She stared up at the bare bedframe and rubbed her face. She might be wrong about Alistair, but she was right about London. She had to clear her name—or die trying—before she would ever be truly free to live the rest of her life. But no matter how often she repeated this truism to herself... she didn’t want to go. She already missed the Waldegraves more than words could say. There had to be a better way than this.
She groaned and rolled face down onto a worn pillow. Fine. After she and Alistair had both had a chance to sleep on it, she would go back.
She hoped deep in her heart that there truly would be sound logic behind Alistair’s lies, for she desperately wanted a reason to forgive him. She was angry and hurt and confused... but she was still a woman in love. With him. With his daughter.
And her home was at Waldegrave Abbey.
She had just drifted back asleep with a dusty pillow clutched to her bosom when a loud knock startled her ramrod straight.
Constables.
The proprietress had not been sympathetic after all. The woman had gotten word and the constabulary was right here, right now, right outside Violet’s door. With rope and chains and locks that would never reopen.
She tumbled from the mattress and scrambled from the bed to the window. Quickly, she pushed open the curtains and peered out at the dark night.
Three stories down, nary even a specter gave life to the empty street. No horses, no carriages... not even a stray dog provided movement to break up the ghostly stillness. If there were constables afoot, the Shrewsbury set was far wilier than the Whitechapel variety.
“Miss?” came the proprietress’s worried voice from the opposite side of the closed door. “I’m afraid we have a situation.”
Violet left the curtains open wide to ensure an unobstructed view of the streets below and hesitated. She hadn’t so much as smelled the constabulary, but... what if this was a trap? Either way, she supposed she was caught. Nothing for it. She shrugged on a cloaking pelisse and eased open the door the tiniest sliver.
“Yes?”
The proprietress stood not a foot away, her expression grave. Incongruously, the sweet scent of raisin biscuits and hot chocolate wafted through the crack in the door. If this was a trap, it was bloody brilliant.
“I didn’t order—” Violet’s heart stopped when the door swung fully open.
To the right of the proprietress stood a maid bearing the biscuits and chocolate. To the left, one pale hand swallowed by the proprietress’s larger one, stood Lily Waldegrave.
The proprietress raised her brows. “She says she belongs to you. Is that true?”
“Oh, dear Lord.”
Violet sucked in a wheezing breath as her heart kicked back into motion. How in Hades? She fumbled in her pocket for her spare key. Missing. Wonderful.
Distract ’em, and you can nick anything. Isn’t that what she’d thoughtlessly told the girl? Her star pupil had been paying closer attention than Violet had ever dreamed. And she’d been plenty distracted when she’d given Lily a final kiss goodbye. She’d been terrified of never seeing her again. And now here she was. Of course she would look for Violet in the village’s only inn. Lily’s father would be furious.
“What in the bloody hell were you thinking?” Violet exploded. “Are you mad? Nicking a key and—”
The proprietress hissed and drew back. “Is that how you talk to your daughter?”
Violet choked off the rest of her tirade. “My—?”
“Mama,” Lily cried in a little baby voice. She broke free from the proprietress’s hold to throw her skinny arms around Violet’s waist. “Please don’t leave me again.”
Speechless with mortification, Violet slid a pained glance up at the proprietress.
“Is she from Waldegrave Abbey, too?” whispered the suitably nonplussed maid.
Lily lifted her face from Violet’s skirts and nodded. “We were locked up for ages. But now we ran away.”
“Shhh.” Uneasy, Violet swung her up and into the room before any further inappropriate confessions could be made. “Thank you for bringing the refreshments. Once Lily has rested a moment, we’ll be heading back to—”
“I can’t go anywhere.” Lily thumped down onto the floor. “My feet hurt.”
Violet spun around to discover her already tugging off her boots. Swollen blisters dotted both pale heels. Violet closed her eyes. Of course. Lily had been in one room her entire life. If her limbs weren’t accustomed to walking long distances, her feet would certainly not be accustomed to the prolonged chafing of tight shoes.
