The Fiery Cross (106 page)

“Help me with her,
Mac Dubh
,” he said.

Seeing what he was about, Jamie knelt and gathered the dead woman up into his arms. Duncan drew himself upright, and turned his face toward the women in the corner.

“Dinna fash yourselves,” he said quietly. “I shall see her taken care of.” There was an unusual note of authority in his voice that made me realize that in spite of his natural modesty, he had accepted the fact that he was master here.

The men left with their burden, and I heard Dr. Fentiman give a deep sigh. It felt as though the whole attic sighed with him; the atmosphere was still thick with stench and sorrow, but the shock of violent death was dissipating.

“Leave it,” I said to Fentiman, seeing him move again to pick up a bottle lying on the floor. “The women will take care of it.” Not waiting for argument, I took him firmly by the elbow and marched him out the door and down the stair.

People were up; I caught the sounds of rattling dishes from the dining room, and the faint scent of sausages. I couldn’t take him through the public rooms in his current state, nor up to the bedrooms; he was undoubtedly sharing a room with several other men, any of whom might still be abed. For lack of a better idea, I took him outside, pausing to snatch another of the maids’ cloaks from the pegs by the door and wrap it round his shoulders.

So Betty was—or had been—Phaedre’s mother. I hadn’t known Betty well, but I did know Phaedre, and felt grief for her tighten my throat. There was nothing I could do for her just now, though; but perhaps I could help the doctor.

Silent with shock, he followed me obediently as I led him down the side path by the lawns, shielded from view by Hector Cameron’s white-marble mausoleum and its growth of ornamental yew bushes. There was a stone bench by the river, half-hidden under a weeping willow. I doubted anyone would be patronizing it at this hour of the morning.

No one was, though two wine goblets sat on the bench, stained red with beeswing, abandoned remnants of the night’s festivities. I wondered briefly whether someone had been having a romantic rendezvous, and was reminded suddenly of my own midnight tryst. Damn it, I still didn’t know for sure who the owner of those hands had been!

Pushing the nagging question away with the wineglasses, I sat down, gesturing to Doctor Fentiman to join me. It was chilly, but the bench was in full sun at this hour, and the heat was warm and comforting on my face. The Doctor was looking better for the fresh air; vestiges of color had come back into his cheeks, and his nose had resumed its normal roseate hue.

“Feeling a bit better, are you?”

He nodded, hunching the cloak around his narrow shoulders.

“I am, I thank you, Mrs. Fraser.”

“Rather a shock, wasn’t it?” I asked, employing my most sympathetic bedside manner.

He closed his eyes, and shook his head briefly.

“Shocked . . . yes, very shocked,” he muttered. “I would never have . . .” He trailed off, and I let him sit quiet for a moment. He would need to talk about it, but best to let him take it at his own pace.

“It was good of you to come so quickly,” I said, after a bit. “I see they called you from your bed. Had she grown suddenly worse, then?”

“Yes. I could have sworn she was on the mend last night, after I bled her.” He rubbed his face with both hands, and emerged blinking, eyes very bloodshot. “The butler roused me just before dawn, and I found her once again complaining of griping in the guts. I bled her again, and then administered a clyster, but to no avail.”

“A clyster?” I murmured. Clysters were enemas; a favorite remedy of the time. Some were fairly harmless; others were positively corrosive.

“A tincture of nicotiana,” he explained, “which I find answers capitally in most cases of dyspepsia.”

I made a noncommittal noise in response. Nicotiana was tobacco; I supposed a strong solution of that, administered rectally, would probably dispose promptly of a case of pinworms, but I didn’t think it would do much for indigestion. Still, it wouldn’t make anyone bleed like that, either.

“Extraordinary amount of bleeding,” I said, putting my elbows on my knees and resting my chin in my hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.” That was true. I was curious, turning over various possibilities in my mind, but no diagnosis quite fit.

“No.” Doctor Fentiman’s sallow cheeks began to show spots of red. “I—if I had thought . . .”

