by Jane Feather
Sam returned with a leather kit bag and flask. He unstoppered the flask and held it to her lips. “ ‘Ere, take a good swig o’ this.”
It was rough brandy that scorched her throat and jolted her belly. But the fumes alone seemed to bring her out of her strange trance. She sat up and shook her head as if to dispel the lingering tendrils of the nightmare.
She held her hands in her lap. They were a curious dead white and she couldn’t seem to make them move … not even her fingers. “They won’t work,” she said to Sam in a plaintive little voice.
He took each hand in turn and chafed it between his rough, callused palms. “They’ll come back in a minute, lass.”
Emma decided to believe him. Sam had transferred his attention to her feet. The burned flesh stung dreadfully, but the upper part of each foot was numb with cold.
Sam rummaged in his medicine bag and brought out a foul-smelling ointment that he slathered on the soles of her feet. It had an immediate soothing effect.
“I’ll be off to ’elp the master now. Sit tight ’ere, an’ we’ll be back in a minute or two.” He jumped from the chaise and bent to examine the figure of the coachman, lying motionless in the ditch where Sam had rolled him after hitting him over the head with a stout stick. “Eh,” Sam muttered. “Best take you along, fellow-me-lad.” He hoisted Luiz over his shoulder and carried him back to the field.
Alasdair was standing over Paul Denis, the lash of the long carriage whip trailing on the ground at his side. Paul Denis lay on the ground in a fetal curl, barely conscious.
Sam dumped Luiz on the ground beside the other two men, who, no longer a pair of expressionless instruments of violence, stared fearfully at the avenging devil with the whip.
“Tie them up,” Alasdair instructed curtly. “Gag them, then put them in the trees, out of sight. I want them left here to be picked up later.”
Charles Lester would be very glad to get his hands on Paul Denis.
Sam and Jemmy went about their work with cheerful enthusiasm. Alasdair, once more back in his abused and pain-filled body, couldn’t help them. He turned and made his way to the chaise, every step an agony now.
He hauled himself into the chaise and fell back onto the seat opposite Emma, closing his eyes, his breathing shallow and ragged.
“Alasdair!” Emma leaned over and tried to take his hands. Then she gasped as the circulation began to return to her own hands and they came to agonizing life. “God in heaven!” She clasped them between her knees, pressing tightly in an effort to contain the pain.
Alasdair opened his eyes immediately. “What is it, sweet?”
“Just my hands. They’re starting to work again.” She offered him a tremulous smile, saying with a supreme effort at humor, “What a pathetic pair of casualties we are. I was trying to touch you but I can’t seem to manage it.”
“I want to hold you but I can’t seem to manage it,” he responded, trying to match her tone.
“That was one adventure I’d rather not have again, if I can possibly help it,” Emma said with another valiant smile. As a child she had always been yearning for adventure, following Ned and Alasdair, dogging their footsteps because she was convinced they would have an adventure and she wouldn’t be there to share it.
An answering smile flickered over Alasdair’s set mouth as he caught the reference. “That, my sweet, was the kind of experience that gives adventures a bad name. Even Ned would agree.”
“Are you going to be all right?” Her smile vanished now. He looked dreadful. Gray and green and waxy, his eyes pain-filled hollows.
“I feel as if I’ve been trampled by a team of shire horses,” he confessed ruefully. “But Jemmy assures me it’s nothing worse than bruises and a couple of broken ribs.” He took a few shallow breaths, then said, “How are your feet?”
“Sam put something on them. I don’t feel them anymore.” She looked at him with a worried frown, then said, “Did you kill Denis?”
“Not quite,” he said in a flat voice. “I might have done so, except that there are a few people who are really going to want to talk to him.”
“Then I hope they talk to him in the way he talked to me,” Emma said savagely.
“We’re ready to go, sir.” Jemmy stuck his head through the open door. “We’ve tethered t’other ’osses to the carriage. We goin’ back to Stevenage, or on to London?”
“What of Maria?” Emma exclaimed suddenly. “She’ll be out of her head with worry. We have to go back to Stevenage.”
“No, we have to go straight to London,” Alasdair said. “I have to arrange for those animals to be collected before I do anything else. We’ll change horses at Barnet and hire postilions and a coachman to take you and me on from there. Sam and Jemmy will ride back to Stevenage with a note for Maria. They can arrange for her immediate return to Mount Street.”
“Right y’are, sir.” Jemmy closed the door of the chaise and vaulted onto the back of one of the leaders. Sam flicked his whip and the team started forward along the narrow track.
“There’s brandy in that bag of Sam’s.” Emma indicated the kit bag on the seat beside Alasdair.
He found the flask and drank deeply, then leaned forward and held it to Emma’s mouth. “This is damnable!” he swore. “I need to hold you so badly, but I can’t move a muscle. And if it weren’t for my own godforsaken stupidity, none of this would have happened!”
“How was it your fault?”
“I should have taken more precautions at the inn,” he said bitterly, taking another swallow of brandy. “I should have had Sam or Jemmy posted outside the door … I should have moved your chamber at the last minute to throw them off the scent … I should have stayed awake…. Oh, the list is endless.”
