I groaned, too stunned, too hurt, to move. I could only lie there, alone, in complete darkness.
23
“Titania!”
I heard Benedict’s call from somewhere above me. A rumble of heavy footsteps came down the stairs, and the ever-brightening glow of approaching light made me shut my eyes in pain.
“Here,” I said, but my voice came out as nothing more than a groan. I ached everywhere as I moved first my fingers and toes, then my feet and hands. I still wasn’t sure how badly I was hurt. I was still stunned. I thought I must have fallen only moments ago, but I felt disoriented and wasn’t sure how long I’d lain in the darkness.
“Titania! What in God’s name happened? Bloody hell!” Benedict’s cry was one of horror. The volume of it set my head to throbbing. I felt his hands upon my face.
“Shh,” I whispered.“Hurt. Head hurts.”
“Thank God, you are alive. Where else are you hurt? “
“Not sure. My constitution—”
“If you say one bloody word about your constitution, I am going to thrash you. Can I pick you up?”
I hurt all over, but other than the throbbing in my head, no one place seemed worst.“Just a bump on my head.”
“I am going to pick you up. Tell me if I hurt you.”
His strong arms slid around me and pulled me close to him. His warmth eased into me, and I sighed. I was no longer alone in the dark.
“We will go to my room. It is closer,” he said, swinging around.
Cracking my eye open, I realized I had only fallen one level down. “No. My room. Do not want anyone to know about us. But they must. Pushed me.”
“What did you say?” Benedict’s arms tightened about me.
“Pushed. Someone pushed me.”
“Someone’s a dead man. Pushed you from where?”
“From the landing by the schoolroom.”
“Titania, I was in the schoolroom, coming back down to you. I heard you scream. Within seconds I was in the passage. No one else was there.”
“No. I was pushed. I am sure of it.”
He pulled me closer.“Shh. We will worry about this later. You need a doctor.”
There was no dissuading him. So a mortifying hour later I found myself ensconced in my bed, suffering the poking and prodding of a doctor’s examination while a wide-eyed maid looked on and the sounds of Benedict pacing outside the door reverberated throughout the room. I’d yet to face Dobbs, but I did hear Benedict speaking to the man, telling him that my curious nature had me discovering the secret passage in the middle of the night. And my penchant for accidents had me falling on my head. I wasn’t sure if I was more miffed at Benedict for concocting such a story or for Dobbs’s ready belief of it.
Yet I had to admit that it was better than telling the truth. As dizzy as I felt, I wasn’t sure if it was better to be a falling woman than a fallen one.
“Well, Miss Lovell, you are a lucky woman. That is all I can say.” The white-haired, bushy-browed doctor, whose frown was bigger than his girth, pulled the sheet back up, covering my hips.“Bruised and slightly concussed seems to be the worst of your troubles. I will leave you something for pain, and after a couple of days of rest you should be able to be back on your feet. But I warn you now, you are going to have a mighty big headache, and the rest of you is going to feel twice as bad.”
“Nothing is broken then?”
“No. I think your elbow and hip came close, but something must have broken your fall just enough to keep that from happening. I do not have to warn you that this could have been much worse, do I? No more strange stairs in the middle of the night, do you understand?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. The fear that I had felt was still too fresh in my throat.
The doctor left, and Benedict burst in. He looked as if he was about to say something that was going to let everyone within hearing distance know we were on much more intimate terms than governess and employer.
“Mr. Trevelyan,” I said sharply, stopping him in his tracks. “It is kind of you to be so concerned for me.” Speaking forcefully cost me. My head began to throb, and the room around me wobbled.
Benedict visibly sucked in air, then his gaze raked down me, not with desire, but with assessing concern. “Miss Lovell. I am just thankful your injuries are not life-threatening.” He turned to the maid. “Will you need to collect anything from your quarters in order to spend the night looking after Miss Lovell?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be but a minute, sir,”the maid said, curtsying before she left the room.
