Evelyn hoped her own growing panic was invisible on her face. What she wouldn’t have given for her full veil, to mask the tension growing around her mouth. “One of the witnesses, officer? But I can’t imagine you were assigned to the investigation. Countess Urvenon’s estate is nowhere near the docks.”
“And yet you are the connection,” he said, leaning forward. She nearly recoiled. “Countess Urvenon and several others of her guests are now in the same state as your employees, in the same hospital, with the same helpless prognosis. The doctors sent for me. And then I heard about that witness. My lady, you would not be the first in the empire to knowingly import new intoxicants onto our soil, or the first to profit from delighting the nobility with new and varied vices, but I find myself not wanting to believe it.”
She closed her eyes. He thought only that she was a smuggler, not the apothecary herself. Believe it, she willed. Believe it, or else he would crack open another of her secrets here and now. She couldn’t gauge how much the witness had said, or who the witness had even been. She couldn’t know if she should lean in to this theory, or offer a smaller version of the truth. Medicines, she could say. Medicines only. After all, she had her box of cures at the ready.
But she faltered. She could only bring herself to bow her head and murmur, “Times have grown difficult.”
Let him draw his own conclusions, and pray they were beneficial ones.
She heard his exhale and opened her eyes to see him looking down at his hands, frowning. No, that had been the wrong choice. She had to be brave. Had to crack herself open for him. She reached out one tentative, shaking hand and laid it over his. His head jerked up. He looked up at her, beseeching. “My lady,” he murmured.
“Times have grown difficult,” she said again, “and so the women of the Empress’s court occasionally come to me seeking cures for their anxieties. Medicines I make myself. No vices. No intoxicants.”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.” Her fingers curled around his reflexively, as if he were a pillow she was grasping after a nightmare. “I learned after my mother,” she said. “What to grow in a garden that could help ease the mind. Herbs, officer. Chamomile, valerian, sometimes a few things stronger. But nothing that would cause any of this. In fact,” she said, catching his gaze and holding it, desperate. “In fact, I am compounding a variety of herbs that will, I hope, help Countess Urvenon and the others. I will send it in the morning to the doctors.”
She held her breath, feeling stripped, flayed, the rest of her secrets perilously close to the surface.
His shoulders relaxed. His lips curled into the smallest of smiles, the kind that would have made some other woman swoon. She could almost sympathize, with the relief that flooded through her making her thoughts fuzzed and easy.
“Allow me to make a search of the house,” Pollard said. Her throat constricted again, and she ducked her head to hide the widening of her eyes. The soldier. If he searched the house, he would find the soldier, see the tattoos, be required by honor and country to report her. He wouldn’t understand that. She couldn’t explain that. “Officer Pollard, I don’t think—”
“To set aside any fears that you are running an opium den out of your cellar,” he said, and his tone eased as he smiled.
“Are you...joking?”
“Yes,” he said, turning his hand over and lightly grasping hers, his fingers warm and lightly calloused. “And no. I do mean to believe the best of you. But I am worried about how this seems to dog you, wherever you go.”
“Have there been more cases?” she asked, staring at their joined hands, unable to make sense of them.
“A few,” he said. “But not many beyond the ones you saw yourself. And I cannot see how an illness or a drug could make the jump between your sailors and the nobility so swiftly and with nobody in the intervening space. It doesn’t happen like that. I do want to believe the best of you, but your connection is the only theory I have. Prove me wrong, and I will be just as confused, but relieved to know it isn’t you behind it.”
The walls closed in around her. His fingers against her were still light, but they felt like a tightening vice. She could not prove him wrong. There was little opium in her home, but the rest... the soldier, the garden, her poisonous workroom? It would only bring on the noose.
“You look unwell,” he said, and that pained sadness was back in his voice. She was losing him, she could feel it. She was not built for this game, could not use these tools to keep herself safe.
“I...” Her lungs seized. She drew her hand from his and pressed both her palms to her cheeks, forcing herself to breathe easily. He was watching her, taking in her weakness, taking her measure. She needed to appear strong, in control, the businesswoman he had known her to be.
Instead, she heard herself murmuring, “I am afraid.” Pollard’s hand hovered by her shoulder, as if he was unsure whether to seize her or comfort her. Evelyn took the choice away from him, standing up and smoothing down the front of her dress again, pulling her shoulders back and setting her head high. “I apologize,” she said, mastering herself. The noose, the noose; if she kept her mind’s eye on the noose, she could prevent this. She had to fold her secrets back in, bind them tightly. “Last night was trying, and I find I am not much recovered yet. May I request that you return in the morning? I will assist you in making a full search then.”
He rose to his feet as well, searching her face for... something. Guilt? Innocence? She watched him in return. Did he see her as the type of woman to be overwhelmed and need her rest, or did he see the calculating, shrewd creature of commerce who could, in a night, clear her house of suspicious plantings and prisoners?
She saw the moment he decided, perhaps before even he knew. He bowed to her. “The morning,” he said. “It was impolite of me to call so late. Please accept my apologies.”
“They are accepted,” she said. “After all, we usually meet in the dark.”
“The harbor shift never sleeps,” he agreed, offering her a small smile. “Please, promise me one thing.”
“Yes, Officer Pollard?”
“Promise me that you will rest. You look unwell.” She touched her cheek, wondering if he could see the dread in her, or if it was only his concern at seeing her skin unobscured by black tulle for the first time. She did look unwell, and had for so many years. “Thank you for your concern, officer.”
He inclined his head to her, cheeks coloring faintly. He was a handsome man, but not quite so good at his occupation as she had always thought him to be. But, she granted quietly to herself, he was used to dealing with sailors and tax agents and businessmen.
He was not used to dealing with unnatural creatures rippling through the fabric of the city like a sickness.
He was not, no matter what he might think, used to dealing with her.
He accompanied her to the door without issue and climbed up into his carriage. Once he had gone, she lingered in the doorway, waiting for her heart to calm itself and planning the way ahead. There was much to do: plantings to pull up and burn, or move into pots and place outside, for those that could stand the damp. And then there was the soldier. The soldier posed a problem, still too unwell to walk out under his own power or to leave to anywhere but a doctor’s surgery, but now that he was conscious, there was a chance she could convince him to lie for her. If she bandaged him better and dressed him so that his tattoos were hidden, she could pass him off as Violetta’s brother, here to be ministered to with her medicines. He didn’t even need to be conscious, really—Violetta would vouch for him. Would protect her.