Emma frowned. “You talk like someone who does this kind of thing all the time. First I discover that my brother is some kind of spy and … and …” She frowned, trying to remember what Denis had said. “A master encoder, that was it. And now it seems you’re a professional bodyguard or some such.”
Alasdair shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m a hopeless amateur. I was dragged into this business because Ned’s masters at Horseguards thought that as an old friend and now your trustee, I’d be able to get close enough to you to find the document. In the best of all possible worlds, I would have searched your rooms and discovered the poem without your being any the wiser.”
Emma was silent. She was too tired and drained to think clearly, but she didn’t like the feeling that for weeks she’d been discussed and manipulated by faceless men who knew nothing about her. And she didn’t like the idea that Alasdair had had more than one motive for involving himself in her life again.
“Why did you agree to do it?” she asked after a minute.
“For Ned,” he replied simply. “Ned died for the information in that poem. He wasn’t to have died in vain.”
Emma nodded. She could find no fault with that. And yet she was still dismayed at the realization that Alasdair had in some sort been spying on her. He hadn’t confided in her until his hand had been forced. He was still as secretive as ever.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think of anything at all. Her feet had begun to sting again, and she didn’t know why, instead of feeling joy and relief that the nightmare was over, she simply wanted to cry like a baby.
Alasdair gave his body up to the rocking motion of the chaise. Every jolt hurt him as if he were on the rack, but his guilt and self-directed anger were much the harder things to bear. He could feel Emma’s distress, but he didn’t know how to alleviate it. He lifted her feet onto his lap, cradling them in his palms. It was the only thing he could do … the only way he could touch her in his present state of disrepair.
Chapter Sixteen
Maria fairly hurled herself up the steps of the house on Mount Street. Harris opened the door for her and she almost tumbled into the hall, untying the ribbons of her bonnet.
“Where is Lady Emma? Has Dr. Baillie been sent for? Oh, m
y goodness, what a terrible thing. Cook must make some calves’ foot jelly at once. And some gruel … oh, my heart! My heart! The palpitations!” She ran up the stairs, discarded shawls, bonnet, reticule, and gloves falling around her as the words poured forth upon the stolid Harris, who followed her, picking up the scattered belongings.
“Dr. Baillie is with Lady Emma now, madam. Cook would have already prepared the jelly,” he assured her, a touch defensively, “but Lady Emma, as we all know, doesn’t care for calves’ foot jelly.”
“Oh, but she must … she must. Tell cook at once.” Maria flew along the corridor to Emma’s chamber.
“Oh, dearest, dearest girl!” She burst in. “Alasdair’s note … I didn’t know what to make of it. An accident, he said. Oh, my heart!” She patted her chest with a trembling hand. “An accident in the middle of the night! What could you have been doing, my love? Oh, doctor, the case is not desperate, I trust.”
She flew to the bed and bent to kiss Emma before collapsing on the chaise longue, fanning herself with her hand.
“No, indeed not desperate, Mrs. Witherspoon,” the doctor reassured her. “Lady Emma has some burns on her feet. I have dressed them with salve.”
“Burns!” Maria’s round eyes opened like saucers. “On your feet! However could that have happened, my dearest love?”
“I fell asleep with my feet on the fender,” Emma said. “Very foolish of me.” She was sitting up on the bed, fully dressed except for stockings and shoes. “Pray calm yourself, Maria. This is no great matter.”
“Oh, why aren’t you in bed? You must be undressed and put between the sheets at once. Must she not, doctor?” Maria flew up from her perch. “I’ll fetch Tilda to you. And there must be calves’ foot jelly.”
“Maria, I loathe calves’ foot jelly,” Emma protested. It was Maria’s answer to all ills. “And I have no need to go to bed. It’s barely noon.”
But she spoke to empty air. Maria had run off, calling for Tilda.
“You’ll not want to go walking about on those feet for a day or two,” Baillie said, finishing his bandaging. “Fell asleep with your feet on the fender?” He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“Yes,” Emma said firmly. “Wasn’t it foolish of me?”
“Must have been a very heavy sleep,” Baillie said pointedly. “For you not to wake up with the pain.”
“I sleep very heavily, doctor.”
“Oh, is that so?” He began to repack his bag. “I’ve another patient to see. Very busy morning, this. Seems Lord Alasdair Chase had a bit of an accident too.”
“Oh, really,” Emma said with an air of shocked curiosity. “What an astomshing coincidence. It must have occurred after we returned to town. Was it a riding accident perhaps?”
“A driving accident, I understand. He overturned his curricle and the wheels ran over him. Very nasty, his man says.”
“How unfortunate.” Emma shook her head and tutted. “And Lord Alasdair is a veritable nonpareil, too.”
“I daresay even a nonpareil can misjudge his horses,” the doctor observed dryly. “Now, if you’ll take my advice, Lady Emma, you’ll swallow a dose of laudanum and get some rest.” He cast her a shrewdly assessing look. “You’ve had something of a shock, I’d say. Over and above the burns. Not looking too chipper at all.”
