Edith Layton (5 page)

She nodded. “But please believe I didn’t mean you caused my weariness today.”

“Never fear, I do believe you. I am, after all, a monster of arrogance. Now,” he said, still smiling, “this collation looks fine, doesn’t it? The shepherd’s pie especially; it’s full of gravy. Or would you prefer the kidneys?”

“Neither,” she said with a shudder. “I think it’s best that I eat lightly today after my overindulgence yesterday.”

“As you will,” he said, taking a slice of mutton.

As he helped himself to a portion of meat pie, he didn’t see the look of dismay that crossed her face when she saw the food he was about to eat.

She rose to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me? I must find the ladies’ convenience.”

He leaped to his feet. “Is it the traveling? Is that what’s unsettled you? We can stop here for the night. We have another five or six hours more to go. If you’re prone to road sickness, we can easily stay on here and take the rest of the trip in smaller stages.”

She shook her head. “Travel doesn’t bother me. I really do think it’s something I ate—or drank—yesterday. Please go on with your luncheon. I’ll be better once I’m out of sight of it. I’ll be ready to leave whenever you are.”

“I’ll speak for a few bottles of water and lemonade for you to take when we leave. Even some sugar water will do,” he said. “You need something to drink on the trip. Many a sailor regrets his first voyage and doesn’t even want to drink because he worries that it will come right back up. But you’ll only feel worse if you let yourself dry out. I’ll stop the coach every so often to be sure you do drink. It will help, you’ll see.”

She nodded and left the room quickly, before he could help himself to the kidneys.

She did sip some lemonade. Miles insisted at the next stop they made. But Annabelle felt worse as the day wore on, and could drink less as the hours went by, and so he stopped insisting. She refused to have him stop their journey. And so he was vastly relieved when sunset came and they finally turned off the main road and up the long drive to the lodge.

He welcomed the dappled shadows as he rode under the towering trees lining the winding drive. He heard the rushing chuckle of water in the stream at the side of the road and relaxed. He felt better now that he was there, and he was sure she
would too. The lodge was a place to heal body and soul. Steeped in solitude, filled with natural beauty, the house and its grounds offered simple pleasures like fishing, walking, and simply sitting in the gardens at the edge of the pond. When he’d been far from England he’d dreamed of this place, the only piece of his inheritance his stepfather couldn’t get his hands on to sell out from under him.

If he and Lady Annabelle had any future, they’d find it here. And if they didn’t have a future together, then at least this place would salve his soul and prepare him for the years ahead.

They rode past purple walls of towering rhododendrons, went around a shadowy curve walled in by huge ferns; when they came out into the sunlight again, cows in a nearby meadow raised their heads to watch the little caravan take yet another turn in the drive. The lodge appeared around the next bend. It had two stories and twenty rooms, but didn’t look overwhelming. Built of mellowed stone, it fit into its surroundings as naturally as if it had grown out of the earth like the trees around it.

When they stopped in front of the lodge, Miles swung off his horse and strode to the first coach. He waited impatiently as the driver let down the stair. His fine lady might be used to stately homes and palaces, but he honestly felt few places in England could match his country retreat for beauty and tranquillity.

The coach door opened, and Annabelle peered out. She bent so she could step out the door and down the stair. She took the steps carefully, touched the ground, took Miles’s arm, and looked around.

Then she stared at him with great surprise, swayed, gasped, closed her eyes, and collapsed in a heap at his feet.

M
iles carried his bride over the threshold, but there was no joy in it for him. “My wife has taken ill,” he told the shocked staff as they stood in the hall staring at him. “Get a doctor. Get her maid in here. I’m taking her up. Is the blue bedroom prepared?” he called over his shoulder as he went up the stair.

“Aye, it is, my lord!” the housekeeper said.