I leaned toward him, and laid a consoling hand on his arm.

“I’m sure you did all that anyone could possibly do,” I said. “She wasn’t bleeding at all from the mouth when you saw her last night, was she?”

He shook his head, hunching deeper into his cloak.

“No. Still, I blame myself, I really do.”

“One does,” I said ruefully. “There’s always that sense that one should have been able to do
something
more.”

He caught the depth of feeling in my voice and turned toward me, looking surprised. The tension in him relaxed a little, and the red color began to fade from his cheeks.

“You have . . . a most remarkably sympathetic understanding, Mrs. Fraser.”

I smiled at him, not speaking. He might be a quack, he might be ignorant, arrogant,
and
intemperate—but he had come at once when called, and had fought for his patient to the best of his ability. That made him a physician, in my book, and deserving of sympathy.

After a moment, he put his hand over mine. We sat in silence, watching the river go by, dark brown and turbid with silt. The stone bench was cold under me, and the morning breeze kept sticking chilly fingers under my shift, but I was too preoccupied to take much note of such minor discomforts. I could smell the drying blood on his clothes, and saw again the scene in the attic. What on earth had the woman died of?

I prodded him gently, asking tactful questions, extracting what details he had gleaned, but they were not helpful. He was not an observant man at the best of times, and it had been very early and the attic dark. He grew easier with the talking, though, gradually purging himself of that sense of personal failure that is the frequent price of a physician’s caring.

“I hope Mrs. Cameron—Mrs. Innes, I mean—will not feel that I have betrayed her hospitality,” he said uneasily.

That seemed a rather odd way to put it. On the other hand . . . Betty
had
been Jocasta’s property. I supposed that beyond any sense of personal failure, Dr. Fentiman was also contemplating the possibility that Jocasta might blame him for not preventing Betty’s death, and try to claim recompense.

“I’m sure she’ll realize that you did all you could,” I said soothingly. “I’ll tell her so, if you like.”

“My dear lady.” Doctor Fentiman squeezed my hand with gratitude. “You are as kind as you are lovely.”

“Do you think so, Doctor?”

A male voice spoke coldly behind me, and I jumped, dropping Dr. Fentiman’s hand as though it were a high-voltage wire. I whirled on the bench to find Phillip Wylie, leaning against the trunk of the willow tree with a most sardonic expression on his face.

“‘Kind’ is not the word that springs most immediately to mind, I must say. ‘Lewd,’ perhaps. ‘Wanton,’ most certainly. But ‘lovely,’ yes—I’ll give you that.”

His eyes raked me from head to toe with an insolence that I would have found absolutely reprehensible—had it not suddenly dawned on me that Dr. Fentiman and I had been sitting hand in hand in what could only be called a compromising state of dishabille, both still in our nightclothes.

I stood up, drawing my dressing gown round me with great dignity. His eyes were fixed on my breasts—with a knowing expression? I wondered. I folded my arms under my breasts, lifting my bosom defiantly.

“You forget yourself, Mr. Wylie,” I said, as coldly as possible.

He laughed, but not as though he thought anything were funny.

“I forget myself? Have you not forgotten something, Mrs. Fraser? Such as your gown? Do you not find it a trifle cold, dressed like that? Or do the good doctor’s embraces warm you sufficiently?”

Doctor Fentiman, as shocked as I was by Wylie’s appearance, had got to his feet and now pushed his way in front of me, his thin cheeks mottled with fury.

“How dare you, sir! How do you have the infernal presumption to speak to a lady in such fashion? Were I armed, sir, I should call you out upon the instant, I swear it!”

Wylie had been staring boldly at me. At this, his gaze shifted to Fentiman, and he saw the blood staining the doctor’s legs and breeches. His hot-eyed scowl grew less certain.

“I—has something happened, sir?”

“It is none of your concern, I assure you.” Fentiman bristled like a banty rooster, drawing himself upright. Rather grandly, he presented me with his arm.

