by Carla Kelly
There was a big sigh, and then a slight motion as the coachman climbed down. One of the postilions opened the door and drew out the step, helping Onyx down.
“Well, Miss Hamilton …” said the coachman. He took off his hat and bowed elaborately, much to the delight and nudgings of the postboys, who grinned at him despite their exhaustion. “Here you are at Sherbourn.”
Onyx shook his hand. “You are a special coachman, sir,” she said. “I thank you for what you have done.”
She turned to help Alice, when a low crying moan that was scarcely human came from the manor. Onyx whirled around, facing the door as it was banged open. Down the steps hurtled a fragile-looking woman.
“Jack!” she screamed. “Jack!”
Onyx ran forward and grasped the woman by the arms.
She could see that the lady was no older than herself. “Madam, may I help you?” she said.
“Jack's not with you? Oh, how could he be! He just left.” She freed her hands in a sudden motion and pressed them to her forehead. “I must be going mad! Oh, please help me!”
Onyx took her hand again, this time holding the agitated woman tighter. “I am Onyx Hamilton. Major Beresford sent for me.”
“Miss Hamilton? We did not expect you so soon. I am …” She paused, as if for a second she could not remember her own name. “I am Emily Beresford. Please, you must help me. Dr. Marchmount will not listen, and Jack had no idea that he would be here today or he would not have left me alone. Please come.”
Onyx let herself be dragged into the manor by Emily Beresford, who, for all her fragility, had the grip of an eagle's talon on her wrist. She towed Onyx across the polished stones and started up the stairs.
“He wants to bleed Adrian. Heavens! He has no blood left! How can he do this! He tells me that he is the doctor and he knows what is best for Adrian. I told him to stop, but he would not listen. He must be stopped!”
They reached the top of the stairs and Emily Beresford released her, breathing heavily. “What must you think of me?” she said in a whisper.
“I think you need help,” said Onyx, stripping off her gloves and then throwing aside her bonnet. A door was open down the hall, and she ran toward it. I shot a highwayman on the road, she thought. Surely I can deal with a doctor. Jack expects me to.
HE ODOR THAT ASSAILED ONYX'S NOSTRILS made her step back involuntarily. She peered into the dark room, all her senses on edge, her stomach recoiling from what was within. She hesitated to enter, as the smells of the sickroom reminded her of the Reverend Hamilton's death ten years before. And then she saw Adrian, his body the merest ripple under the light sheet that covered him, and her courage came back.
“Wait, sir,” she called to the man—it could only be the doctor—who was bending over the bed. “Please don't touch him.”
The man straightened up and looked her way. He was well-dressed in black frock coat and elaborate embroidered waistcoat. In his hand he held a small metal box. Onyx looked at it and remembered such a box at her father's bedside during the final stage of his long illness. She had played with it once when no one was watching and cut her fingers for her foolishness.
“Don't bleed him,” she said as she hurried to Adrian's bedside.
The doctor slammed the bleeder down on the table by the bed. Adrian, his eyes still closed, twitched at the noise, as though his nerves were wired together. The doctor stepped toward her. He towered over Onyx, but she did not back away.
“I will not have overly nervous females telling me what is my duty,” he snapped at her. “It is perfectly obvious to me that this man's black humors are about to overtake his entire system. He must be bled to release them. It is the only way. Leave me.”
“I will not,” said Onyx. “You will go right now before I set my postboys on you.” She called to Emily, who stood in the doorway wringing her hands. “Lady Sherbourn, be so good as to summon them up here right away.”
Emily darted away. Onyx turned back to the doctor, who had not retreated one step. “Lady Sherbourn tells me that Major Beresford has gone in search of a physician. Your services are no longer required here. Submit your bill, and let us not see you here again.”
“You are killing this man,” said the doctor.
“No, you are,” she said, her voice deadly quiet. She took a step toward him, and he backed away. “If you do not leave, I will take that poker to you myself.”
The doctor laughed and again Adrian twitched. “You? You?” Dr. Marchmount roared. “Is this house filled with raving females?”
