The Perfect Poison by Amanda Quick

dark night and what everyone had believed was his father’s deathbed. Fergus Jones had dismissed those keeping the vigil around him—the nurse, an assortment of relatives, the servants—all except Caleb.
     
     
     
    “COME CLOSER, SON,” Fergus said, his voice weak and hoarse.
    Caleb moved from the foot of the bed to stand at his father’s side. He was still stunned by the suddenness of the crisis. Until three days ago his father had been a fit and healthy man of sixty-six years, showing no signs of anything more debilitating than some mild discomfort in his joints, which he treated with salicin. A hunter, like so many males in the Jones line, he had always enjoyed a hearty constitution and seemed destined to live to a ripe old age as had his father before him.
    Caleb had been assisting Gabe in an inquiry into the theft of the founder’s formula when he received the urgent summons informing him that his parent had succumbed to a sudden infection of the lungs. He left his cousin to pursue the investigation on his own and hurried to the family estate.
    Although he had been anxious, in truth he had expected that his father would recover. It was not until he walked into the solemn, heavily draped household and listened to the doctor’s grim prognosis that he understood just how dire the situation had become.
    His relationship with his father had always been close; even more so following the untimely death of his mother, Alice, who had died in a horseback riding accident when he was twenty-one. Fergus had never remarried. Caleb was the sole offspring of the union.
    A fire blazed on the hearth, heating the sickroom to an uncomfortable temperature because, although his entire body was hot to the touch, Fergus had complained of the chill. The unnatural sensation of cold, the nurse had explained with an air of morbid satisfaction, was one of the sure indications of the approach of death.
    Fergus looked up at him from the stack of pillows. Although he had been sliding in and out of a delirium for most of the day, his eyes now held a feverish clarity. He grasped Caleb’s hand.
    “There is something I must tell you,” he whispered.
    “What is it?” Caleb said. He tightened his grip on his father’s hot hand.
    “I am dying, Caleb.”
    “No.”
    “I confess that I had planned to leave this world a coward. I did not think that I could bring myself to tell you the truth. But I find that I cannot, after all, leave you in ignorance, especially when there may be some small chance—”
    He broke off on a racking cough. When the fit was over he lay quietly, gasping for air.
    “Please, sir, do not exert yourself,” Caleb pleaded. “You must conserve your strength.”
    “Damn it to hell. This is my deathbed and I will spend what energy I have left as I wish.”
    Caleb smiled slightly in spite of his devastated spirits. It was oddly reassuring to hear the familiar, gruff determination in his father’s voice. The men and women of the Jones family were all fighters.
    “Yes, sir,” he said.
    Fergus narrowed his eyes. “You and Alice were the two great blessings bestowed on me over the course of my life. I want you to know that I have always been grateful that the good Lord saw fit to let me have time with both of you.”
    “I am the most fortunate of sons to have you for a father, sir.”
    “I regret to say that you will not thank me for siring you after I tell you the truth about yourself.” Fergus closed his eyes in pain. “I never did tell your mother, you know. It was my gift to her. Alice died without ever realizing the danger you will confront.”
    “What are you talking about, sir?” Perhaps Fergus was hallucinating again.
    “I still hesitate to tell you of the truth,” Fergus whispered. “But you are my son and I know you well. You would curse me to your own dying day if I held back knowledge of such a vital nature. Given what I am about to say, you will doubtless abominate me anyway.”
    “Whatever it is you