“Can you taste it?” Giles asked. He sounded so concerned, she couldn’t help but answer in earnest.
“Yes. It’s delicious.” She blushed and stared into the tray. Giles smiled softly in relief and took another spoonful of soup. “Lord Gil, what about you?”
“I’ll eat after you finish.” So eat your lunch first, his stern gaze added.
Fiona could tell that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had fed her the entire lunch. She resigned herself to her fate and reluctantly opened her mouth, feeling like she’d just lost a battle.
Giles said he had never nursed anyone before, but one couldn’t tell, given the impeccable timing and grace with which he offered her the spoon. Time and time again, he brought the spoon or fork to her lips, and she ate until her plate was empty.
Last of all, he handed her a cup of medicine, which was to be added to her daily regimen today—on top of her antibiotic and fever reducer. It was a dark liquid resembling tea that had been over-brewed. It did not look the slightest bit appetizing. This medicine was supposed to aid in her recovery, so Fiona picked up the cup, but the characteristic smell wafting from it made her stop short of drinking it. Ugh…
“They’ve sweetened it for you,” Giles assured her.
“Y-yes, I’ll drink it now.”
She braced herself and gulped it down…and her mouth filled with a bittersweetness beyond anything she could have imagined. It was sweet, yes, but so overwhelmingly bitter! She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard, hugging the cup to her chest and lurching forward.
Giles offered a sympathetic chuckle, seeing her shoulders shake with the effort of swallowing it. “That medicine puts the least strain on the body, apparently.”
“Yes, the doctor assured me as much,” Fiona murmured. Because she rarely fell ill, she wasn’t accustomed to taking medicine. Powders and pills were all fine, but liquid medicine was brutal.
With tears in her eyes, she somehow managed to down the rest of it. Then Giles whisked the cup out of her hand and replaced it with a single hard candy. Fiona made a face. “…A reward for being a very good girl?”
“I suppose so.”
Giles was treating her like a child no matter how you looked at it. Fiona had an inkling that there was a tenderness informing his behavior, though, and it made her feel peculiar all over. She popped the yellow candy in her mouth and let the lemony flavor erase the remaining bitterness on her tongue. “My little sister often had to take this sort of medicine. I should have given her a candy reward like this.”
Only now was Fiona beginning to appreciate how strong her sickly sister was, to have taken such vile medicine all through her childhood without complaint. The admiration that swelled up inside her almost brought her to tears. She stared off into the distance, vowing to tell Cecelia she was a very strong girl the moment she got home.
Giles smiled, watching her. “Well, you were a good girl today, Fiona, so I commend you for that.”
“How’s this,” Fiona said. “In the future, if you drink that bitter medicine in one gulp, I’ll give you a candy too.”
Not like that will ever happen… Fiona’s relationship with Giles would end very soon. Talking about the future like this was stupid; she knew it was. She blamed the bright sunlight streaming into the room, which felt almost magical. Besides, I wouldn’t get these stupid ideas in my head if Giles didn’t smile so softly at me.
Fiona closed her eyes and rolled the candy around her mouth with her tongue, dwelling in the embarrassment of what she had just said.
“Yes,” Giles said after a long pause, sounding stilted. “I would love that.”
Fiona didn’t open her eyes. She lay there, indulging in the nonsensical thought that bittersweet lemon was the perfect flavor for fake lovers.
Giles quickly finished his own lunch. Once he was done, he made casual mention of what had happened at the White Palace. Fiona’s focus turned to the pile of newspapers beside her. “I assumed there would be a great ruckus about it, but the papers said nothing,” she marveled.
“Well, Rick did a good job distracting the party guests and reporters.”
As luck would have it, the rooms in which the crimes took place were located far from the great hall, and on a floor not used by many people. The area was quickly sealed off, and the crown prince put the staff under a swift gag order. Somebody might have heard strange noises and suspected foul play, but with the crown prince keeping his lips sealed on the matter, nobody would dare dig any deeper. Naturally, an internal investigation was being conducted—Fiona was one of the people who had been questioned—but none of that was made public.
“Did they find Gordon?” Fiona asked in a lower voice. She had been the only person pulled out of the lake that night.
Giles shook his head no. Dennis and Reginald confirmed that they did see two people falling from the window from their vantage point on the lake. After daybreak, the lake and its surrounding forest were searched, but neither Gordon nor his personal effects were found.
“Gordon was shot in the shoulder,” Giles reminded her. “It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it’s hard to believe he could have swum properly in his condition.” The lake wasn’t wide, but it was deep. If he sank to the bottom, there would be no way to recover his body. Of course, they couldn’t write off the possibility that Gordon had swum to the shore and escaped under cover of fireworks, but none of the guards or gatekeepers on duty spotted a man of his description, so there was no definitive proof one way or another.
When Giles told her that the search at the lake had been called off the previous day, Fiona sighed. In the end, Otto Gordon’s whereabouts remained unknown, and no one knew if he was alive or dead. Neither his name nor word of the crimes he committed would ever grace a person’s lips again.