“Don't try me,” she replied, and pressed her lips tight together to keep her voice from shaking.
The doctor stepped back from the bed, and Onyx turned to Adrian. His eyelids flickered but he did not open them. She took in his terrible emaciation and the dreadful smell that emanated from his body and raised the sheet.
His bony hips and ankles were covered with sores, raw, weeping wounds caked with his own excrement, deep holes in his already thin body. She touched one, noting how inflamed it was with filth. She raised her eyes to the physician, daring him to explain such madness to her.
“I use the body's own products to draw out the cancer, miss,” he explained, his voice patronizing, cool. “As the wounds drain, he will begin to heal.”
“Nonsense,” she snapped and lowered the sheet again, more angry at that moment than she had ever been in her life. “These are nothing but sores! Painful, rotten sickroom sores! What medicine have you been practicing here? I say you are a charlatan and a mountebank! You should be prosecuted and relieved of whatever license, if any, you possess!”
She ran across the room and grabbed up the poker, swinging it over her head as the doctor, abandoning his air of superiority, scrambled out of the room and bumped into the coachman.
The coachman was so exhausted that he swayed on his feet, but he gathered himself together and clamped two meaty hands on the physician's arms. “You're not troubling this lady?” he asked. “After I went to such pains to get her here? Let us go below and discuss this, sir.”
Onyx dropped the poker and picked up the doctor's bleeding box. She flung it at him as he ran down the stairs. “Send Major Beresford your bill, and don't even come here again!” she shouted, pounding her fists on the banister.
The doctor turned around in the doorway only long enough to look up at her. His mouth worked but no words came out. He pointed his finger at her and then ran from the house. In another moment she heard the crack of a whip and a horse racing away. She leaned against the railing and covered her face with her hands. “What have I done?” she said out loud as the coachman lumbered back up the stairs.
“Are ye all right, miss?” he asked as he helped her to her feet.
She dusted off her dress. Her neatly drawn-back hair had come loose from its pins and was wild around her face. She smoothed it back. “Thank you, sir. Again you have been of much help to me.”
“Nothing to it, miss. And now, if you think there is no one else I should eject from this house, my boys and I will tend to our horses.”
She smiled at him, and he tipped his hat and bowed again.
Onyx watched as Emily Beresford trudged back up the stairs, hand-over-hand on the railing, as if she had not the strength to go another step of her own accord. She sank down on the top step and rested her forehead on her knees. Onyx sat down beside her.
“Onyx … Oh, may I call you Onyx? Our acquaintance is so brief “—she smiled slightly—“and somewhat precipitate.”
“Surely we already know each other well enough to dispense with formalities,” said Onyx.
“Onyx, when I engaged Dr. Marchmount, he told me to put Adrian entirely in his hands and do as I was told.” She shook her head. “He seemed so sure of himself, so certain that he was right, that I did not question anything.” She made a face. “Dr. Marchmount was recommended by the older ladies of this neighborhood and friends from York, persons whom Adrian says I must cultivate.” She sighed. “It was only latel
y, as Adrian grew weaker and weaker, that I began to doubt. Would that I had done so sooner. Can you help me?”
“Of course. That is what I came here to do,” said Onyx, feeling less sure now, but not about to share her fears with the worn-out woman beside her. “My foster father died when I was ten. I remember that he had such sores, and I recall what we did for him.”
Emily brightened perceptibly. “Do you think he can be well again?”
“I do not know. We will have to wait until Jack returns with a real physician. But we can make him more comfortable.”
By late afternoon Adrian Beresford was clean and resting on a sheepskin. As she had soaked the sores with warm water and a little witch hazel, Onyx dug back in her mind to the winter of her father's final illness.
“Emily, can you get me a sheepskin?”
Lady Beresford was patting dry a sore on her husband's heel. “I am sure I can. What would that be for?” She looked away. “Forgive me if I sound suspicious, Onyx. I suppose now I am too late wary.”
