Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday (15 page)

Claudia loosened Nell’s cravat, spread the blankets over her, took her pulse, lifted her eyelids to peer at her pupils, and spoke to her quite sharply, commanding her to wake up. A siren’s nerve-shredding wail had just caught at the edge of my hearing when Nell’s lips moved.

“Papa?”

“I’m here, dearest.” Derek bent to kiss her brow. “Don’t try to move, my darling. Help is on the way.”

Oliver waved the ambulance over and we stood back while the medical team went to work. When Bill volunteered to go to the hospital, to slay any and all red-tape dragons that might dare to cross Nell’s path, I urged him on without a moment’s thought. Bill and I would walk through fire for Derek’s children and we knew that he would do the same for ours.

Derek and Emma rode in the ambulance with Nell, and Bill took the Mercedes while Gina and Simon guided the earl into his chauffeured limousine and accompanied him to the hospital. When they’d gone, Claudia went in search of Deacon, and I helped Oliver carry the first-aid kit and the blankets into the house. I dropped the blankets on the entrance hall’s polished floor, placed the first-aid kit in one of the marble niches, sat on the stairs, and burst into tears.

Oliver, who looked close to tears himself, instantly came to sit beside me.

“Try not to worry,” he said worriedly. “Nell may look delicate, but she’s tough as old boots. I sometimes think she’s stronger than the rest of us combined. I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

A petite, gray-haired maid appeared and began to fold the blankets I’d dumped on the floor. My histrionics must have alarmed her because she broke the servants’ sacred vow of silence and asked if something was amiss. I stared at her, wondering how on earth she’d missed all of the commotion, but Oliver was patience itself.

“Miss Harris was thrown from her horse,” he explained. “She’s been taken to hospital.”

“Miss Harris was thrown?” said the maid. “How dreadful.” She thought for a moment, then added, “I’ll light a candle for her, sir.”

Oliver thanked her, pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, and handed it to me. “Why don’t you call home, Lori?” he suggested. “It might help to hear your sons’ voices.”

“My boys . . .” I took a few hiccuping breaths, blew my nose, and wiped my eyes. “That’s a great idea. Will you be okay on your own?”

He nodded. “I’ll stay by the phone and report to you if I hear anything.”

I squeezed his hand gratefully. “I envy the girl who marries you, Oliver. If you ever come to visit me and Bill, I’ll introduce you to our nanny. You and Annelise both have hearts of gold.”

Oliver colored to his roots but managed a shy smile. “I may take you up on that. A nanny in the family would be very useful, indeed.”

I gave him a despairing look, then went to help the maid refold a blanket she’d dropped, forgetting Dimity’s admonition never to intrude on a servant’s work. My assistance seemed to embarrass the maid, who mumbled a word of thanks before scurrying off with her burden.

“Don’t let Giddings see you helping the hired help,” Oliver advised after she’d left. “He already suspects them of slacking off.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll try to remember that I’m a pampered guest.” I started up the staircase, stopped, and turned to face Oliver again. “Claudia was terrific, wasn’t she?”

“She always wanted to be a doctor,” he said. “When she was little, she used me to practice bandaging. I spent many a fine summer afternoon bound up like a mummy.”

“What changed her mind?” I asked.

“An active social life leaves little time for medical studies,” Oliver answered, “and one needs an active social life to marry well. Now that she has married well, there’s her husband’s career to consider. What do you think he’d say if she declared her intention of launching her own career?”

“‘Good luck, honey’?” I ventured. “No, I guess not. Still, it seems like a waste. She was wonderful.” I nodded to Oliver and continued up the stairs, my newfound respect for Claudia tinged with pity.

While the rest of us had panicked, she’d kept a cool head. She’d had the presence of mind to keep Nell warm and loosen her cravat. Her strident voice, so irritating in the drawing room, had pulled Nell from the dark well of oblivion. Claudia seemed to possess the sound instincts and quick reflexes needed to save lives. It saddened me to think that she’d used her gifts solely to secure a suitable mate. I wondered if it saddened her, too.

Oliver’s soothing words and my sober reflections had momentarily distracted me from the shock of witnessing Nell’s terrible fall, but I nearly came unglued again when I reached Annelise on the cell phone.

