by Nancy Butler
“I don’t want broth. I don’t want anything.” He sounded like a peevish child.
“I’m not interested in what you want,” she replied tartly, in a tone that would have done Nanny Perkins proud. “Now sit in your chair and swallow this broth…or I will ladle it down your throat!”
His voice lowered a notch. “Your bedside manner is a bit lacking, Miss Exeley.”
Well, at least he knew who she was, even if she misliked his use of that particular name.
“And your manners are totally lacking, Mr. Perrin,” she responded. “Now come out from there.”
“No!” he growled.
Diana set the tray down on his bedside table and went to peer behind the screen. Even in the near darkness she could see the plaintive, guarded expression in his eyes. He looked like a stag brought to bay. He flung one hand toward her, as if to thrust her away. That hand shook uncontrollably, as it hung there in the air between them. Diana wanted to cry out at the unfairness of it—that he should be so dreadfully afflicted—but knew she dared not express her anguish.
He seemed to sense her dismay anyway, and abruptly curled both shaking hands to his chest, so that the cuffs of the dressing gown obscured them. That childlike gesture of vulnerability pierced her heart.
“Come to gawk, have you?” he muttered. “Gawk at the cripple.” He turned his head into his shoulder. “Leave me a little dignity, will you, for Christ’s sake!”
“I only want you to eat.” She added softly, tenderly, “I’ve had some experience getting stubborn creatures to eat.”
If he recalled those words, the ones he had spoken to her that first night on the island, he gave no sign of it. Diana realized then the dilemma she had placed him in. If he fed himself, he had to sit before her, and attempt, with his palsied hands to carry the food to his mouth. Or he could allow her to spoon the food into him as though he were an infant. Either scenario would have repelled a man as proud as Romulus Perrin.
Diana sighed. “Very well. I will leave the tray. But when I come back for it in an hour, I expect to see that you have eaten every bit.”
He said nothing, and so she went from the room, still trying to fathom this strange illness. One thing was clear to her, however. In spite of all that she and Rom had shared, regardless of all they meant to each other, he still insisted on shutting her out of his pain. There was almost a selfishness to it she could not comprehend. She dreaded to tell her hostess that, although Rom’s memory might have recovered, his spirit was still deeply troubled, so she hid in the rose garden until it was time to remove the tray from his room.
She knocked this time. And allowed him a chance to retreat behind the screen. As she feared, he was nowhere in sight when she entered. She went to the bedside table, relieved to see that at least he had eaten most of his soup and all of the bread.
“Would you like one of the footmen to come up and shave you?” she asked without turning around.
“Where’s the point?” he asked crossly. “I doubt I’ll be riding out to pay calls on all my friends. And if you would cease barging in here, I’ll be happily rid of my only visitor.”
She longed to heave the soup bowl at the screen. “This isn’t working, Romulus.”
“Thank God you’ve realized it.” His curt, disembodied voice came welling across the chamber. “I don’t require a bleeding nursemaid! I’m sure you can find some other poor soul to plague with your charity.”
“Oh, bosh!” she said with great feeling. “I wasn’t talking about myself, you insufferable man. I meant this hiding business isn’t working. I am not going to flee in horror, just because you’ve developed a bit of palsy. I am not one of those superstitious fools from Treypenny.”
“It’s not only the…palsy. I…I don’t want to see you, or speak to you. Can’t you get that through your stubborn head? I don’t have to explain myself to you—suffice to say that my feelings for you have changed. I have changed.”
Diana gripped the edge of the table. She was proud her voice didn’t waver as she called back, “Then come out from there, and say those words to my face. Like a man, Romulus. Not like some craven—”
“I am a craven!” he muttered fiercely as he staggered into the dim light. He raised his trembling hands toward her, entreating her. “It’s not this damned affliction.” He thumped at his chest with one fist “It’s what is gone from here, from my heart. I feel nothing. Nothing but rage, nothing but hatred.”