Miles moved quickly, but kept glancing down at the woman in his arms. She looked drowned. She was white and cold, utterly insensible. He saw her breast rise and fall so he knew she at least lived. He was calm because he’d learned to be calm in emergencies, but he was alarmed. He’d swear this wasn’t any simple malaise. He’d seen stricken men in battles, land and sea, and so knew
grave illness when he saw it. This wasn’t motion sickness or a result of something she’d eaten—unless it was poison. Because his new wife was that desperately ill.

She was light but felt curiously heavy in his arms. All the spirit that animated her was gone. She was still lovely; even inert and lifeless as she seemed, she was tragically beautiful, a drowned Ophelia newly plucked from the waters where she’d submerged herself. Ridiculous to feel guilt, he told himself. His lovemaking hadn’t caused this; this was something else. But he remembered how stricken she’d been after they’d made love yesterday. She’d tried to hide it, but he’d known. And so he felt more than guilt as he laid her down upon the bed.

He touched her face. It was hot, but when he ran his hands down her arms they felt cold. He held her small icy hands between his own and chafed them. Where was the damned maid? The blasted doctor? Miles turned to leave to summon more help, but spun round again when he heard her moan.

She was struggling to sit up.

“Hush,” he said, sitting on the bed and holding her. “You fainted. Lie back now. If you sit up too soon, you’ll swoon again.”

“I do not faint,” she said weakly.

That sounded more like her. He managed a
smile. “Maybe not. But you did this time. Wait, let your head clear.”

She lay back on his shoulder and looked up at him. Her eyes were a brilliant blue—too bright, he realized. He felt the shivers that coursed through her. She frowned. “Miles. I feel terrible. Really dreadful. It’s more than my stomach now. My throat hurts almost as much as my head does, and my head throbs so much I can hardly think. But now I don’t think it’s because I’m…with child. Do you? I mean, do you think it’s possible?”

“Oh Lord,” he said, holding her closer. “No, Annabelle, I sincerely do not.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, hoping what he said was true, because the thought of her conceiving after her first experience with him, and such an inadequate experience at that, chilled him as much as it obviously did her. But then she shivered again, and he realized it wasn’t fear that was making her shudder. That worried him even more.

“I’m her husband. There’s no need to make me wait outside,” Miles said stubbornly, positioning himself with his shoulders against the wall as he watched the doctor examine Annabelle.

“Whatever you wish,” the doctor muttered. A fattish man, obviously summoned from his dinner table, the physician didn’t seem as impressed by
Miles’s rank as he was by Annabelle’s illness. “And you say this feeling started this morning?” he asked Annabelle after inspecting her tongue again.

She nodded, then grimaced at the pain nodding caused.

“Any cough?”

Miles began to shake his head, but she spoke. “Yes,” she said, “it began this afternoon, in the coach.”

Miles went still. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t ridden with her.

“No spots,” the doctor murmured as he pulled aside the dressing gown Annabelle’s maid had gotten her into and inspected her white breast. “No rash. Just a sudden onset of nausea, stomach pain, then fever, chills, head and muscle aches?”

“Yes, is that good or bad?” Annabelle asked, too worried to be embarrassed at her state of undress.

He muttered something indistinct, pulled her gown closed, and laid his head to her chest to listen again.

“Just come from London, have you?” he asked her when he straightened.

“We have,” Miles said. “Does that matter?”

The doctor scowled. He stood up. “I’ve gotten letters from a colleague in London. There’s a virulent infection going round there. This seems very like it. We hadn’t got it here yet. Now, of course, we have.”

“What can we do for her?” Miles asked.

“I’ll leave medicines. See she takes them as prescribed.” He went to the dressing table and took vials and powders from his bag. He mixed two potions, poured a powder into a slip of paper, and wrote instructions.

But when he said good-bye to Miles at the door, he added, “Her maid can tend to her. Keep away from her if you want to avoid infection, and keep her away from the rest of the staff if you can, because the infection spreads like wildfire, and I’d hate to see it get a hold here.”

“When will she recover?”

