An Independent Miss by Becca St. John Read Free Book Online Page B

crafting, always
searching for new buds and plants she could use. Her eyes were trained to see
what others missed. They didn’t fail her this time.
    “Oh! Look!” She pulled away,
stepped off the path and into the woods, bent over a lifted mound of last
fall’s leaves, knowing what pushed them up. “Morels!” Delighted, she looked up,
just as Andover, his eyes wide with horror, grabbed her wrist before she
reached her prize.
    “Don’t touch that!” he ordered,
urging her away, as though she’d found a vipers’ nest.
    “But look…” She fought his hold,
brushed away the clump of leaves with the toe of her boot, revealing a stout
morel mushroom. “They’re absolutely divine! And if there’s one…” She stopped
explaining, stunned by the revulsive shudder that racked his frame.
    “Please,” he asked, so agitated,
Felicity held her breath, watching his nostrils flair, chest heave, as he
desperately tried to breathe past panic. Visibly, he fought to calm. “Please,”
he said, in a lower tone, gesturing for her to precede him to the path.
    With one sorrowful look back, she
complied.
    He didn’t return to where they were
standing, instead clamping her hand to his arm, as he led them toward the
Smiths’. The firm grip could not hide the tremble of his hold.
    “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he
offered.
    “Possibly not,” Felicity said with
quiet conviction, “but you did.”
    “Yes, of course.” He cleared his
throat.
    “There’s more than a revulsion of
mushrooms,” she offered.
    He nodded. She waited, her mind
wildly filling with scenarios. He interrupted.
    “We’ve spoken of the deaths in my
family.”
    “Yes.” And suddenly the tumult of her
thoughts stilled in a solitary focus. “Something they ate.”
    “Yes.”
    Her heart sank. “Mushrooms.”
    “Foraged mushrooms.” He stopped,
then faced her, eyes dark with memory. “I do not believe there is a more
gruesome death, Lady Felicity, all three of them. My father, brother, and
sister-in-law.” He looked to his feet, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Four, if you count the expected babe.”
    “How awful,” she whispered.
    “Yes.” He lifted both her hands to
his lips, kissed the fold of her fingers. “Awful. Those hours of sitting with
them, trying everything we could to save them. Everything. But in the end, all
we could do was watch them suffer.”
    He pinched the bridge of his nose
and grimaced, having forgotten the bruising from earlier.
    “Those were the worst moments of my
life. Mother and I would not be here, but neither of us can abide mushrooms of
any sort.” Humor, though he did not smile. “As expected, the doctor was
useless, his concoctions, to purge them when they already convulsed with
nausea, bloodletting when their bodies writhed so fiercely blood spewed across
the room, cupping. Worse, those supposed men of science, always they make it
worse.” He shuddered.
    “I’m sorry.” She was, for she’d
seen such deaths and knew there was little anyone could do against the poison
of fungus.
    “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. We
didn’t speak of it, I don’t speak of it.” He released her, put his hand to the
small of her back, moving them forward before offering his arm once more. “That
is the only firm rule I think I would ever ask of you, that you do not bring
foraged food into our home.”
    “But surely…”
    “No, I am most fixed on this.” He
frowned, no doubt registering her distress. “Have no fear, we have extensive
orangeries and greenhouses and all sorts of modern modes of growing whatever
you want, and forcing them to bloom when you want. Even mushrooms, if you must.
My father and my brother loved them. I believe the gardener has a place in the
cellar where he grows them. Just don’t show them to me, ever.
    “You will have your fill of
anything you want. But I beg of you, do not bring anything into our home that
has been found in the wild.”
    “You will hunt.”
    He nodded. “Fair