Alone with me now, Benedict came over and sat on the edge of the bed. I winced as my body shifted toward his weight. He took my hand and brought it to his lips. “Titania, this charade of distance is going to kill me. I swear to you, I am going to get to the bottom of all this. I refuse to believe in a bloody curse.”
Curse? I wondered, but my head hurt too much to ask. I groaned with pain.
“Here,” Benedict said. Reaching to the bedside table, he picked up a small cup and pressed it to my lips.“The doctor left this for pain.”
The sickly sweet smell of laudanum syrup, which I remembered giving my mother during her last days, assaulted my nose. All I could think of through the haziness in my mind was Francesca, drugged and falling from the tower. I didn’t want to die like Francesca. I turned my head quickly, suddenly nauseated, and closed my eyes.
“Titania!” Benedict said my name sharply. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He’d become as white as a ghost. The hand he held the medicine in was shaking like a leaf.
“Why did you say that? Why did you say that you don’t want to die like Francesca did? Dear God. You think I would do that? You think I did do that?”He threw the medicine across the room.
“No, I did not say that,” I said, but there was no conviction in my voice. The presence of the drug and my vulnerable and confused state had me completely unnerved. A woman had died once in this house, and it had never felt more real to me than it did right then that I could, too. I didn’t doubt Benedict, but there were others, and I’d be helpless drugged.
“You did.” His dark eyes were filled with pain, his voice more hopeless than I’d ever heard. The distance between us was suddenly greater than any class difference. Tears stung my eyes, but I couldn’t cry. I let false doubt fill the void, thinking it was better this way.
We had to part. To my fuzzy mind, letting him think I distrusted him made that parting easier. It was for the best, for I was fast losing myself so deep inside of him that I’d rather die than leave him.
The next day passed in a blur of pain and maids. I was never alone, and I had never been more alone. I hadn’t realized just how bleak my heart would be without the warmth of his presence. I didn’t even have the comfort of his scent about me.
It wasn’t until that night, when the mists that I saw from my bedroom window surrounded Trevelyan Manor like a shroud, that I let myself cry. I hugged my pillow close to my breasts, my breasts that ached for his touch, and tears fell. My body ached all over from the fall, but I hurt more deeply for the feel of Benedict’s touch, for the heat of his gaze, for the strength of his presence. I prayed that my tears would wash away some of the pain from my heart, but they didn’t. The pain seemed to grow. The room was dark except for the glow of a dim lamp. The maid who’d been watching over me had fallen asleep, sitting up in the reading chair. So I shut my eyes and gave in to the quiet sobs wrenching through me. I wondered what would happen once I recovered. Would Benedict send me away? I couldn’t leave Justin and Robert yet. Their hearts were just beginning to heal.
I heard a slight noise, just the rustling of the bed curtains. Startled, I sat up quickly, sending a fresh wave of pain stabbing through my head. My breath clogged in my throat as I searched to see who had come to my room in the dark hours of the night.
“Miss Lovell?” came Justin’s whisper. Relief swept through me.
“Yes?” There was no way to hide the fact that I was cryi
ng. Still, I dabbed at my cheeks with the corner of the bed-sheet. Justin hesitantly stepped from the shadows beyond the bed curtains and stood there, looking lost. He had something bundled up in his hands.
“What is it?”
“This… this is for you.” Tissue paper crackled as he set the bundle down next to me.“Don’t cry,” he said.
“Tears can sometimes help the roses grow,” I told him, but I didn’t think there were going to be any more roses in my garden of love for Benedict. Winter had come too soon.
“You… you are going to get better, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I have just a few bruises and a bump on my head, but I will be up and about before you know it.”
“Good,” he said, sighing as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. “This is for you,” he said again and pushed the package closer. “But be careful when you open it.”
“Do you want me to open it now?”
“Yes… please.”
Tearing back the paper, it took me but a second to realize what he’d brought me. “They are beautiful,” I said, as more tears began to fall.