“She’s young and healthy; she could shake it off in a week. But she may not. I think it’s a form of a contagious distemper from France. They always send us their finest,” he added sourly. “This may be an influenza. It was epidemic there; God save us from such here. We had a bad course of it in ’03. It can be virulent, it can be milder. Let’s hope this is the lesser version. See she drinks a glass of lemon water every hour and takes the medications. And pray. I’ll be back tomorrow. Send to me if spots appear or if she becomes worse, of course. Good night, my lord.”

But it was to be a bad night, followed by too many others.

A week after he arrived at the lodge, Miles felt as ragged as he looked. He rose from the chair by Annabelle’s bedside where he’d once again spent
the night. After a quick look to reassure himself that she still slept, he went to the window and pulled back a corner of the curtain so he could see outside.

It was raining again.

What a strange honeymoon, he thought as he gazed at the drenched landscape. He hadn’t had time to feel sorry for himself and didn’t now, because all his sorrow was for his wife. There was, he now believed, a very real chance that he might be a widower before this honeymoon was over.

She was sinking into deeper illness with each day. Her cough was rough and incessant, and her fever ran high. Getting her to take her medicines was enough of a battle, they couldn’t begin to make her eat. Miles stayed with her from the first; that comforted him more than it did her because she was too caught up in the sickness to notice much else. He wondered when he’d admit it was time to send word to her parents. But he didn’t want to terrify them for no good reason, and it was all so unbelievable. Or was it just that he refused to believe it? He’d married a beautiful, vibrant young woman. She might now be dying. All in a week. All since the night he’d laid passionate, uncaring hands on her.

Miles rested his forehead against the windowpane. He knew his lovemaking hadn’t caused this, but it pained him to think that it hadn’t really
been making love. After all, he couldn’t claim to have loved her, or even liked her more than many other women he’d bedded. Was this terrible guilt he bore just another consequence of the folly of marrying without love?

He’d seen death in battle, seen healthy young men bleed their lives away. Watching beauty dwindle was another thing altogether. She was so vulnerable, and there was nothing he could do against her invisible enemy.

He felt pity as well as helplessness as he watched her fading away. But it was all for a stranger, and surely she should have someone who loved her beside her now, someone who would regret her illness for more than pity’s sake. Still, to summon her family now? He’d been a sailor and had learned superstition. Sending for her parents would be like admitting defeat: speak his name and you let in the Angel of Death.

But she wasn’t getting better, and nothing they did for her made any difference, except for the worse. Blistering and cupping to reduce the fever hadn’t done her any good that he could see, only disfiguring her fragile white skin. The fever parched her soft rosy lips, cracking them, turning them white, making them peel. The powders the doctor gave her made her retch; she couldn’t keep them down any more than she could retain any food. She became thinner, frailer every day.

They’d cropped her hair the fourth day. Miles had protested, but the doctor insisted. It drained her strength, he’d said. Perhaps. But Miles’s own knees had felt weak as he’d seen her beautiful inky tresses seized, clipped to the scalp, and burned in the fireplace. She’d been too sick to protest, perhaps too sick to notice. But it had near killed him.

The bloodletting the fifth day had almost finished Miles and the doctor. Miles had come into the room after washing up that morning to see the doctor holding her limp wrist, watching her rich, dark blood flowing and the color in her face ebbing as he drained her life away. Miles had lost his temper and maybe his mind, because he’d shouted, ordering the doctor to stop and get out, threatening mayhem if he didn’t obey.

And so now it was just he and her maid and the housekeeper attending to her, because the doctor refused to return. Just as well. Miles didn’t trust him anymore, or himself with the man. Instead, he’d sent for a surgeon in London, an excellent man. Harry Selfridge had served with him, and owed him, and would come.

But would he be too late?

“Yarrow and elderflower?” Miles said on a tired laugh. “Lungwort and cinquefoil? And then I suppose you chant, ‘Round around the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw?’ I think
not, Mrs. Farrow. Thank you, Mrs. Kent,” he told his housekeeper, ignoring the plump little woman he’d just spoken to. “But I don’t believe in witchcraft.”