Violet turned back to the proprietress. “Is there a carriage we can rent?”
The proprietress looked startled at the question. “’Fraid not, mum. You’ve seen Shrewsbury. There ain’t enough of it to bother taking a carriage from one side to the other. Only carriage that passes through regular is the post.”
Violet glanced toward the window. Now that night had fallen, the streets were silent and empty. Of course there was no carriage. “Is there a message boy we could dispatch to the abbey, to ask Mr. Waldegrave to come posthaste in his?”
The proprietress shook her head. “Don’t believe he’s got a carriage.”
“That’s right,” the biscuit-maid put in as she placed her tray upon a small table. “When ’e was ’ere buying buttons the other day, ’e did come on foot.”
Violet exhaled slowly, and did her best to put aside for the moment the reminder that sun-shy Alistair occasionally escaped the abbey for a little town shopping. “Can you at least send him the message that his daughter is here at the inn?”
The maid’s eyes widened. “This is his daughter?”
“He has a wife?” echoed the proprietress, thunderstruck.
“Oh, they’re not married,” Lily put in as she climbed atop the ancient bed. “She’s my governess. And my mama.”
Lovely. Violet tried to keep smiling through clenched teeth, but her fingers clenched the sides of her gown. The proprietress and her maid now stared at Violet in a wholly new light. This might not be the pinnacle of the miseries she’d suffered in her twenty-some-odd years, but it was rapidly becoming one of the most humiliating.
“Can someone please, please, dispatch the message?” she said with what little composure she had left. “Immediately?”
The maid nodded so enthusiastically that Violet had no doubt everyone in a fifty-mile radius would have the news before sunup.
“As you say, ma’am.” The proprietress held out her palm. “That’ll be sixpence for the missive, another for the refreshments, and one and six for the extra guest.”
Fully aware that she was being swindled blind precisely because she was in no position to haggle, Violet jerked her coin purse from her skirt pocket and placed the required half-crown onto the proprietress’s palm.
“Thank you,” she forced herself to say politely. She firmly closed the door in their unabashedly craning faces and turned toward Lily. “What the devil were you thinking, to do such a foolish—”
Violet’s words faded into nothing at the sight of the child fast asleep atop the bedclothes, both boots off and her pelisse still on.
Shaking her head with a sigh, Violet shrugged off her own pelisse before easing Lily out of hers and crawling onto the bed beside her. There would be plenty of time to read Lily the riot act in the morning. And if there wasn’t—if Alistair ripped into the inn like a hurricane—then they both could use a little sleep beforehand.
Chapter 38
Violet awoke to earsplitting screams. Lily.
Light poured through the still-open curtains, cascading over the bare-framed bed and bathing them in the sun’s warmth. Wherever the dawn’s light touched Lily’s bare flesh, the skin pinkened and inflamed before Violet’s very eyes.
She seized the thin bed linen out from beneath Lily and threw the material atop her. Then she raced to the open window, frantically tugging the curtains closed. They were a little too short and didn’t quite meet in the center, allowing an inverte
d T of deadly sunlight to sear the uncurtained bed. Moth holes in the worn linen bedclothes displayed peekaboo patches of angry, blistered flesh.
Panicked, Violet upended her bundle of clothes and draped gown after gown upon the curtain rod until it began to bow under pressure. She yanked the bell pull until the cord threatened to fray, and then raced back to Lily’s side.
Slowly, nervously, she peeled the linen off the trembling child.
Fortunately, Lily still wore the dress she’d arrived in. Unfortunately, the gown lacked undersleeves and the hem hit mid-calf. The result was horrific.
The heel blisters of the night before were no longer discernible amid the bright red flesh and raw blisters covering her from shin to toe. Her arms and hands were likewise ruined, her neck and face nearly unrecognizable. Silent tears streamed down the once-white cheeks. Violet’s cheeks were just as wet.
She scanned the room for a pitcher of water. Unsure whether she was doing exactly the right but unwilling to let Lily suffer, Violet slowly poured the cool, clean water over the child’s raw skin.
