by Lee Rowan
Will ran a finger along the damp sill, then dried it with the sleeve of his nightshirt and pushed the window open again until some random drops spattered on the stone. “We should see how long it takes for this to dry,” he said, “and we will have a notion of how long ago he was here.”
“I wonder if he will have the nerve to come back in the morning,” David said. “By the way, Will, you were the first to find Virginia—what woke you?”
“I must have been dreaming—nothing I remember—and there was something in my dream about a door closing. I heard it quite distinctly; it woke me. I should have just gone back to sleep, but….” He shrugged. “I had the conviction that the sound had been real, so I got up to look in the hall. I heard the sound of movement from the stair, found that someone was lying there, and came to wake you.”
“You must have heard the closing of this door. We should ask Amelia what brought her out. But for now, I think it’s time to wake my father. And as with the doctor’s last visit, I think it would be best if you take yourself discreetly away for now.”
“I hate leaving you to face all this,” Will said.
“And I would love to let you have the honors!” David replied, attempting to lighten the mood. “But you might as well take the chance to get dressed. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”
IT WAS a long half hour, anyway, before the Earl was up and about and convinced that his offspring had taken all the correct actions without his supervision. As they settled around the table in the little sitting room between Amelia and Jane’s bedrooms, he could do nothing but yawn and complain about the cause of his surprising absence during the crisis.
On Fiske’s orders, he had taken a dose of laudanum himself upon retiring and had slept through everything, much to his own disgust. “I should have known better. ‘You need your rest,’ he said.” He snorted. “I’m asleep for no more than six hours and that woman decides to go roaming and endanger her child!”
“I’m sure that wasn’t her intention, Papa,” Amelia said wryly. Exactly the right tone, David thought—at least, for Amelia it was.
The Earl snorted once more. “Walking in her sleep, I suppose. You haven’t bothered your mother about this, I hope!”
“No, sir,” David answered. “Kirby heard us in the hall and came out to help, but Mother was asleep when she left and still sleeping when she went back. Anne is awake and sitting with Virginia, Captain Marshall is getting dressed—”
“As is Jane,” Amelia put in. “Genie is still in bed. I hope she sleeps as late as she usually does.”
Their father nodded. “I want no mention of this to your mother until after Fiske has seen Virginia. There’s no need to cause her unnecessary distress.”
That had been David’s thought as well, but he had known suggesting it would only irritate his father. “Yes, sir. The boy went off over an hour ago, so if Dr. Fiske is at home, they should be here before much longer.”
“Good.” He yawned hugely, covering it with one hand. “Damn that quack’s potion! I thought tea would do something to dispel it, but it’s useless.”
David caught his sister’s eye, and she spoke up. “Papa, would you like to lie down until the doctor arrives and give the medicine time to wear off?”
“No, I would not!” he said, but the last word vanished in another yawn. “But I had better, I suppose.” He pushed himself up, not quite as steady on his feet as David would have wished. “You may as well see him in and explain the situation. I would only be repeating what you’ve told me. But I want to talk with him before he leaves. Laudanum, indeed! I’m not in my dotage just yet!”
Amelia went with him, disguising her solicitude with questions about what to ask the doctor. David decided to watch rather than try to help and risk irritating his father again. He was more concerned than he liked to admit over his parent’s uncharacteristic docility. It was foolish to worry; he knew that. The Earl seldom took any sleeping draught other than his customary port or brandy, he was nearing seventy, and the past few weeks had been difficult ones. The dose of laudanum had obviously knocked him out, proving Dr. Fiske’s diagnosis of fatigue, even if his patient would not admit it. But the shape he was in, even a man as stubborn as the Earl might concede to lying down as a graceful alternative to falling flat on his face.
All that granted, it was still distressing to see the man who had been as strong and immovable as Gibraltar suddenly agree to go back to his bedchamber while there was a crisis in his house. It was wrong, unnatural.