“That would hardly be surprising. Sheepskin is merely soft to lie upon, and there are oils in it to soothe the skin.”
“I will see to it.”
Albert, the footman, lifted Adrian into his arms while Onyx rapidly changed the sheets and spread out the sheepskin that Chalking had brought her. She directed Albert to lower Adrian onto his side, and she placed a pillow between his knees. “We'll have to move him often. That way the sores will have a chance to heal. I wish the light did not bother his eyes. He would so benefit from sunlight on his wounds,” she whispered to Emily.
During the entire ordeal, Adrian had not opened his eyes. She could see restless movement behind his closed lids, but he made no attempt to look at them.
“Is he in pain?” she whispered again to Emily, who was busy applying the lotion that Lady Bagshott had put in the basket she had sent with Onyx.
“He is in pain when he begins to move about, and moan, and pick at his sheet,” said Emily. “Then I know to give him another dose of morphine.”
“You know how much?”
She nodded.
“May I suggest … if you agree … give him just slightly less than that dreadful doctor prescribed,” said Onyx.
In another hour, as darkness came, Adrian began to pick at his sheet and move his head. Expertly Emily Beresford raised his head and poured a capful of morphine into his mouth, quickly closing his lips so none of it would run out. Soon he was sunk in deeper sleep.
The two women looked at each other. Emily stood up and held out her hand to Onyx, who took it and hauled herself to her feet.
“Every day is thirty-six hours long,” Lady Sherbourn said.
“That will change,” said Onyx. “Do you think there is anything to eat in this lovely house?” she asked.
Emily nodded. “I am sure there is. I had breakfast years ago downstairs.”
Onyx smiled at Emily's little attempt at a joke. “Well, let us see. I wonder where Alice is.”
She had not seen Alice since Emily Beresford came screaming down the stairs that morning. Alice was not accustomed to the sickroom, but she had vanished so completely that Onyx could only wonder.
They went downstairs, arms about each other's waists, holding each other up. Chalking met them at the foot of the stairs. “There is a small dinner ready for you.” He turned to Onyx. “Your companion directed that I take her repast to the bookroom.”
“The bookroom?” asked Emily, mystified.
“Indeed, Lady Beresford.”
Their curiosity aroused, the women went to the bookroom and looked in. Alice was bent over the account books, reconciling the bills and expenses. She glanced up when she heard the door open, with a smile on her face that Onyx had not seen in years.
“This is too famous, Onyx!” she exclaimed, her voice alive with animation that her exhausted charge could only envy. “I have never seen such a collection of bills and statements!”
Emily grimaced. “Excuse my blushes. It is entirely my doing.”
Alice clapped her hands. “Surely you will not mind if I go over your accounts and reconcile them? I haven't had such fun since I taught Gerald his geometry, Onyx. Imagine!”
Onyx could only stare. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, feeling like a fish out of water. With an effort, she gathered her wits about her. “Alice, I am sure Lady Sherbourn will not begrudge you your fun. Only do not stay up too late over it. You'll have plenty to do for days.” She closed the door and left Alice to her pleasure.
Emily stared at the closed door. “I never imagined there could be enjoyment in figures.” She held out her arm to Onyx. “Pinch me. Am I dreaming this?”
“No, you're not, Lady Sherbourn,” Onyx replied. “Alice Banner is a woman possessing a singular nature.”
“No, no, remember? You are to call me Emily,” said the marchioness. “Titles are so dreadfully stuffy. Jack calls me ‘Emmy,’ mainly, I think, because he knows how it rankles.”
Onyx thought of her own nickname born of the clever mind of Jack Beresford but did not see fit to enlighten Lady Sherbourn. She followed Emily into the morning room, where dinner awaited them.
Emily ate but little, nodding over her food and then falling asleep like a little child kept up too late. Chalking summoned Lady Sherbourn's maid, and the woman helped her mistress to her feet and out the door.
“Chalking, if there should be any trouble with Adrian tonight, waken me, please, and not Lady Sherbourn. She is so tired.”
“As you wish, Miss Hamilton.”