When a serving girl finally answered the call, Violet shoved the empty pitcher into the astonished maid’s empty hands.
“More water,” Violet said in a tone that brooked neither arguments nor questions. “As cold as you can make it, and ice if you’ve got it. I need a doctor or a surgeon or anybody that knows anything at all about children or burns or healing ointments. And I need Mr. Waldegrave here right bloody now.”
The maid’s eyes widened as they took in the burnt child upon the bed. “We sent the message last night. Jimmy’s young and didn’t think to wait for a response. Since the abbey ain’t sent a return message, p’raps Mr. Waldegrave is simply waiting to come at a decent hour.”
“Mr. Waldegrave will simply have to come immediately,” Violet said through clenched teeth. “Send Jimmy back this very second. Tell him to box the man’s ears if he has to. And hurry back with that water!”
“Yes’m. I will, ma’am.” The maid clutched the empty pitcher and scurried for the stairs.
Violet hurried back to the side of the bed and eased one hip carefully down onto the mattress. She hated to do anything that might disturb Lily, but she hated even more being right beside her and unable to help. Violet glanced up at the pile of gowns hanging haphazardly across the window and then gazed back down at the shivering, blistering child beside her.
More than anything, Violet hated being responsible for Lily’s pain. She was the one who hadn’t thought to close the curtains. She would never forgive herself for that. Ever.
“W-what happened?” Lily croaked, her eyes squeezed shut tight and her voice raw.
Violet swallowed hard. “You got burned by the sun, honey.”
Eyes still shut tight, Lily nodded once as if that much, at least, had been expected. “Are you sending me away?”
“Home, Tiger Lily,” Violet promised. “We’re both going home.”
Lily cracked open her eyes. “You’ll stay with me?”
Violet nodded, doing her best not to let Lily see her cry. “Of course.”
Lily tried to smile, then winced from the pain of having stretched her cracked flesh.
“Then it was worth it,” she whispered, clutching the folds of Violet’s gown with her injured fingers. “Please don’t leave me ever again. I love you.”
Choking back a sob, Violet jerked her face up toward the empty bar where bed curtains should have hung and blinked back tears as rapidly as she could. “I love you, too, Tiger Lily. I’m yours forever and ever.”
The pounding on Alistair’s door matched the incessant pounding in his head.
“Go away,” he shouted, burying his head beneath his pillow. If his father had suffered thus after every drinking spell, then Alistair hadn’t been missing a damn thing. “I swear I will vomit if you bring food near me again!”
“Master, come quickly. You are needed.”
Warily, he forced himself to sit up. Roper, who never lost his calm, sounded on the verge of panic. “What is it?”
“It’s Miss Lillian,” came the urgent reply. “We must go. Right now.”
Aggrieved, he held his throbbing head with one hand and forced his feet into slippers with the other. Whatever was amiss, he was certain it did not need to be attended to until at least noon. He stumbled across the room and pawed at the lock until it inadvertently clicked free. Clutching the wall at a sudden attack of nausea-spiked vertigo, he swung open the door.
“What has she done this time?” he demanded. “Tell her to go back to sleep. There’s no class today.”
Belatedly, he realized a diminutive servant boy not much older than Lily herself also stood next to Roper, with Mrs. Tumsen and half the staff hovering right behind.
“What’s going on?” He struggled to clear his thick head. “Why are you all here? Is it my birthday?”
“It’s your daughter,” the boy piped up. “She’s all burnt up at the inn with your mistress.”
The haze evaporated from Alistair’s mind, but the words still did not make sense. “What?”
“Master,” Roper murmured. “You remember yesterday, when you said Miss Smythe had left you?”
He shot a quick glance over his manservant’s shoulder at the gaggle of onlooking staff and decided there wasn’t much point in dissembling. “Yes, I seem to recall something of that nature.”