“You’re
where
?” I said, sinking onto the edge of my bed.

“The stables at Anscombe Manor,” she replied. “It’s Saturday, Lori. The twins’ riding lessons. Remember?”

“Riding lessons,” I murmured, and ordered myself to calm down. The boys’ “riding lessons” consisted of them making a few circuits around Anscombe Manor’s hay-strewn paddock while seated on an ancient and extremely mild-mannered pony led at a sedate walking pace by Kit Smith on foot. It wasn’t exactly the Kentucky Derby.

Annelise had grown accustomed to detecting agitation in my voice. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

“No, it’s not,” I said, and proceeded to tell her about Nell’s riding accident.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Nell,” she said when I’d finished. “But you don’t have to worry about Will or Rob. They’re wearing their helmets, and they’ve never fallen off old Bridey yet. Even if they did, Kit would catch them before they hit the ground.”

Annelise wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, but it was good to hear her say it aloud. It was even better to hear the twins bubble over with admiration for their peerless steed. Their joyful exuberance overcame any impulse I might have had to wrap them in cotton wool.

Our conversation was interrupted by a familiar click, and when Annelise got back to me, she said she’d better take the call.

“It’s Bill,” she told me. “I think he needs to hear from his children.”

“I’m sure he does,” I said, added a brief good-bye to the boys, and rang off.

I sat for a moment to collect my thoughts, then turned to Reginald. “You think Rob and Will would mind if I burned their riding boots?”

Reginald made no reply, but I knew what he would have said if he’d possessed the power of speech.

“They’d convince Kit to let them ride in sneakers,” I acknowledged wryly, and thanked heaven that my sons had inherited a certain degree of stubbornness from me. They’d never let me smother them, no matter how hard I tried.

I returned the cell phone to my shoulder bag and went to the bathroom to wash my tear-blotched face. I was toweling off when I heard a loud thump on the bedroom door. When I opened the door, I found Simon standing in the corridor, holding a large silver tray laden with covered dishes.

“Sorry to kick the door,” he said, “but as you can see, my hands are fully occupied.”

“You shouldn’t be carrying such a heavy load,” I said.

He ignored my protest and swept past me into the room.

“I come bearing relatively good news,” he announced. “Nell’s injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.”

“Thank God,” I said, and heaved a quavering sigh of relief.

“I come bearing breakfast as well. Oliver told me you hadn’t eaten.” Simon placed the tray on the rosewood table and turned to face me. “He also told me you’d been weeping. I really can’t have that, you know. Come here—but be gentle with me.”

He opened his arms in a gesture that was more brotherly than seductive, so I went to him for a long, comforting hug.

“I know what you were feeling,” he murmured. “The clutch at the heart . . . You’ll think me mad, but I rang my son at Eton, just to hear his voice.”

I tilted my head back to look up at him. “I did the same thing. You’ll never guess where I found
my
sons.”

When I told him, he responded with a sympathetic groan. “Poor old thing. I hope you’re not planning to lock up their saddles.”

“I briefly considered burning their boots,” I confessed, “but what would be the point? A life without risk is no life at all.”

Simon’s midnight-blue eyes shifted slightly. They seemed to focus inward for a moment, as though my words had struck a chord, then he stepped away from me and said briskly, “Bill’s a tremendous bully. I was deeply impressed. He simply shook the doctors by their stethoscopes until they coughed up a diagnosis. Nell has a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone, and mild concussion.”

“Not great,” I said, “but better than a fractured skull.”

“Indeed,” Simon agreed. “And now I must fly. I was dispatched to Hailesham to retrieve Bertie, who was left behind in the confusion.”

“Go,” I said, flapping my hands at him. “And thanks for the food. I think I might be able to find an appetite now.”

When Simon had gone, I uttered a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving, then sat at the writing table and made short work of the breakfast he’d so thoughtfully provided. I was too full of nervous energy to sit around twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the morning, so I grabbed my jacket and headed for the stables, in hopes of finding someone who’d confirm—or contradict—Nell’s story about the flea-ridden horse blankets.

