“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.”
51
SUSPICION
The 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.
I bit the inside of my lower lip, trying to think of anything or anyone that might possibly give her comfort. Jocasta? Did Jocasta even know of Betty’s death yet? Duncan knew, of course, but he might have chosen not to tell her until after the guests had left.
“The priest,” I said, the idea occurring suddenly to me. “Would you like Father LeClerc to—to bless your mother’s body?” I thought it rather too late for Last Rites—assuming that Phaedre knew what those were—but I was sure that the priest would not mind offering any comfort he could. He had not left yet; I had seen him in the dining room only a few moments since, polishing off a platter of pork-chops garnished with fried eggs and gravy.
A slight tremor went through the shoulder under my hand. The still, beautiful face turned toward me, dark eyes opaque.
“What good will that do?” she whispered.
“Ah … well …” Flustered, I groped for a reply, but she had already turned away, staring at a stain in the wood of the table.
What I had done in the end was to give her a small dose of laudanum—an irony I resolutely ignored—and tell Teresa to put her to bed on the cot where she normally slept, in the dressing room off Jocasta’s boudoir.
I pushed open the door of the dressing room now, to see how she was. The small room was windowless and dark, smelling of starch and burnt hair and the faint flower fragrance of Jocasta’s toilet water. A huge armoire and its matching chiffonier stood at one side, a dressing table at the other. A folding screen marked off the far corner, and behind this was Phaedre’s narrow cot.
I could hear her breathing, slow and deep, and felt reassured by that. I moved quietly through the dark room, and pulled back the screen a little; she lay on her side, turned away, curled into a ball with her knees drawn up.
Bree had come into the dressing room behind me; she looked over my shoulder, her breath warm on my ear. I made a small gesture indicating that everything was all right, and pushed the screen back into place.
Just inside the door to the boudoir, Brianna paused. She turned to me suddenly, put her arms about me, and hugged me fiercely. In the lighted room beyond, Jemmy missed her and began to shriek.
“Mama! Ma! Ma-MA!”
I thought I ought to eat something, but with the smell of the attic and the scent of toilet water still lingering in the back of my sinuses, I had no appetite. A few guests still lingered in the dining room; particular friends of Jocasta’s, they would be staying on for a day or two. I nodded and smiled as I passed, but ignored the invitations to come and join them, instead heading for the stairs to the second floor.
The bedroom was empty, the mattresses stripped and the windows opened to air the room. The hearth had been swept and the room was cold, but blessedly quiet.
My own cloak still hung in the wardrobe. I lay down on the bare ticking, pulled the cloak over me, and fell instantly asleep.
I woke just before sunset, starving, with an oddly mixed sense of reassurance and unease. The reassurance I understood at once; the scent of blood and flowers had been replaced by one of shaving soap and body-warmed linen, and the pale gold light streaming through the window shone on the pillow beside me, where a long red-gold hair glinted in the hollow left by someone’s head. Jamie had come and slept beside me.
As though summoned by my thought, the door opened and he smiled in at me. Shaved, combed, freshly dressed, and clear-eyed, he seemed to have erased all traces of the night before—bar the expression on his face when he looked at me. Frowsy and ill-kempt as I was by contrast with his own neat appearance, the look of tenderness in his eyes warmed me, in spite of the lingering chill in the room.
“Awake at last. Did ye sleep well, Sassenach?”
“Like the dead,” I replied automatically, and felt a small internal lurch as I said it.
He saw it reflected on my face, and came swiftly to sit down on the bed beside me.
“What is it? Have ye had an evil dream, Sassenach?”
“Not exactly,” I said slowly. In fact, I had no memory of having dreamed at all. And yet, my mind appeared to have been ticking away in the shadows of unconsciousness, making notes and drawing its deductions. Prompted now by the word “dead,” it had just presented me with its conclusions, which accounted for the feeling of unease with which I had awoken.
“That woman Betty. Have they buried her yet?”
“No. They’ve washed the body and put it in a shed, but Jocasta wished to wait until the morning for the burial, so as not to trouble her guests. Some are staying on for another night.” He frowned slightly, watching me. “Why?”
I rubbed a hand over my face, less to rouse myself than to collect my words.
“There’s something wrong. About her death, I mean.”
“Wrong … how?” One eyebrow lifted. “It was a fearful way to die, to be sure, but that’s not what ye mean, is it?”
“No.” My hands were cold; I reached automatically for his, and he took them, engulfing my fingers with warmth. “I mean—I don’t believe it was a natural death. I think someone killed her.”
Blurted out that way, the words hung cold and stark in the air between us.
His brows drew together, and he pursed his lips slightly, thinking. I noticed, though, that he did not reject the idea out of hand, and that strengthened my conviction.
“Who?” he asked at last. “And a
re ye sure of it, Sassenach?”
“I have no idea. And I can’t be totally sure,” I admitted. “It’s only—” I hesitated, but he squeezed one of my hands lightly in encouragement. I shook my head. “I’ve been a nurse, a doctor, a healer, for a long time, Jamie. I’ve seen a dreadful number of people die, and from all sorts of things. I can’t quite put into words what it is here, but now that I’ve slept on it, I just know—I think—it’s wrong,” I ended, rather lamely.
The light was fading; shadows were coming down from the corners of the room, and I shivered suddenly, gripping his hands.
“I see,” he said softly. “But there’s no way ye can tell for sure, is there?”
The window was still half-open; the curtains billowed suddenly into the room with a gust of wind, and I felt the hairs rise on my arms with cold.
“There might be,” I said.
52
A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
The outbuilding where they had put the body was well away from the house—a small toolshed outside the kitchen garden. The waning moon was low in the sky, but still shed light enough to see the brick path through the garden; the espaliered fruit trees spread black as spiderwebs against the walls. Someone had been digging; I could smell the cold damp of recently turned earth, and shivered involuntarily at the hint of worms and mold.
Jamie felt it, and put a light hand on my back.
“All right, Sassenach?” he whispered.
“Yes.” I gripped his free hand for reassurance. They would hardly be burying Betty in the kitchen garden; the digging must be for something prosaic, like an onion bed or a trench for early peas. The thought was comforting, though my skin still felt cold and thin, prickling with apprehensions.
Jamie himself was far from easy, though he was outwardly composed, as usual. He was no stranger to death, and had no great fear of it. But he was both Catholic and Celt, with a strong conviction of another, unseen world that lay past the dissolution of the body. He believed implicitly in tannasgeach—in spirits—and had no desire to meet one. Still, if I was determined, he would brave the otherworld for my sake; he squeezed my hand hard, and didn’t let go.
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