I don’t react. I let her speak.
“And I’m sure it’s purely a coincidence,” Hale continues, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, “that our dear, sweet Marjorie cultivates a very healthy, very private garden of foxglove, monkshood, and deadly nightshade right behind the greenhouse. But I suppose it’s easier to blame the strange cousin for a few sick girls than look in her own backyard. I know Marjorie has never liked me. She never failed to make that evident in your absence. Such a bully.”
She smiles then. Perfectly pleasant. Perfectly lethal. It is a brilliant, terrifyingly plausible deflection, and it reminds me exactly how sharp the mind behind that glassy stare really is.
“You have nothing to worry about with me, Knox,” she murmurs, leaning forward. “Do you not trust me? H
