From the doorway, Edmund echoed Diana’s thanks silently in his head. This family had suffered enough. Diana dropped to her knees beside the bed and burst into tears as she pressed her cheek against her father’s face.
“It was Aunt Henrietta. It was all Aunt Henrietta. She poisoned Father and tried to poison me too. She had someone try to kill Edmund, but Percy was injured instead…”
Lady Templeton looked up, startled, and met Edmund’s face behind Diana.
“Is this true, Edmund? Can it be true?”
“Every word, Lady Templeton, and more. Dr. Hughs, we brought this sample back with us. I thought it might help.”
He carefully took the container of poison from his pocket in all its wrappings.
“How could she do something so wicked?!” Esther exclaimed. “Diana, are you harmed? You said she tried to poison you too.”
“Edmund saw her and poured it away. I’m safe, Mother. I didn’t ingest any of the poison. Only poor Father has been harmed, and Percy through Aunt Henrietta’s other actions.”
Equally surprised as Lady Templeton but always a man of action, Dr. Hughs had already released Lord Templeton’s arm and took the package from Edmund’s hand. He unwrapped it and inspected the white crystals cautiously.
“I will take this to the apothecary in the nearest town, and we will see what the two of us can make of it."
“The man she sent to buy the poison from an apothecary in London said it was this…” Diana recalled, going to the desk in the corner and quickly writing down the Latin words she had seen on Allerton’s note. “I’m afraid I don’t know what it means. I only studied the Aeneid and some history in Latin.”
The doctor frowned as he looked between the writing and the crystals.
“You’re very lucky to be alive, Lord Templeton,” he commented. “With a large dose, you would have been dead almost immediately.”
“She was trying to avoid raising suspicion by giving him small doses every day,” Edmund told them. “I think she hoped that if Lord Templeton were unconscious for long enough, he would slip away, and the family would attribute it to illness.”
“But you kept him alive, Mother, because you wouldn’t leave him and you managed to keep feeding him,” Diana said, smiling through her tears. “She couldn’t complete her plan because you were here so often.”
“Oh Richard.” Lady Templeton exhaled in dismay and relief, holding her husband’s hand between both of hers and kissing it. “I couldn’t have guessed what Henrietta was doing. But I knew, I just knew that I mustn’t leave you, whatever anyone said. I was right.”
“Esther…” Lord Templeton breathed with the ghost of a smile. “You saved me.” His wife nodded with tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” Dr. Hughs agreed. “Without Lady Templeton’s care and all that broth, you would have been dehydrated or starved weeks ago, even if Lady Birks never administered a single fatal dose. She has done more for you than I could.”
“But why?” Lady Templeton demanded, still trying to grasp what her relative had inflicted on her family. “Why would she want to hurt Richard? Or Percy? Or Diana? We’ve never shown anything but kindness to Henrietta and her children. Andrew and Diana were even betrothed!”
“She wanted to get my dowry quickly to pay Andrew’s gambling debts,” Diana explained. “He’s bankrupted the whole family and they’ve lost everything. But you would normally never have agreed to something so precipitate. So, she needed Percy in Father’s place and you distracted, Mother. That way she could manipulate all of us.”
“God save us all!” Lady Templeton breathed. “It’s the work of the devil.”
“Then, she tried to have me shot,” Edmund continued. “Because she saw that I was an obstacle to her plans. In the end, she tried to kill Diana too rather than let her marry any man but Andrew.”
“The woman must be mad!” Lady Templeton exclaimed incredulously. “Quite mad.”
Edmund nodded in agreement.
“Mr. Langford will be arranging two doctors to certify that fact shortly. I imagine that she will be locked up safely somewhere for the rest of her life where she can’t do any further harm.”
As he spoke, he saw Lady Templeton taking in the fact that he was standing close beside Diana, with his hand resting on one of her shoulders.
As Diana rose, she took Edmund’s hand instinctively in her own and remained close at his side beside the bed, oblivious to her mother’s watching eyes. Edmund made no attempt to step away, and Esther only nodded slowly at what she saw, clearly not displeased but having many other things on her mind.
“Now that Lady Birks is gone, will the poison clear itself from my husband’s body?” she asked Dr. Hughs. “Is there any medicine we can give him?”
“It should clear within a few days if this description of the poison is correct,” the doctor told them cautiously, fingering the piece of paper again. “Still, there could be ongoing effects and internal damage. We won’t know for days, weeks, or even months. Lord Templeton clearly has a strong constitution, but we have no idea how much poison was administered to him.”
“We will get you well again,” Lady Templeton vowed, stroking her husband’s hair. “I insist upon it.”