

  She stepped over to set the tray down on my side table, not knowing Daniel was right behind her. He fell to the ground, his eyes wide, looking shocked. In turn, Daisy tripped, the tray crashing to the ground. Annabelle jumped up from her chair, grabbing Daniel before he could get his hands on the shards of glass. I leaned over to see what had happened when I froze.

  “What is that?” I finally choked out, pointing to the something in the middle of the broken teapot. It was a root, wet and moist and brown.

  “Oh!” Daisy said as she scrambled to her feet. She began loading up the broken pieces onto the tray.

  “Let me see that,” I said, pointing to the root, forcing myself to stay conscious. “Where did this come from?”

  “Why, from Lord Seth,” Daisy said, placing it on the tray, holding it out so I could see it. “He said that this would help you get better faster.”

  “What is it?” Annabelle asked, stepping around the puddle of steaming tea. Daniel was still squirming in her arms as she leaned around to see what we were looking at. I picked the root up off the tray. It was slimy and left a brown trail on my hand where I touched it. It had an awful, earthy, bitter scent to it, one I distinctly recognized from my tea. Just the smell made me want to gag.

  Something was nagging at me, something from when my dad had tried to teach me about plants. My exhausted mind raced as fast as it could, but it still felt like it was filled with molasses. I tried to remember why this plant stood out to me. I forced myself to focus. All at once, the pieces crashed together.

  “Daisy, how long have you been giving this to me?” I asked hoarsely.

  Her eyes were wide. “I don’t know. A few days, I suppose. He gave it to me, said it would help with nausea in pregnancy. Then, when you started getting sick, he told me to keep giving it to you. He said that it could help with feeling ill as well.”

  “Christine,” Annabelle whispered. Her face was frozen in a look of horror.

  Daisy glanced between us. I was too weak to show much emotion on my face, but if I could, I was sure my expression would mirror Annabelle’s.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Was he wrong?”

  I struggled to sit up, eyes locked on the slimy root.

  “This isn’t going to make you feel better?” Daisy asked. She looked ready to cry.

  “Far from it,” I said. “This is monkshood. Seth is trying to poison me.”

  Chapter Twenty–Three

  Daisy’s eyes were filled with tears. “I had no idea!” she said, covering her face with her hands.

  Annabelle wrapped her arms around her. “We know you didn’t, love.”

  “I don’t understand! Why would he do this?”

  Annabelle hesitated. “I have a theory.”

  I looked up at her with interest. She and Daisy were just blurry blobs in my vision. My head was spinning. I thought I might throw up again.

  “I think Seth is hoping that killing you will destroy Jasper,” Annabelle continued. “If Jasper abdicates his position, Seth can take over.”

  “We don’t know that he did this on purpose,” I mumbled. “He could have genuinely thought he was helping. Maybe he grabbed it accidentally.” I leaned over and vomited into the bucket.

  “Christine, that’s naïve, bordering on stupid!” Annabelle exclaimed. She was right. I was simply holding hard to the hope that Jasper could reconcile with his brother.

  “Sorry, my brain isn’t working,” I slurred as I vomited again, trying hard to keep from blacking out.

  “What do we do?” Annabelle asked, ignoring my statement as she held my hair back. “What’s the cure?”

  I was trying to think, but my mind was again moving like molasses. I pushed through, knowing the answer was hiding in my mind somewhere. “There isn’t one,” I finally said.

  “What?”

  I struggled to sit up. “There isn’t a cure or an antitoxin. I need try to flush it out of my system before it builds up enough to poison me. And we need to monitor my vitals.”

  “All right,” Annabelle said, in the sort of anxious way that people do when trying to fix a disaster. “We can do that. Let’s get you some water.”

  “Dandelion,” I choked out between heaves. “It can help detoxify.”

  “I’ll brew a tea of dandelion,” Daisy said, wiping her eyes. “I want to help make this right.”

  She began to leave, but Annabelle stopped her. “Wait. We need to proceed carefully,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I rested my head on my pillow, trying to steady myself as the world spun around me. I shivered, and Annabelle covered me with another blanket. I must have had at least five over me.

  “We are fairly certain that Seth tried to poison you,” she said. I was going to protest, but I knew she was right, and I didn’t have the energy to construct an argument. I didn’t have the energy for any emotion right now. I was a sort of numb mixed with sick. “We can’t let him know that we suspect him. Daisy, if he asks, I want you to tell him that you’re still giving her tea from the root. At least until we can talk to Jasper.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I spoke up from my fog. “I think he’ll take it better if he hears it from me.” If anyone was going to tell my husband that his brother was attempting to murder his wife, it was going to be me.

