I thought back to that first night at Dalmay House, when we had entered Will’s room and I had seen him hunched in the corner scrabbling at the wall with his charcoal.
“It’s the valerian root,” I gasped.
Gage and Michael turned to look at me.
“That’s what’s triggering Will’s melancholic episodes.”
Gage glanced back at the tin, his jaw hardening.
“But we haven’t tried to give him valerian root tea since that first time,” Michael protested.
I shook my head. “It’s not the tea. It’s the smell. It reminds him of the asylum.”
He frowned. “Because they served it to him?”
“No.” Gage rose to his feet to explain. “She means the scent must be similar to what the asylum smelled like. I admit, it is quite rancid.”
Michael still looked confused. “It smells like an herb.”
I stared at him in amazement. “What are you talking about? It reeks! Like stale body odor and . . . and smelly feet.”
A grin tugged at the corners of Gage’s mouth. “I’d heard there were people who didn’t actually mind the smell of valerian root, but I’ve never actually met any. Until today. I guess you and your cook simply enjoy the smell of rancid feet.”
Michael scowled.
“I smelled this in Will’s bedchamber on the night we arrived,” I said, gesturing to the tin in Gage’s hands. “I caught a whiff of it as I was approaching Will. I remember thinking it was body odor, but as I moved closer it dissipated. Donovan must have put this in something or wiped it on an object. He must have introduced it to the room on purpose, knowing it would upset Will.” I pressed my hand to my nose again. “Close that,” I told Gage.
The lid clanged against the container as he pressed it down. “Donovan must have noted Dalmay’s reaction to the valerian root tea when you tried to give it to him. Then he began introducing it to Will’s environment when he thought no one would notice or when he wanted him to have an episode. Clearly he was up to mischief when he provoked a fit the other night. Sabotaging your engagement, I’d wager, when he heard you’d told your fiancée and her family about Will.”
Michael rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and stared at the tin as if it were a snake about to bite him. “Could it be he had trouble sleeping and he simply used it to make himself a cup of tea?”
Gage’s expression was dubious. “If it were something so innocent, why did he feel the need to hide it in a place few people would think to look?”
He had no answer for that.
I felt sorry for Michael—he appeared horrified by the realization that the man he’d hired to take care of his brother had, in fact, been doing him injury—and, yet, at the same time, I was furious with him. He was so protective of Will, even willing to go so far as to lie for him, but he hadn’t noticed that one of his staff was hurting him. If he truly couldn’t sense how awful the valerian root smelled, perhaps I could forgive him for missing it. However, I couldn’t help thinking that if Donovan had been so capable of harming Will in this way, how many other little things had he done to impair him? Had Michael missed those, too?
I crossed the room to lean against the door frame, staring out into the corridor. Perhaps I was being too hard on him. But I couldn’t offer Michael any words of comfort just then. And I knew if I couldn’t dredge up enough sympathy to do that, I might say something I regretted.
“I need to speak to Lucy,” I told the men, without looking back or waiting for a reply.
I could hear the clang of pots and the thwack of a knife up ahead and followed it into the kitchen. The scent of bacon lingered in the air from breakfast, mixing with the sharp aroma of the onions one of the maids standing at the butcher-block table was chopping. The girls looked up at me in surprise.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I told them with a reassuring smile. “I’m looking for my maid. Could you point me in the direction of the women’s quarters?”
As they stood gawking at me, I began to realize how absurd the situation was—ladies did not go belowstairs to seek out their servants—and felt a blush sting my cheeks.
“Well, dinna just stand there gawpin’ like fish,” a little, round woman in a long apron scolded, entering the room behind me. “Answer ’er ladyship.”
The maids continued to stare, neither of them seeming to be able to find their tongues.
The woman sighed and shook her head. “They dinna have a lick of sense betweenst the both of ’em.” Then she turned to look at me, as if she conversed with ladies in this manner every day. “Yer maid’s quarters’ll be doon that hall. But I think ye might find ’er quicker in the servants’ hall across the way. Heard the maids in there twitterin’ away like magpies just a moment ago.”