“I do not need them anymore.” Justin placed his hand over mine, which rested upon the bouquet of thorns he’d brought to me.“I am not going to live like Cynthia Parker’s son Quanah—holding on to thorns at the death of his parents. I want to be like you.”
“Justin, thank you. Thank you. This is the best gift ever.”
“Miss Lovell, can I have a big hug? Like the ones you give Robert?”
I opened my arms and wrapped them around Justin and pulled him close to my heart. More tears fell.“You can have all the hugs you can stand,” I whispered softly, praying that I’d be around long enough to fulfill that promise. I feared that rather than helping repair the fabric of the Trevelyans’ lives, I’d done more to tear it apart.
Turning over in bed the next morning, trying to ignore the pain screaming at me as glaringly as the sun beat through my window, I pulled the sheets over my head.
“That will not make me go away.”
My eyes popped open. Surely I hadn’t just heard Mrs. Trevelyan’s acid voice. Not even fate could be that cruel on a morning like this.
“I do believe, Miss Lovell, that you were hired to tend the children, not contract fevers, fall down stairs, and hide beneath bedsheets. I have sent the maid Benedict left here back to her household duties.”
Good Fortune had most assuredly washed her hands of me. I pulled down the covers. Mrs. Trevelyan stood, dressed shockingly in something besides black—a dark blue dress enhanced with a beautiful cameo pinned at the gown’s cream lace neckline. For the first time since meeting her, I saw remnants of the beauty that graced Katherine and could pair them as mother and daughter. Too bad her disposition hadn’t changed with her appearance.
“We both know where I would rather be at the moment, Mrs. Trevelyan. Is there a purpose to your visit this morning besides tormenting me?”I asked, folding my hands calmly. I wasn’t about to let her unnerve me.
“Perhaps not.” Dashing my fervent hopes that she’d depart, she pulled a chair close to the bed and stiffly situated herself in it. “You have proven yourself a liar, so I wonder myself why I am even bothering to speak to you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you recall, Miss Lovell, I said just after you came here that you were sowing the seeds that would destroy my sons, and you replied that your purpose here was to teach my grandsons. I have seen my prediction come to fruition. You are obviously more involved with my sons than my grandsons. Whatever grasp Stephen had gained on his life when he went back East, he has now lost. And when he is sober, he looks at you as if you are his saving angel. Benedict has never been this on edge, not even when Francesca died. You have managed to ensnare them both. What is it you hoped to accomplish? Do you think that Stephen or Benedict will marry a laundress?”
She continued before I could speak.
“Benedict is accusing everyone from scullery maid to me of harming you. It was very clever of you to arrange such a dramatic fall in the middle of the night so near my son’s private quarters. No man can resist the appeal of rescuing a woman in distress. Neither can he resist the role of protector. So claiming you were deliberately harmed was a master touch. And waiting to do it until after I had forsaken my wheelchair allows me to be suspect, too.”
“Did it occur to you that I might actually be telling the truth, Mrs. Trevelyan?” Anger gave me the strength I needed.
“Who else but me wants you to leave?”
“Maybe you can answer that question better than me. Maybe it is not me affecting Stephen and Benedict, but the past.” That wasn’t anywhere near the whole truth, and I hoped lightning wouldn’t strike me dead, but Benedict’s mother had painted such a twisted picture. “Perhaps whoever murdered Francesca wants me gone because I make them uncomfortable.”
“Murdered!” Benedict’s mother stood so abruptly that she knocked the chair over backward.“How dare you bring the filth of gossip into my home! Believe me, that evil woman killed herself and left a curse damning my entire family. She lived on laudanum, could not make it a day without it. And when she could not have what she wanted, she devised a plan to destroy everyone.”
“How?” I asked, wondering if Mrs. Trevelyan had as inaccurate a view of Francesca as she had of me. Yet, even distorted, I had the feeling that I was about to learn more than I ever had about Francesca.
“By pretending to be the innocent, a tragic victim. By making everyone feel responsible for her unhappiness, then leaving a note telling everyone they drove her to her death and that she would haunt their lives, destroying anything and everything that they loved.”
