Ellen’s skin looked as white as her night rail. Sweat beaded on her forehead. As her red-rimmed eyes met Rose’s, the glass dropper fell from her slack fingers and shattered on the floor.
She doubled over. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“It’s just as well, else I’d stick my finger down your throat and make you sick!” Rose ran for the chamber pot that sat beneath a sideboard and rushed back to plunk it on the worktable.
She held Ellen’s head—and her own tongue—while spasms wracked the younger woman’s body, purging her of the poison. Over and over, but it wasn’t enough for Rose. When Ellen swallowed convulsively, holding back another spasm while she slumped against the table, Rose couldn’t hold her tongue any longer.
“All of it,” she demanded. Ellen’s knees buckled, and Rose held her up by sheer force of will. “More! I want to see that there’s nothing left in your stomach. Nothing, Ellen, you hear me? Else my finger will go down your throat. More!”
At long last, a series of dry heaves left Rose satisfied. She slung an arm around Ellen’s shoulders and led her to a chair.
Still shuddering and frightfully pale, Ellen sank down. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, a shaky hand to her mouth. Tears spilled and ran down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
Rose took the chair beside her, a hand to her still-racing heart. She thought she’d caught Ellen in time. She’d call her mother and a doctor to make sure, but first she had to catch her breath.
She’d never been so scared in her life.
“Good God, Ellen, I know you’re unhappy, but surely things aren’t bad enough to end it all.”
The younger woman’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t trying to,” she whispered. “I swear it. I didn’t know pennyroyal was that dangerous.”
Cautious relief sang through Rose’s veins, but something still didn’t fit. “Why, then?” Suddenly chilled, she hugged herself, running her hands up and down her arms. “Pennyroyal is a powerful herb. Did you know that pregnant women shouldn’t eat or drink anything containing pennyroyal, for fear of bringing on their courses?”
Ellen clenched her hands together in her lap and stared at them. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve all kinds of foreign books to practice my languages. Many of them are herbals…”
Rose’s voice trailed off as she stared at her friend’s miserable, huddled form—and understanding dawned.
“You’re with child, aren’t you?” she breathed, not a question, but a statement. “You were trying to rid yourself of it.”
Ellen’s fingers clenched harder; her tears flowed faster. Words spilled out between sobs. “The midwife said to brew pennyroyal tea, but I didn’t have any leaves, and then I saw your mother’s oils…”
“Oh, Ellen!” Aghast, Rose slid from her chair to kneel at Ellen’s feet. She grabbed her hands. “How could you?” The younger woman’s tears fell warm on all their clasped fingers. Looking up, Rose searched her face. She hadn’t been attempting suicide, thank heavens, but… “How could you even think of doing something so wrong?”
Ellen blinked and met her gaze, a sudden spark of anger making her eyes flash green. “There are worse wrongs,” she returned vehemently. “How about bearing a child out of wedlock? Disappointing my brother? Or defying him to marry the man I love?”
She wrenched her hands from Rose’s and dashed at her tears.
“Which is more wrong, Rose? A babe will leave me no choice but to go behind Kit’s back—no choice, no choice at all! I tried to talk him into letting me wed Thomas—I tried! But I cannot try anymore, don’t you see? Not with Thomas’s child growing inside me. My options are gone. I can have another child, but I’ll never have another brother. I need more time…”
Rose swallowed, trying to understand, trying to be a good friend.
Though she wasn’t a woman to sigh over other people’s babies, she couldn’t imagine not wanting her own. She squeezed Ellen’s fingers. “Don’t you want Thomas’s child?”
“Of course I do.” Ellen’s tears flowed even faster. “But—”
“You’re going to have it,” Rose said through gritted teeth. Ellen was her friend, and she’d promised Kit she’d watch over his sister. He wouldn’t want Ellen to lose her baby—she was sure of it. “If I have to stay with you day and night, I’ll be here to make certain you do nothing to harm your child.”
If you haven’t harmed it already.
A heavy silence descended as the words hung between them, unspoken.
Only time would tell. Until a day or so passed without Ellen’s menses coming upon her, Rose would wonder whether she’d caught her in time.
But a little color had sneaked back into Ellen’s cheeks. Though her face was wet with tears, her forehead was no longer slicked with sweat. Her body had stopped shuddering.
Rose saw reason to hope.
She got to her feet, bringing Ellen up with her, and wrapped her into a fierce hug. A hug that encompassed both the woman and the new life within her. “You won’t have a child out of wedlock,” she promised into Ellen’s wavy dark hair. Drawing away, she offered her friend a shaky smile. “Now Kit will have to allow you to marry Thomas.”
“He won’t.”
“He will. Once he hears you’re with child—”
Ellen stepped back. “I cannot tell him that.”
“What do you mean, Ellen? You must.” Rose’s gaze dropped to the other woman’s middle. “He’ll figure it out soon enough in any case, so you might as well tell him now.”
“I couldn’t. He’d kill me.”
“He wouldn’t!”
“He thinks I’m his virginal baby sister. Have you any idea how he’d look at me? He’d think it his failure, and—”
“You’d rather lose your child than confess to your big brother?”
“No!” Ellen had gone white again. Into the tense silence that followed, she released a long, shuddering breath. “I just…I cannot tell him,” she whispered.
Rose didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—but she wanted to be a good friend. And she could tell Kit anything.
“Then I’ll tell him for you,” she said simply. “But first, we send a footman to fetch the doctor.”
