When one is the rightful heir and the other wants everything just for himself. Josephine realised that she was caught in the middle of a succession war.
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As she regained her strength, Josephine couldn't help but be aware that her husband was ever so attentive to her needs, but also cautious as he saw to those needs. He brought her meals on a silver tray as though they possessed no servants to do so. He would watch her eat as though he thought it was the most amazing activity in the world.
In the afternoons, he would wrap a blanket around her and carry her out to the garden so that she could benefit from the sunshine. Much to the diligent working gardener's dismay, Hero would spend several moments plucking the brightest of the blossoms from the gardens until her lap was filled with an assortment of colours and fragrances. Then he would sit beside her and ply her with questions about the Great Exhibition and the many inventions and changes that had occurred since he'd been out of society. That was how he'd begun to refer to the time he was in Pentonville, not as his incarceration, or his imprisonment, or his brother's dreadful act, but as the time during which he was out of society. He never wanted anyone to know that his brother had swapped places with him for a time. He wanted her to explain all the modern inventions so that he could carry on as though he'd never been away.
As she told him of one thing and another, she was amazed at how much progress could be made in eight years.
In the late afternoons, he would leave for a time, and while he always told her that it was to see to estate business, and while she knew that he had a good many duties that required his attention, she suspected that he was visiting with his brother. She knew Hero was saddened by the fact that his brother was locked away from society, more saddened by the fact that he didn't know why Eros had turned against him or why Eros believed he was Hero.
And doubts had surfaced surrounding the deaths of his parents. Arsenic was easily obtained, available for purchase from any chemist, a favourite among ladies who used it to enhance their complexions. The law did require that a person sign the Poison Book, but what happened to it after that...well, not everyone used it on her complexion. It was becoming a favourite murder weapon among married ladies who wished to dispose of their husbands. Hero had hired a man to travel throughout London, searching all the apothecaries' books. Hero's signature had been found in one of them, the arsenic purchased a month before his eighteenth birthday. And as Hero had never purchased poison, he had to believe that once again the act was carried out by Eros pretending to be Hero.
But all that could be proven was that arsenic had been purchased. Not that Eros had actually used it. Although Josephine had never thought that his complexion needed righting.
She knew the knowledge her husband had gained haunted him, so she was relatively certain that he was spending some time with his brother, trying to discern what had shaped him into such a different man, but it was a hopeless task. He would return in the early evening, more sombre and solemn, reflective. And she would seek to cheer him up by sharing portions of the letters that Katherine wrote to her, telling her of her exploits to find a man who wouldn't bore her after a day or two.