Diana closed her eyes briefly. “I don’t blame you for hating them, Romulus,” she said quietly. “What Beveril and Argie did to you was indefensible.”
“It’s not them!” he cried raggedly. “I don’t hate them. Christ, I don’t even think about them. It’s me…it’s myself that I hate. You’re right, I am no longer a man…nothing but a worthless, spineless craven.”
He came toward her, and though his steps were unsteady, his eyes looked straight into hers. “I wanted to die…” he breathed. “I prayed to die. There wasn’t an ounce of fight left in me. I let Argie Beasle whip me and never raised a hand to stop him. There is nothing in this world that can take that blight from me. Not you, not anyone.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Not that there is anyone else. They’re all gone. My father, my friends.” His face twitched noticeably, as he said in a frighteningly matter-of-fact voice, “My mother abandoned me, did you know that? My father never admitted it, but I heard the peasant woman who looked after me in Rome relating the sorry tale to a neighbor. Francesca forgot I was fluent in Italian.” All the glibness left his voice as he bit out. “Even my own mother couldn’t bear the sight of me.”
“No, Romulus,” Diana wailed softly. What she most feared had come to pass—his ghosts had risen up again to taunt him, and clearly a new one had been added to their ranks. The pain in his voice when he spoke of his mother had chilled her to the core. “You can’t know why she left you.”
“Good thing she did. It saved her discovering what a worthless coward she had whelped.”
Diana knew with shuddering certainty that this ailment was far beyond her feeble powers to cure.
“I love you, Romulus,” she said in a small voice. “For what it is worth.”
His mouth tightened as he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t. Don’t love me, Diana. Don’t waste it on a man who will never be able to love you in return.”
“You did love me…once.”
“No,” he said dully. “I never did. It was just another sort of madness.”
He dragged himself back to the screen then, back to the shadows that obscured his traitorous body. There was no barrier on earth, however, that could have obscured his broken, wounded soul from Diana. She went toward the doorway, her face white, her hands clutched to her breast. If Romulus had been watching from his refuge, he would have seen her stagger and almost fall as she neared the doorway.
As the door shut softly, the man behind the screen put his trembling hands over his face and wept.
Chapter 13
Lady Hamish was in the lower hallway, arranging a bouquet of tulips and early roses in a Delft bowl. She looked up expectantly as Diana came down the stairs.
“He is still lucid,” Diana said, her tone giving little away. She lowered her eyes, trying to disguise the bleak despair that had settled there, “But the nervous condition he suffers…has made him uncomfortable with visitors.”
Lady Hamish saw at once the distress on Diana’s face, heard the raw edge of pain in her voice.
“If you don’t mind,” Diana continued, “it might be less taxing for Romulus if I alone looked after him.”
To Diana’s relief the baroness agreed, albeit sadly. “I will do whatever you think best.”
* * *
Diana spent each afternoon with Rom, trying to break through his frightening reserve. He barely acknowledged her presence in his room and, though he’d stopped hiding behind the screen, he made a point of always sitting at the window, his face averted from her. She read to him from the books of mythology she loved—
she’d found several in Lady Hamish’s impressive library—but the tales of Olympian gods with their very human flaws, left him unmoved. She spoke to him of her life with her scholarly, invalid father in Yorkshire, and of the school she had started there. All the bits and pieces of her past that she had been unable to share with Romulus on the island, she now offered to him. He made not one comment.
It was like trying to batter down a wall of diamond-hard, impenetrable ice. But she kept on regardless—because she would not let her own sense of futility defeat her. But every night, when she went wearily to her bed, she let the tears of frustration rise up and spill out.
Niall came to visit Romulus three days after Diana’s arrival and would not be turned away. She stayed out of the room, hovering near the doorway while Niall was closeted with him. There were sharp words and muttered curses exchanged, and when Niall emerged, his face was flushed with anger.
“He is mad,” he uttered balefully. “He called me a filthy Gypsy, and told me if he’d wanted the room fouled, he’d ask to have some swine brought in.”
Diana blanched.