“Come, Mrs. Fraser. You need not be exposed to the insulting gibes of this puppy.” He glared at Wylie, red-eyed. “Allow me to escort you back to your husband.”

Wylie’s face underwent an instant transformation at the word “puppy,” turning a deep, ugly red. So early in the morning, he was wearing neither paint nor powder, and the blotches of fury stood out like a rash on his fair skin. He seemed to swell noticeably, like an enraged frog.

I had a sudden urge to laugh hysterically, but nobly suppressed it. Biting my lip instead, I accepted the doctor’s proffered arm. He came up roughly to my shoulder, but pivoted on his bare heel and marched us away with all the dignity of a brigadier.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Wylie still standing under the willow tree, staring after us. I lifted my hand and gave him a small wave of farewell. The light sparked from my gold ring, and I saw him stiffen further.

“I do hope we’ll be in time for breakfast,” Doctor Fentiman said cheerfully. “I believe I have quite recovered my appetite.”

T
HE GUESTS BEGAN TO DEPART after breakfast. Jocasta and Duncan stood together on the terrace, the very picture of a happily united couple, bidding everyone farewell, as a line of carriages and wagons made its slow way down the drive. Those folk from downriver waited on the quay, the women exchanging last-minute recipes and bits of gossip, while the gentlemen lit pipes and scratched themselves, relieved of their uncomfortable clothes and formal wigs. Their servants, all looking considerably the worse for wear, sat openmouthed and red-eyed on bundles of luggage.

“You look tired, Mama.” Bree looked rather tired herself; she and Roger had both been up ’til all hours. A faint smell of camphor wafted from her clothes.

“Can’t imagine why,” I replied, stifling a yawn. “How’s Jemmy this morning?”

“He’s got a sniffle,” she said, “but no fever. He ate some porridge for breakfast, and he’s—”

I nodded, listened automatically, and went with her to examine Jemmy, who was cheerfully rambunctious, if runny-nosed, all in a slight daze of exhaustion. It reminded me of nothing so much as the sensation I had had now and then when flying from America to England. Jet lag, they called it; an odd feeling, of being conscious and lucid, and yet not quite solidly fixed within one’s body.

The girl Gussie was watching Jemmy; she was as pale and bloodshot as everyone else on the premises, but I thought her air of dull suffering derived from emotional distress rather than hangover. All the slaves had been affected by Betty’s death; they went about the chores of clearing up after the wedding festivities in near-silence, their faces shadowed.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her, when I had finished looking in Jemmy’s ears and down his throat.

She looked startled, then confused; I wondered whether anyone had ever asked her that before.

“Oh. Oh, yes, Madam. Surely.” She smoothed down her apron with both hands, clearly nervous at my scrutiny.

“All right. I’ll just go and have a look at Phaedre, then.”

I had come back to the house with Dr. Fentiman and turned him over to Ulysses, to be fed and tidied up. I had then gone directly to find Phaedre, taking time only to wash and change my clothes—not wanting to come to her so visibly smeared with her mother’s blood.

I had found her in Ulysses’s pantry, sitting numb and shocked on the stool where he sat to polish silver, a large glass of brandy by her side, undrunk. One of the other slaves, Teresa, was with her; she breathed a short sigh of relief at my appearance and came to greet me.

“She’s none sae weel,” Teresa muttered to me, shaking her head with a wary glance back at her charge. “She’s no said a word, nor wept a drop.”

Phaedre’s beautiful face might have been carved of fruitwood; normally a delicate cinnamon, her complexion had faded to a pale, ligneous brown, and her eyes stared fixedly through the open door of the pantry at the blank wall beyond.

I put a hand on her shoulder; it was warm, but so motionless that she might have been a stone in the sun.

“I am sorry,” I said to her, softly. “Very sorry. Dr. Fentiman came to her; he did all that he could.” That was true; no point in giving an opinion of Fentiman’s skill—it was irrelevant now, in any case.

No response. She was breathing; I could see the slight rise and fall of her bosom, but that was all.