  Annabelle looked at me, still skeptical. “All right, if that’s what you want. We can’t let Seth know that we’ve caught on, either, so do you think you could fake being sick until you get a chance to talk to Jasper?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to fake anything,” I told her as I leaned over and threw up again. Bridget walked in at that moment and went to the washbasin, wetting a cloth and placing it over my forehead. She took a long glance at the broken teapot, slimy root, and Daisy’s red eyes.

  “What did I miss?” she asked.

&nbs
p; I fell back asleep not long after that. When I woke up a few hours later, I was already feeling much better. Pink sunlight drifted through the curtains as the sun began to set. It had been twelve hours since I had last drunk the poison. Daisy and Bridget had made me a lemon dandelion tea that tasted awful, but I knew it was good for me. I alternated between that and water. My head was clearer, and I could sit up. For the first time in days, the room wasn’t spinning. I climbed out of bed, and Bridget sat up from where she was reading in the chair.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  “I think I’m all right,” I said, my feet hitting the carpet. I tried to walk, but my legs buckled underneath me. “I suppose I could use a little help.”

  Bridget put her arm around me and helped me to the bathroom, waiting outside the door until I was done.

  “Are you feeling any better?” she asked, her voice low. We had filled her in on what we had discovered. She was properly furious, threatening all sorts of bodily harm to Seth. It had taken a while to talk her down.

  “A bit,” I said. “I don’t feel like I’m going to vomit.”

  “That’s progress!” she said. “Do you think you could stomach some bread or crackers?”

  “That sounds wonderful,” I told her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had managed to keep down any food.

  “I’ll go grab some,” she said as she helped me back into bed. I stayed sitting up and took a long sip of water as she shut the door behind her.

  A few minutes later the door opened. I expected it to be Bridget, but instead it was Jasper. He beamed when he saw me.

  “Look at you, sitting up!” he said, coming to take a seat next to me.

  “I think I’m finally on the mend,” I told him.

  “You’ve got a little color back in your cheeks,” he said, caressing my face with his hands.

  I rested my hands on my belly. “I just hope none of this hurt the baby.”

  “The baby is fine,” he assured me. I knew it was just to make me feel better, but somehow his confidence helped.

  I took a deep breath, knowing the conversation we had to have. “Jasper, I need to talk to you about something,” I said.

  He looked at me, blue eyes wide. “Of course. What is it?”

  “Well—”

  There was a knock on the door. Again, I expected Bridget. What I got instead was Seth.

  He peeked his head in the door. “Hi, there,” he said. “May I come in?”

  I glanced at Jasper.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Seth and I had a long conversation a few days ago.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to hear. It going to make things that much harder for Jasper to know that Seth had betrayed his trust. Either that, or I was completely wrong, and he had poisoned me accidentally. My head was starting to hurt again.

  But the moment Seth stepped into the room, I knew instantly that he had poisoned me intentionally. In his hand, he held a vase filled with bright purple flowers. Monkshood.

  “I picked you some wildflowers,” he said.

  “Oh.” My voice faltered. “I’m not sure I have anywhere to put them.”

  “Right here should be work,” he said, setting it down on the little table by the window. I didn’t want to look at them. They left a bad taste in my mouth.

  “That’s nice, isn’t it?” Jasper said hesitantly. “Although you could have just picked some from the garden.”

  “I liked these better,” Seth said. Jasper bristled, glancing at me. I wonder if he knew what I knew about them.

  “You had something to talk to me about?” Jasper said.

  “I forgot what it was,” I lied. “It must not have been important.”

  “That’s all right,” Jasper said, “but I need to talk to you. Seth and I have to go to London.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “We leave tomorrow morning.”

  “You have to go now?” I was ready to cry.

  “I know it’s not the best timing,” he admitted, “but the prince says he needs us. I hope to only be gone a few days.”

  “You’re both going?”

  Jasper glanced at Seth, who had made himself comfortable in one of the chairs beside the window. “Yes.”

  Relief washed over me. Seth would be out of the house while I recovered. Then I had a bad, dark thought. What if he tried to do something to hurt Jasper while they were gone?

  “You’ll be careful?” I whispered.

  Jasper looked surprised. “Of course.”

  Bridget came through the door then, carrying a plate with bread.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, glancing from Seth to me.

  “We’ll leave you be,” Jasper said. “Get some rest, Christine.”