“He’s turned into bleeding Beveril,” Niall stated, and then grinned. “Don’t look so mournful, my sweet. A man who’s up to those insults at least isn’t fading away. That’s what I most feared. Anyway, I got a bit of my own back. Told him he looked like a flea-bitten billy goat.”
Niall’s scathing criticism must have fazed Romulus—over tea that afternoon, Lady Hamish informed Diana that the patient had rung for a footman and asked to be shaved. It felt like a small victory.
* * *
The next day Niall returned, carrying a covered wicker basket, “This,” he said, handing it to Diana, “is just what he needs. The man never could turn his back on a foundling.”
The basket contained a fat cygnet. Crowing with delight, she lifted the creature from its bed of straw. Then her eyes clouded in dismay. The baby swan had an odd-looking leather boot on one leg, attached with a harness over its back. “Oh, Niall, what’s wrong with his foot?”
“Snapping turtle got him, it looked like. I found him bleeding on the shore of the island the day after the fire. He was nearly done in, poor creature. I’ve been keeping him there, in the pen. He’s one of your brood, I suspect.”
“This is very clever,” she pronounced, after examining the false foot. “Can he swim?”
“Like falling off a log,” the boy assured her. “He’s been swimming in the pond for days.”
Diana carried the cygnet into Rom’s bedroom and set it on the floor near his chair. It made a beeline for Rom’s legs and began to hop about, eager for attention.
It has to be one of ours, Diana thought. He clearly remembers Romulus.
The man in the chair looked down and frowned. Then he reached down and lifted the cygnet onto his lap. His shaking fingers, once so deft, prodded cautiously at the leather boot. “What foolishness is this?”
They were the first words he had spoken to Diana in four days. “He was bitten by a turtle and lost his foot,” she explained. “Niall made him the little shoe—you know how skilled he is at leather working.”
Gently, Romulus set the cygnet on the floor. “He should have let him die,” he said morosely. “Some things we shouldn’t tamper with. Poor beast will never have a normal life.”
“He’s not a poor beast,” Diana said, bristling. “He is called Remus.” The name had only just occurred to her, but she thought it most apt. Romulus looked up at that, his brows knit in distemper, but Diana ignored his scowl. “And as he gets older, Niall can make him a larger shoe. He swims very well, you might be interested to hear. In spite of his affliction.”
With that pointed statement, she went from the room. She made a great show of walking down the hall, letting her feet thud on the floor. Then she crept on tiptoes back to his door, which she had purposely left open a crack. Sure enough, there he was, leaning from his chair, talking to the baby swan. She couldn’t quite hear his words, but they were soothing, reassuring.
The great sham! she thought with fond fury. So he wasn’t beyond all feeling. He wasn’t beyond love. He’d just lost his way, lost his faith in himself. But he’d find his way back and learn to value himself again. A man who could croon to a baby swan was a long way from being completely lost.
* * *
After five days of being kept from Rom’s presence, Lady Hamish decided it was time for a reckoning with Diana. Though she had continually questioned the girl about her patient, her questions brought no satisfactory answers, so that morning she mentioned she would have a look in on Romulus herself. The dismay in Diana’s eyes was all the answer she needed. She drew the girl into the small morning room.
“Tell me,” Lady Hamish said gently, but adamantly. “Tell me everything.”
To Diana’s credit, she didn’t prevaricate. She regaled her hostess with every bitter, angry comment Romulus had hurled at her that first day, and every hurtful, silent snub he had offered her since. She railed at those who had left their mark on him—the mother who had callously abandoned him, the French who had imprisoned him, Beveril Hunnycut who had plotted his downfall, and Argie Beasle who had whipped him like a cur. She feared, she said with a sob, that everything in his past had conspired to destroy his sense of self-worth. And if that weren’t enough, there was his never-ending guilt over the death of his comrades in prison.
Lady Hamish worried her lip. “He carries a fearful weight on his shoulders, that one,” she murmured. “All that needless guilt. A man’s pride is so easily damaged, Diana. And I don’t need to tell you, Romulus Perrin is prouder than most men.”