No. It was the most natural thing in the world. It was the way of things that the older generation would step back so that the next, younger and stronger, could shoulder the burdens. But, God in Heaven, there could not be a worse time, with the responsibility falling in one direction and the power in another.
David picked up his teacup and drained it, in agreement for once with his father—the tea did nothing to make him feel more alert or rested. He might as well go get into his own clothes, and see whether Will had sat down for a moment and gone back to sleep. Poor Will. David almost hoped he was catching forty winks.
He also hoped to see Dr. Fiske arrive before Ronald came sauntering back, feigning innocence and full of false solicitude, or someone else might go tumbling down those damned stairs.
DAYBREAK WAS near by the time the doctor arrived, a wet, gray dawn appropriate to the occasion. “Where is the lady?” Dr. Fiske demanded, pausing in the doorway only long enough for Leland to take the rain-soaked coat from his shoulders
“This way, sir.” David was no more willing than the physician to stand on ceremony and wait for Leland to lead the way. He didn’t much like Virginia, never had, but this….
“Your boy didn’t say anything but ‘she’s dying,’” Fiske said. “What’s happened?”
“She took a bad fall down the staircase. No one has any idea why she might have been wandering around in the dead of night. Her maid has a bruise on her temple, and was hard to waken when I found her.”
“Do you think her ladyship struck her own maid?”
“I could not say, sir, and I would not attempt to guess why she would do so.”
“The question ought to be how she could have done it. Did she take her cordial at bedtime?”
“Yes, sir, my sister Amelia watched her drink it.”
“It would take a great deal of resolve to overpower that medication. Was she in an hysterical state?”
“According to her maid, no. But I imagine that, in her state of mind, anything might be possible. She has been unconscious since we found her a little over two hours ago. My sister says she muttered briefly after she was put to bed, and her breathing has grown harsh this past half hour. But… well, sir, you were here not long ago. She had remained uneasy in her mind on the matter of my brother’s death, full of fears and accusations.”
“Yes, yes. Were there any visible injuries? The child…?”
David could only shrug, and then they were at the bedroom door where a knot of anxious servants melted away at the advent of the physician. Kirby opened the door and led them through the sitting room. As they entered the bedroom, Margaret left off bathing her mistress’ forehead and turned back the counterpane.
Fiske took hold of Virginia’s lax wrist. After a few seconds, he glared at the hapless maid. “When did she stop breathing?”
“She—” The woman bent closer and let out a shriek. “Oh, my dear Lord! No! Just this moment, it must be, oh, dear heaven! She turned away when I touched her just a moment ago—” She took a couple of quick, squeaky breaths and turned frantically to Amelia, standing with Will at the far side of the bed. “You saw, my lady?”
“Yes,” Amelia said, her face white but composed. “Just as you entered, I believe. A few harsh breaths… then stillness.”
Fiske took a small disk from his pocket and polished it on his sleeve. A mirror, David saw. A chip of silvered glass that stayed bright and undimmed by breath when he held it up to the woman’s silent lips.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I am too late.”
And then, in the deathly quiet of the room, they saw a small movement under the coverlet stretched over Virginia’s belly. David cringed inwardly. The baby, so near to term, would die slowly, suffocated. Another death on the household.
“Go get a basin of hot water,” Fiske told the maid. “Go. Now. And you, Lady Amelia.” He cut David and Will out with a look. “Not you two.” He folded back the covers, set his black bag down on the spotless counterpane, and unbuckled it. “Navy, you said?”
Will swallowed. “Yes.”
“Seen some bloodshed?”
“More than I care to remember,” Will said. “What are you—”
“Up on your Shakespeare?”
“Julius Caesar?” David guessed. “Do you think we can save him?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his sister pull the door shut behind her.
“We might,” Fiske said. “Due in two weeks’ time. If we’re quick about it….” He selected a small, sharp instrument from the case and sliced ruthlessly through the soft wool of Virginia’s nightdress. “Hold that shawl ready. You—Marshall? Stir up the fire, we’ll need to keep the child warm.” Probing carefully with his left hand—“Ah, there you are, you rascal, stay there….” He raised the scalpel once more and brought it down, and David had to turn his head away.