“Surely no one believes that possible.”
“You would think that. But I ask you, what are the results? Look at Stephen, Benedict, and Katherine, and you tell me.” She paused. “I warn you, Miss Lovell, I will do whatever it takes to protect my family this time. I have learned the hard way not to trust an innocent face, and I will not make that mistake again.” She left the room then, and thousands of questions filled the void of her abrupt wake, questions I had to get out of bed to answer.
It took me most of the morning to bathe and dress myself. Though clothed, I wasn’t quite ready to face walking down the stairs until I’d rested, but a little knock sounded at my door before I could sit down. Robert ran inside. “Miss Wovell, I’m scared. I’m scared.”
Constance came through the door on his heels. “Dear Robert, it is nothing more than a clever poem.”
“I don’t wike spiders!” Robert ran right to me and wrapped his arms about my legs. I wasn’t quite steady on my feet yet, and I thought for a moment we’d both topple. Thankfully, we didn’t. I set my hand on top of his head and looked at Constance.
“Whatever has him so upset?”
Constance held up a book.“I found this clever little poem by Mary Howitt, and I thought the boys would love it. ‘The Spider and the Fly.’Have you had the opportunity to read it?”
“No, I do not think I have heard of it.”
“You would know if you had, it’s rather amusing. The spider invites the fly into his parlor. The fly, thinking itself wise, declines, only to succumb to the spider’s flattery and become a meal.”
“I don’t want to be eaten,” Robert cried.
I patted his back.“No one is going to gobble you up. I’m sure that Aunt Constance wouldn’t let that happen. Would you?” I asked, tossing the question to Constance so that she herself could reassure the little boy.
“Indeed not. Now come along. We need to find something for you two boys to do until Cook Thomas is ready with your lunch.”
Now that I had Robert with me, I was reluctant to let him go just yet. I had missed the boys yesterday. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t quite sure what day it was. “How about we all go sit in the garden for a little while?” I smiled at Constance.“I could use some fresh air and company.”
&nbs
p; “Very well, then, to the garden. Perhaps the boys can run off some of their energy. They have the hardest time sitting still. I will bring this poetry book, and perhaps we will have the opportunity to read them another poem.”
Robert looked as if he was about to wail in complete rebellion over hearing more of Constance’s brand of poetry. I set my finger upon his lips, warning him of his gentlemanly duties. “Thank your aunt Constance and run get Justin. Tell him we are going to the garden and to bring his sketchbook.”
“I fear Benedict is going to be displeased if he sees you about, especially with the boys,” Constance said, and my heart squeezed painfully hard.
“Oh.” I feigned surprise.“Why is that?”
“Because you are suppose to be resting. I assured him Maria and I could handle the boys. We got along well enough before.”
“I will have to thank him for his consideration, but I think I have rested long enough. I am not even sure I know what day it is.”
She narrowed her eyes. “My, you are in a state. I had not realized you had hit your head that hard. It is Sunday.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I missed seeing Mr. McGuire yesterday. He must be worried about me. I will have to send him a post.”
“Did you get your post this morning? I believe it was from him.”
“No. I have yet to receive anything. I’ll have to ask Dobbs,” I said, shaking my head. I had to be more addled by my fall than I thought, for I had completely forgotten that I was to see Mr. McGuire yesterday.
Constance frowned, then shrugged. “I could have been mistaken about the letter. But I will be going into town in the morning. If you need, I will gladly deliver a message to Mr. McGuire. He is a dear old man. In fact, I purchased this book of poems from him just last week.”
“Thank you. I will write a note tonight for you to take to him. He means a great deal to me.” I gathered my sketchbook and called to the boys, telling them we were ready to go to the garden. My progress down the stairs was slow, for Justin and Robert spent their energy “helping me.”Being up and about made me feel a great deal better, and I was glad to have Constance and the boys for company. If nothing else, they kept my mind off Benedict and my pain.
The Mistress of Trevelyan Page 32