“Nor do I!” the plump woman spoke up. “The yarrow, elderflower, and peppermint is a time-honored specific for the influenza. The lungwort and cinquefoil is for the cough. Speedwell and agrimony might help as well. These remedies have been noted as far back as Culpepper and haven’t yet been repudiated by modern physicians.”

Miles rubbed a hand over his aching eyes. His housekeeper had come to his study and told him that a healer everyone in the district respected had come to see him. He’d invited Mrs. Farrow in, if only to have someone else to talk to about Annabelle’s illness. The middle-aged, neatly if not fashionably dressed woman had impressed him. He’d been expecting an ignorant crone, but Mrs. Farrow spoke in accents befitting a duchess.

“My father was a landholder here in the district,” she’d told him proudly, “but his mother and her grandmother before her were herbalists, and they taught me their lore. I’ve researched even more. I may not be able to cure your good lady but I will not harm her. I may well be able to settle some of her symptoms, my lord; at the least I can make her rest more easily.”

“But herbs and such brews…” he said unhappily.

“May do her some good; I promise no more. When Mrs. Kent sent to me and told me of your lady’s plight, I came at once. I know her symptoms. Dr. Morrison should have sent for me. We’re old adversaries, but even he can’t and won’t gainsay me. Mind, he won’t recommend me. I suppose it galls him that I have as large a practice as he does. And as many satisfied patients, I might add. Nevertheless, if you refuse, I’ll go. I came out of duty, not for personal gain. I have patients aplenty.”

Miles rubbed his chin and was startled by the scratching sound. It had been a long time since he’d shaved. It had been even longer since he’d cared. He honestly didn’t know what to do. Yet another day had passed and Annabelle was no better, perhaps worse. She slept most of the time now, the fever baking her. He bathed her with cold cloths when her skin seemed afire and packed blankets around her when she shivered. But to dose her with magic?

He stood, irresolute. He’d been in his study composing a letter to Annabelle’s parents when this woman appeared. Now he realized his thoughts were as disorderly as his appearance. He hadn’t slept or eaten properly in a while.

He wasn’t grieving for Annabelle now, it was too soon. Now he was grieving for her bad judgment in having wed as senselessly as he had. But how could she have imagined sickness? She
should have, and so should he, because now he realized how cruel it was for her to be at death’s door while she was among strangers, and that, after all, was really what they were. Of all the things they’d discussed as they’d courted, gossip, fashion, theater, they’d never actually talked about the nub of it. Why marry someone you didn’t burn for, or at least care for? They hadn’t spoken about it because they’d both known why and had accepted it.

They’d married for convenience. But they’d both been idiots, he saw it now. The nearness of death had brought it home to him. In the long hours as he sat at her bedside and watched her sinking, his heart had sunk too. Now, too late, he realized his folly and hers. It was more than a pity that she should die without having known love, it was damnable. But what if he made another idiotic decision now either by permitting this woman to dose Annabelle, or by sending her away?

“I have a physician from London coming,” he said.

“He isn’t here,” she said. “Have you time to wait?”

“I? I have all the time in the world, but my wife…” He hesitated. He’d sailed a good part of that world and had seen the strange things men thought would cure them of everything from syphilis to simple colds: charms of all varieties from dried monkey feet to bags of herbs worn
around their necks—and sometimes he’d been almost convinced those things had worked. He’d seen those same sufferers drink odd potions and feel better in an hour too.

What other course did he have? His friend from London would be here, or so he hoped. But in how long? And would that be too long? And so, Miles thought wearily, the only question now was: What would he want if he were the one lying in that bed?

“Mrs. Farrow,” he said courteously, “would you care to come with me and see my lady before you promise more?”

She nodded. She walked into Annabelle’s room with him and looked at the woman lying in the center of the great bed. She caught her breath. “Ah, the poor child,” she said, low.