She should have screamed. Any sailor under the knife would have. More than the cloudless mirror or her marble pallor, that unearthly silence convinced David that his sister-in-law was indeed dead. Not all the blood he’d seen shed in battle could have prepared him for the sight of the gruesome birth, but he managed to keep hold of his nerves as well as the squirming infant that Fiske deposited on the delicate woolen shawl draped over his shaking hands.
David swallowed his gorge. He’d seen calves born, and horses, and that one summer Freya had delivered her pups right in the nursery… they’d looked very much like this, but smaller. It was just a baby, he told himself, just a baby… and it wasn’t breathing. “Oh my God.”
“Steady there,” the doctor said. “We must unwrap the little chap—Oh, pardon me, the young lady.” He peeled off the caul and cleared the child’s wrinkled face, pushing gently on her belly, then releasing it quickly. With a great whoop, the tiny chest expanded and color rushed into the wizened body. A thin wail wavered in the air, and Fiske grinned foolishly. “The finest sound in the world. There, there, my dear, your uncle David will look after you.”
He wrapped the ends of the shawl around the baby and pushed her toward David. “Hold her there while I deal with the cord.” Once again, David looked away. In a moment the doctor said, “Take her into the sitting room and keep her warm by the fire. I need to tidy up here, before that maid comes back in and starts howling like a banshee. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Jordan, in the village—wet-nurse—in case she might be needed. You’d best send someone for her—tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her.”
David nodded numbly and took the baby over near the hearth, finding a strange comfort in the jerky, involuntary movements of its arms and legs. He sat down in the low chair near the warmth, only then realizing his knees were shaking.
After a moment, he felt Will move closer to stand beside him, hovering, one hand on his shoulder. “A little girl,” Will said under his breath.
“Yes. A little girl.” His eyes went unbidden to the doctor, who was hastily repairing the damage to the body. A little girl. Not a son who would avenge his father. Not a new heir. A helpless baby girl who would be no threat at all, to anyone.
A child now orphaned, and to no purpose.
Chapter 12
“SHALL I make myself discreetly invisible?” Will asked.
“If you like. In fact, you might go downstairs and see if there’s any sign of breakfast. I’ll be down when the doctor’s finished. That girl should bring up the water soon, and I imagine Amelia will rally the troops to do whatever is needed. Ask whoever’s serving to make up a pot of coffee for the doctor, would you? I know he’ll need to speak to my father before he leaves.”
Relief was not long in coming. Even before Margaret managed to find a basin of hot water, Amelia returned, and she had anticipated what had occurred; she had gone to fetch their nurse. The old woman’s face lit up at the sight of Mark’s newest and last child, one small bright spot to end a long and very dark night, and David was happy to hand the baby into the arms of someone far more qualified to care for her.
“Boy or girl?” Amelia murmured, standing close.
“Girl.”
“Ah,” she said, a world of meaning in the syllable.
“Yes, and safer for it,” he said as he made use of the washbasin. “But only for the present. What remains to be done?” David had been worried that his sister might be too shaken by this latest catastrophe to carry on, but she seemed to be in much the same state he was—numb, the way men could get after the cannon had been battering them for hours with waves of sound and concussion. Too numb to feel, but not quite too numb to function.
“I need to sit down and make a list,” she said, smothering a yawn. “I spoke to Father. I think Mama will give Kirby instructions about what to do about….” She glanced at the bedroom door, and her composure wavered a little. “There’s no end to it, is there? How much longer will this go on?”
“I don’t know.” He gave her a hug. “Poor old thing, why don’t you run downstairs now? I sent Will off to find some breakfast, and you deserve it as much as he. Or would you like me to have something sent up to your room?”