  Jasper came and said goodbye the next morning. I clung tightly to him before he left, my goodbye full of tears. I wanted to warn him, but Seth was lingering just outside the door.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you too,” he assured me.

  Every hour that went by without the toxic tea in my system made me feel better. I was making constant trips to the bathroom, but this time it was to get rid of all the water I was drinking instead of vomiting it up. Color started to return to my face. My lips weren’t so pale, and I was regaining strength every day.

  I had resolved to speak to Jasper privately as soon as he returned. I couldn’t wait until Jasper came back. I missed him so much, and now that I was feeling better, I wanted to return to planning for our new baby. The doctor had come by to monitor my progress, and just like Jasper, he assured me that the baby was still all right.

  “The heartbeat is strong,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  When I heard the carriage pull up, I leapt out of bed. I was still in my nightdress, but I didn’t care. I waited by the front door and when he stepped out of the carriage, I ran and threw my arms around him.

  “You’re feeling better then?” he laughed, kissing my cheeks.

  “Much,” I said. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

  Jasper glanced back at Seth, who was glancing at us from inside the carriage. “I have to file some things away in the library. Why don’t we head there?”

  He took my arm and we walked back into the house. Jasper was carrying a bundle of papers. He led me up to the loft of the library and began to file them away as I sat down at one of the tables. He set light to a candle on my table, and the light flickered, casting soft shadows around him.

  “How was your trip?” I asked him.

  “It was fine,” he said, pausing for a moment as he bound a few pages together. “However, I suspect that’s not why you wanted to talk to me.”

  “How were things with Seth?”

  Jasper turned to look at me. “Christine, what’s going on?”

  I fiddled with a book on the table while I tried to form my words. I had rehearsed my speech a thousand times while he was gone, and now that he was back I couldn’t think of the words. I bit my lip.

  “You remember that I was sick?”

  Jasper shook his head. “Christine, that was less than a week ago. Whatever it is, just spit it out.”

  “I found out why.”

  He stopped what he was doing. “What do you mean?”

  “Jasper,” I took a deep breath, “I was poisoned.”

  He dropped the book he was holding, pages scattering across the floor. “What?” he asked. His voice was scarcely a whisper.

  I swallowed. “It was the tea,” I said. “It was infused with monkshood.”

  He sank into the chair across from me. “Monkshood.”

  “It’s a flower that—”

  “I know what it is,” he said. His jaw was set and his eyes were full of anger. “Seth.”

  “He gave it to Daisy,” I said. Tears stung my eyes. I knew that once I told him, his relationship with Seth would be irreparable. “He told her it would make me feel better.”

  Jasper shook his head. “I can’t believe I trusted
him.”

  “It’s possible that it was a mistake—”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. He stood up and crossed the table, kissing me on the forehead. “Why don’t you head back to bed. I can tell you’re still weak. I’ll deal with Seth.”

  I nodded, standing up. Before I left, Jasper wrapped me in his arms. “I am so, so sorry,” he told me, clinging tightly.

  I kissed him. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You didn’t know.”

  “I should have been smarter.”

  I pulled away and placed my hands on his face, looking him in the eyes. “Please don’t blame yourself,” I begged. “Please. There’s only one person to blame, and that’s Seth.”

  His eyes hardened. His hands were clenched so tightly his knuckles were turning white. “You’re right. Now you go to bed. I’m going to take care of him.”

  I kissed him once more before going down the stairs. I glanced back, watching his shadow in the soft candlelight. I smiled to myself as I gazed at him. I started down the stairs, and I could hear books and papers tumble to the floor. I winced. As collected as he had been with me, Jasper was angry. Finally, I left the library, shutting the door behind me.

  I started down the hallway, my bare feet padding on the carpet. I had only gotten a few feet when I was slammed against the wall. I saw stars, black spots darting in front of my vision.

  “You little whore,” Seth whispered, his breath warm in my ear. His hand was on my neck, pressing me into the wall. I couldn’t believe how strong he was. I struggled to move, but he held me firmly at arm’s length, and there was nothing I could do.

  “I heard what you said to my brother,” he growled. “What was that all about?”

  “Was any of it a lie?” The words came out strained as he applied pressure to my windpipe. I clawed at his hand, but he held firm, his nails digging into my skin.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to leave instead of sticking around to make sure the job was finished.”

  “Let me go!” I choked out, trying to kick him. My legs hit his body, but it felt like kicking stone. He didn’t move. He looked me in the eyes, watching me struggle.