It seemed an insignificant detail, in light of what had happened, but after finding the strand of golden hair in the nursery, I needed to know, for my own peace of mind, if Nell had been telling the truth about burning the bundle of kerosene-soaked cloth.

An ominous shroud of gray clouds had covered the sun by the time I crossed the courtyard, and a chill wind snatched at the smoke rising from the workshops’ chimneys. A half-dozen horses huddled for warmth in the rolling pasture beyond the greenhouses, but Deacon was not among them.

I found the dappled gray in a loose box in the imposing, neoclassical stone stable. Claudia was there, too, leaning on the box’s half-door and gazing intently at Deacon.

“You found him,” I said as I approached.

She glanced at me, then looked back at the horse. “He found his way here on his own. It’s the strangest thing. He seemed . . . frightened.”

“Of what?” I asked, standing beside her.

“Fences, apparently,” she answered tersely. “He’ll never make a hunter. Simon will have to get rid of him.”

I studied the horse as he calmly nibbled the alfalfa pellets in the manger. “He went over the hurdles pretty willingly the first time Simon tried them.”

“Deacon’s headstrong and unreliable,” Claudia declared. “If he were mine, I’d have him put down.”

“Nell’s going to be all right,” I said hastily, and relayed Simon’s report on Nell’s injuries. I thought Claudia would be pleased by the news, but it only seemed to make her angrier.

“It was a stupid stunt,” she said heatedly. “The shock could have killed Uncle Edwin. He’s already had one heart attack. Another would finish him.”

I gaped at her. “I’m sorry, Claudia, I had no idea that your uncle was ill. Does Derek know—”

“Derek has made it his business to know as little as possible about his father,” Claudia broke in. “Uncle Edwin ceased long ago to look to him for either support or sympathy.” She pushed herself away from the half-door and brushed her palms together lightly. “If you’ll excuse me, Lori, I’m going to change. I’m absolutely filthy.”

“Uh, Claudia, wait a minute.” I thought fast, then improvised madly. “I wanted to ask—is there any part of the stables I should avoid? I heard a rumor that I might run into fleas.”

“Not anymore,” she informed me. “Nell burnt those dreadful old blankets yesterday. I wouldn’t have touched them with a barge pole, but vermin don’t faze Nell.” As Claudia strode past me, she added haughtily, “I hope today’s lesson will teach her to be a bit less fearless in future.”

I stood outside of Deacon’s loose box, lost in thought, until a gust of warm breath tickled the back of my neck. I turned and found myself face-to-face with the dappled gray. I cautiously raised a hand and stroked his velvet nose. He snuffled his appreciation.

“You don’t seem headstrong to me,” I murmured. “But I don’t know much about horses.”

I gave him a final pat, walked into the courtyard, and paused. My gaze traveled from the neatly hedged pasture to the Victorian greenhouses, from the row of humble workshops to the intricate stonework gracing Hailesham’s west facade.

Hundreds of country houses were demolished in the last century,
Simon had told me.
Treasure houses the likes of which will never be seen again. It’s a miracle that Hailesham survived, a miracle wrought by succeeding generations of my family. . . .

I knew now, for certain, why the earl had called the cousins home.

The time had come to pass the torch to the next generation. He wasn’t sure how much longer he had to live.

Sixteen

A sudden cloudburst sent me scrambling into the house. I was about to return to my room via the back staircase when I heard a faint trill of music coming from the drawing room. Someone was playing the grand piano.

Curious, I went to the entrance hall, slung my rain-spattered jacket over the staircase’s wrought-iron balustrade, and opened the drawing room door. The red-haired maid sprang up from the piano bench, blushing crimson. I tried my best to appear nonthreatening, but I seemed destined to embarrass every temporary worker on Lord Elstyn’s payroll.

“Sorry, madam, it won’t happen again, madam, please don’t tell Mr. Giddings,” she sputtered.

“I won’t breathe a word to Giddings,” I said, “and there’s no need to apologize. You play beautifully.”

The maid fidgeted with her apron. “I’m only supposed to dust it, madam, but, well, it’s such a fine instrument and it gets so little use. . . .”

“I understand,” I told her. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you, madam.” She curtsied, grabbed her basket of cleaning supplies, and fled the room.