“I should like to go down for breakfast, I think. But first I will go and wash my face and see if Jane is awake.”
“She slept through all this?”
“Yes. It would have been cruel to wake her. She stayed with her own mother through her last illness, and it was a difficult death. I know she would have sat with me, but since she and Virginia were never close, I thought it best to let her sleep.”
“Was Virginia ever close to any of you?” he asked.
“She and Mary got on very well,” Amelia said. “We were all on reasonably good terms, but Jane and Genie and I did mean to go and live with Mother at the Dower House when Mark inherited.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to live with her, either,” he said.
Amelia smiled sadly. “It’s true Virginia could be difficult, but I pitied her. I think if she had ever been able to give Mark a son, she might have been more assured and less fretful.”
David thought it more likely that she would have become insufferable if that were the case, but Amelia generally viewed people less cynically than he did himself. “Since we’ll never know, there’s no harm in hoping you were right,” he said. “Go along, then. I’ll see you downstairs.”
He felt he ought to stay until Dr. Fiske had completed his examination of the body, but the doctor said he required no assistance for that task and David kept catching himself dozing off. He finally decided there would be no harm in a walk down the hall, so he excused himself and stepped out of the suite. The rest of the household was up and about, and the Earl, who had apparently slept long enough to shake off his fatigue, was pacing the hall outside Virginia’s suite when his son emerged.
“Amelia told me,” he said without preamble. “Did Virginia ever wake and explain what she was doing out in the hall?”
“No, sir. She passed away without saying a word. Does Mother know?”
“Yes. Took it well. She said that at least Virginia is at peace now.”
“I hope so.” His mother’s view was no doubt preferable to the notion of Virginia’s angry spirit storming through the halls—though if she could be persuaded to haunt Ronald, that might be worth seeing.
“I wanted to name the child after your mother,” his father said abruptly. “She says we should name her Michaela, after Fiske. That seems fair enough—he did save her life.”
“Dr. Fiske certainly deserves the honor,” David said. He felt he ought to suggest consulta
tion with Virginia’s family, but decided there was nothing to be gained by it. The baby would most likely remain here in any case. This had been her father’s home. She would be the apple of everyone’s eye and unlikely to object to any name her grandparents chose to give her. “What of Mark’s other daughters?”
“They’ve never liked it here, and I don’t want to bring them out from London under the circumstances. That Stafford woman dotes on those girls, so I think it’s best they stay with her for now. I hope she wants to keep them with her in London until she can marry ’em off. I expect she will if I pay for their keep!”
David blinked. He had not considered Mark’s three elder daughters, and he pitied them, but he hoped his father was right about their Grandmother Stafford. “And the new baby?”
“Even if I were fool enough to pack a newborn off to London, your mother isn’t! I need to send word about the funeral, of course, but I shall let her decide whether the girls need to attend. Since Virginia meant to have the child christened here, I mean to prevent those Staffords from giving her one of those insipid milksop names that she saddled the first three with. Didn’t do them any good that I ever saw.”
Patience, Prudence, and Verity would probably not appreciate their grandfather’s assessment, but David was inclined to agree. He was able to avoid any comment on the matter because Dr. Fiske appeared and asked for a word with the Earl. David waited only long enough to see if his presence was required, then went off downstairs to find Will and a large quantity of coffee.
AS USUAL, Grenbrook’s staff saw to it that breakfast was everything one might desire, even if one had awakened to a shocking tragedy at an ungodly hour. Will was halfway through a heaping plate of eggs and ham when Davy made his way downstairs, followed shortly after by Lady Amelia and Jane Winston.
They were seated in a smaller saloon a little way from the main dining room, and there was a dearth of conversation among them after an announcement from Amelia that Anne was having breakfast in her mother’s rooms, and Eugenia was fretting because Nurse would not let her come near the new baby until she was absolutely free of what had developed into a bad cold. “I hope she is well soon. Not that Nurse needs any help, but Genie could do her white-work there and have something happy to distract her.”