“He is in purgatory, Lady Hamish,” Diana wailed softly. “Alone and without hope. That is why I didn’t want you to see him. It would rend your heart.”
Lady Hamish smiled slightly. “I am tougher than you give me credit for. Now let me think on this—there may be something I can do to restore Rom’s faith in himself.”
Diana looked doubtful. “Forgive me for saying this, Lady Hamish, but how can you help him? He has turned his back on me, who loves him without judgment. How can another help him to heal?”
“Perhaps the beginning of a cure,” the lady replied cryptically, “is to discover the source of the illness.”
* * *
Lady Hamish waited until Diana was abed before she went to her jewel case and drew a folded paper from a compartment hidden at its base. Then taking up a small bottle of cordial and two glasses from her dressing table, she went out into the hall. The trip to Romulus’s bedroom, only three doors from her own chamber, was the longest walk she had ever taken.
She knocked once and then entered. His eyes widened when he saw who his late-night visitor was. He quickly threw down the book he was reading and was halfway to his hiding place when she spoke out.
“No, Romulus,” she said quietly. “There is no need to hide from me. Nothing I see in you could ever displease me.” He stood wavering before her, clearly unsure of what to do. “Sit,” she said, pointing to his chair. “And I will sit here, just beside you.”
She set the glasses on the table that stood between them, and then poured a generous amount of the deep amber liquid into each one. Romulus watched her the whole time with puzzled eyes.
“I see you are recovering nicely from your recent internment,” she said in a level voice. “The twitches are far less pronounced than the last time.”
His eyes brightened slightly.
“No, you didn’t know that, did you?” she said. “It took you weeks to get the use of your hands back the last time, as I recall, and look at you now, holding your glass with hardly a tremor.”
He knocked back his drink with a single motion, and Lady Hamish refilled his glass. “Yes, this is a very good cordial,” she observed. “Smuggled, I don’t doubt. My butler gets it from the publican in Treypenny.”
The baroness rarely babbled, but she knew she needed a bit of time before she got down to business. She carried her own drink to her lips, wi
shing her heart wasn’t beating so erratically.
“Lady Hamish,” he said slowly, “I wish you would stop tossing pleasantries at me, and get to the point. You haven’t bothered with me this week past, and I wonder that you should trouble yourself with me now.”
The lady took this surly outburst in stride. He had always been fractious, she recalled fondly.
“Our resident dragon has kept me away from you, thinking to protect me, I suppose. Until today, she’s led me to believe that you were merely a little out of sorts.” Her voice deepened. “She neglected to tell me that you have been sitting here for nearly a week, festering with guilt and self-pity.”
“Madam!” Romulus uttered, as he staggered to his feet. “Don’t make me abuse your hospitality.”
“How? By telling me to mind my own business? You are my business, Romulus Perrin. Though it’s taken me twenty-five years to come around to it.”
Romulus shuddered as he fell back in his chair and laid his head wearily against the cushion.
One of them he could fight. Barely. But if they were both going to have at him, Allegra and Lady Hamish, then he’d best take his leave of this place. If he had anywhere else to go, that is. Maybe he could return to the hospital in London. At least there a man was not badgered by women who thought they knew what was best for a fellow.
Not to mention that it was killing him in slow increments to see Allegra every day, and to hold himself aloof from her. To keep trying to convince her that his love had been nothing more than an unfortunate lapse. She was a damned, stubborn chit, but he’d never thought of Lady Hamish as stubborn. High-handed, perhaps. And resolute. But now he saw that she was as bone-headed as Allegra.
“I fear you have left me in the dust, Lady Hamish. What have you waited twenty-five years to do?”
As she took a paper from the pocket of her gown, he saw that her hands trembled worse than his did.
“There is no good way to say this, except right out. I haven’t told you before now, because it was clear you were making your way in the world without me. I almost told you last year, when you came to the island, but again, your spirit prevailed over your illness, and I saw that you still had no need of me.”