She sat alone over dinner, automatically putting food from plate to mouth, not knowing what she was eating. She went to sleep leaning over the food and woke when the little clock chimed ten o'clock. She left the room after blowing out the candles.
The hallway was dark. She tiptoed to the bookroom and looked in, but Alice Banner had long ago taken herself off to her bedroom, wherever that was. Chalking was nowhere in sight. Onyx went up the stairs. It seemed the height of rudeness to look in each room until she found the one with her valise, so she went instead to Adrian's room.
He slept fitfully, pulling at the covers, resting his hand on his swollen abdomen, and then lifting it off as if his spidery fingers were too heavy a weight. She pulled up a chair beside him and rested her hand on his arm.
Adrian was still then. He moved his head in her direction, but he did not open his eyes. A small frown creased the nearly transparent space between his eyes.
“You know I am not Emily,” she whispered, “but you do not know who I am, do you, Lord Sherbourn?”
The frown deepened, but there was no other movement. “My name is Onyx Hamilton,” she said slowly and distinctly. “Jack sent for me. Now, sleep, my lord.”
The frown gradually disappeared. His breathing, although still harsh, became more regular.
She leaned back in the chair and watched him, looking for some resemblance between him and his younger brother and seeing none. Disease had so ravaged his body that he seemed to have no more substance than a pattern card. His facial features were sharp and sunken, his Adam's apple appearing absurdly large because his flesh was so wasted. The veins in his arms were elevated, huge.
“Adrian, what must you have looked like before?” she whispered and felt a great sadness settle over her. She thought then of Jack coming home after four years of terrible warfare to such misery. “Poor, poor men,” she crooned to Adrian.
She woke at midnight when the clock chimed and was still awake a half hour later when she heard voices in the downstairs hall. The first thought to invade her sleep-starved mind was that the doctor had returned. She had half-risen from her chair and was looking around for the poker when she realized the improbability of that notion.
The voices were low, but as she grew more wide awake, she knew that Jack had returned. In another minute she heard him walking up the stairs, moving slowly, as if he were as tired as everyone else in this manor.
The door opened, as she ha
d known it would, and he looked in, adjusting his eyes to the little light from the fireplace before he approached Adrian's bed. She stirred in the chair, and he stepped back quickly, as if surprised to see someone else in the room.
“Emily?” he asked.
“No. Onyx,” she whispered back.
He came closer then and touched her shoulder, as if to prove to himself that she was real. When he decided that she was, he leaned over Adrian, raising the blanket higher around him. He reached for Onyx's hand then, pulling her from the chair and out into the hall. Holding her by the hand, he sat down with her on the top steps before he let go.
“We seem to have serious conversations on the stairs,” he commented, turning to her in better light. “My coachman woke up long enough when I came into the stable to tell me that you were a great gun, a regular brick. And may I add, he has never been known to utter a kind word about any female. You are the first.”
He shrugged himself out of his overcoat, which was wet, and draped it over the banister. “Chalking told me you were in bed.”
She summoned the energy to chuckle. “Chalking abandoned me in the dining room! I fear he is forgetful. Does he generally misplace guests?”
It was Jack's turn to work up a smile. “Yes. He is too old for his post, but there is nothing Adrian dislikes more than pensioning off old servants and hiring new ones. It smacks of work, something he generally likes to avoid.” He looked sideways at her. “Chalking told me a wondrous tale about someone taking a poker and driving off a doctor twice her size. I would have put the whole thing down to advanced senility, except that I heard a similar story in the stable from the postboys, all of whom, including the coachman, as much as told me they would follow you wherever you led. Wellington would envy your command over troops.”
“It wasn't that much,” she protested. He was sitting so close to her, and she wished he would go away.
“It was surely that and more,” he contradicted quietly. “I am deeply in your debt, Onyx B. Onyx,” he amended. “When I saw the chaise in the carriage house, I was all ready to scold you for hurrying so fast, but when the coachman told me his tale, I could only be grateful you arrived in time.”