“Miss Lillian took off after her,” Mrs. Tumsen put in, her voice and hands shaking. “They spent the night at the Shrewsbury Inn, and this morning... well, this morning there was sun. The inn hasn’t got curtains and bed testers like we do. And Miss Lillian... ” She swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
Struck with bone-jarring terror, Alistair bolted from his room without bothering to fetch his coat and hat or muck with sensible shoes.
“Where are my horses?” he barked, cursing himself for ever letting go his livery. So what if he hadn’t taken a ride in nine years? If he would have been smart enough to have kept stableboys on hand just in case, he wouldn’t be about to waste a good hour chasing his half-wild horses into the barn to be readied. “Has anybody checked the carriage to make sure it’s still viable? How are the wheels? If I have to walk into town and carry her back in my bare hands... Roper, summon a physician. Have him meet us at the inn. Cook, see what you can do for cold compresses. Order every ounce of ice in a hundred yard radius. Mrs. Tumsen, you know where the liniments are. I want to see every single footman carrying buckets of water to Lily’s chamber. It’s too dangerous to travel with her while the sun still shines, but as soon as nightfall hits, I’m bringing her back home. Maids, prepare everything you can think of. I’m counting on everyone to do their part to—”
“Master.” Roper stepped forward. “It’s done. The horses have been readied and the carriage awaits you. There’s a full bottle of ointment and clean linen soaking in ice water between the seats. Everyone you don’t see here before you is carrying water and ice to Miss Lillian’s chamber. Physicians have been notified and Mrs. Tumsen has placed every drop of liniment within arm’s reach of Miss Lillian’s bed.”
Alistair could have hugged him. “Then what are we waiting for? Roper, come with me. The rest of you—” He took in their worried, sympathetic faces. “Thank you all.”
He preceded Roper down the corridor and out the door, then raced to the reins like a man possessed. They flew down the path at a tear, dirt and dust billowing up behind them.
When they arrived at the inn, a crowd had already begun to form. Some of the womenfolk hovered by with expressions of alarm and empathy. A few of the menfolk, led by the smithy, were less congenial. They shouted Bible verses and “Let the devil spawn burn!” as he shoved past them to enter the inn.
The proprietress stood halfway up a curved staircase, gesticulating wildly. “They’re upstairs. Come quickly!”
With Roper on his heels and his heart in his throat, Alistair raced up after her.
The room was pitch black. Someone had seen to that muc
h, at least. After the blinding light of the midmorning sun, it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. Weak flame flickered in a small sconce. Slowly, the shadows began to make sense. As soon as he could make out the bed, he hurried over and fell to his knees at his daughter’s side.
Hands wringing, Violet leapt to her feet to allow him room. He ignored her. How she could have let this happen...
“Papa’s here, sweetling,” he murmured, suffering at the sight of so many burns covering his daughter’s sweet face. “I’ve got some ointment and a cold wrap here for you, and then I’m going to bring you home.”
“Alistair,” Violet burst out. “I am so, so sorry. I never meant—”
“Be silent.” If she forced him to speak to her, he would only wound them both.
An icy fury emanated from his bones. Had he not told her time and again the horror that would occur if Lily went into the sun? His innocent daughter was in a horrible state, and she had let it happen. These burns were far worse than those Lily had suffered before, and she still bore the scars from last time.
Alistair’s throat closed. People died from burns like these. If he lost his daughter because Violet hadn’t protected her, he would never, never, forgive her.
He thrust an open hand toward Roper, who immediately provided him with shears. Slowly, gently, Alistair trimmed away the sleeves where they might rub against Lily’s raw arms, cut away the bottom third of her skirt where it could chafe her thin, blistered legs. With every snip of the shears, he sliced away another part of his soul.
Lily was hurt. Lily was in pain.
Lily might die.
Vision blurring, he covered her with every drop of the ointment. His entire body shook with anger and fear and desperation. He lifted the large folded linen from the bucket of ice water and carefully swaddled it around his daughter. She winced as necessity forced him to touch and move her, but she made not a single word of complaint. She was so fragile... Her brave stoicism broke his heart.
Too Wanton to Wed: Gothic Love Stories #4 Page 29