Emma was feeling far from chipper. Indeed the prospect of a period of unconsciousness was very appealing. But she was anxious about Alasdair and knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d had a report from Jemmy about the doctor’s visit.
Maria came bustling in with a silver porringer. “Here’s some barley broth for you, my love. Very strengthening. And if you won’t take the jelly, I’ve instructed cook to make up a tisane to my own special recipe.”
She set the porringer on the bedside table, continuing in almost the same breath, “I’ll send for you immediately if there’s the slightest cause for concern, Dr. Baillie.”
“There won’t be,” Emma said, wondering what Maria was going to make of the news that Alasdair also had suffered an accident … an unrelated accident, of course. But nonetheless the coincidence would pique anyone’s curiosity.
“Dr. Baillie has to attend to his other patients, Maria,” she declared firmly. “I shall go on very well now.”
Maria accompanied the doctor to the door. “You must give me your instructions, doctor. I’m a competent nurse, you should know.”
Emma grimaced, listening to Maria’s busy chatter receding down the corridor. She sniffed at the contents of the porringer and shook her head. Maria was a darling, but she was a dreadful fusspot. And she was going to want a great deal more explanation than she’d been given so far.
“Dr. Baillie says you should take laudanum and get a good rest, my love.” Maria hurried back into the chamber. “Now, I’ll feed you some of this broth. It will help you get your strength back.”
Emma declined the offer of being fed, but took some of the broth to satisfy Maria.
“But how did it happen?” Maria asked, hovering anxiously as the invalid spooned up the broth. “Why did you leave without a word? And in the middle of the night?” She was genuinely bewildered.
“I fell asleep and burned my feet. Alasdair thought we should return to London at once to consult Dr. Baillie … I was in some pain, you understand.” Emma was amazed at how glibly the lies, unconvincing though they were, fell from her tongue. “Alasdair was very worried. So worried that I don’t think he thought of anything but getting on the road. But when we were changing horses at Barnet, he remembered to send you word. It should have reached you before you awoke. I hope it did.” She looked innocently at Maria.
Maria shook her head. “Well, yes, it did, thank heavens for that. Indeed I don’t know what I would have done if I’d found you gone from your bed without a word. Such a shock it would have been, I doubt I’d have recovered.”
“I really do beg your pardon, Maria,” Emma said, reaching out for the other woman’s hand. “It was an infamous thing to do, but I was in such pain and Alasdair was so worried, that I’m afraid all else went out of our heads.”
“Well, I can see how it must have been,” Maria said, still sounding doubtful. “So easy to forget, of course.”
She sat on the end of the bed, still looking very bewildered and rather hurt. “But I do so wish you had woken me. I could have been dressed in a trice.”
“I think Alasdair may have thought the burns to be worse than they are,” Emma offered. It didn’t really matter whether Maria believed this cock-and-bull story or not. All that mattered was that she tacitly agree to accept it.
“Well, to be sure, I don’t know.” Maria shook her head again. “But here’s Tilda to help you into bed.”
Emma decided that meek acquiescence in the role of invalid was probably wise. It would appease Maria and she owed her some appeasement. Maria would enjoy fussing over her, and if left to do what she wanted, would probably soon stop asking questions. Of course, once she heard of Alasdair’s “accident,” she was bound to be intrigued. But that bridge had yet to be crossed.
Alasdair endured the doctor’s ministrations with tightly clamped lips. He refused to be bled, however, maintaining that he had enough bruises already without adding gratuitously to the sum.
Dr. Baillie humphed a bit but didn’t press it. “A driving accident, your man said, sir.” He wound fresh strips of linen around the broken ribs.
“Yes,” Alasdair agreed through clenched teeth. “Damn fool thing to do. Overreached myself.”
“Racing were you, sir?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Alasdair replied. “Ouch! For God’s sake, man, be a bit more careful.”
“The strapping has to be tight, sir, otherwise the bones won’t knit,” Baillie said, stolidly unaffected by the flow of curses cascading on his head. “There’s danger of a punctured lung from one of these ribs if you move around too much for a day or two. You’ll need to lie flat to give them time to knit.”
Ala
sdair swore with increased vigor, but he knew the man was right. The stabbing pain he felt every time he breathed was evidence enough.
“I’ve just come from Lady Emma,” Baillie continued placidly. “You were with her when she burned her feet, I gather?”
“If I’d been with her, she wouldn’t have burned them,” Alasdair snapped with perfect truth.
“Quite so, sir. On tike fender,” Baillie mused. “Fell asleep with her feet on the fender.” He shook his head. “Most odd thing to do … almost impossible, I would have thought.”
Alasdair didn’t offer a response. Baillie was a notorious gossip. He would have a wonderful time regaling his many society patients with the strangeness of these two accidents. The story would be all over town within the week. A dignified silence seemed the only possible response. His own friends would tease him unmercifully at the idea that he of all people had overturned himself in a curricle. But he’d have to endure it.
“A letter has just come for you, Lord Alasdair.” Cranham entered the bedchamber with a silver salver. “The messenger said there was no answer.”
The insignia of Horseguards sealed the missive. Alasdair broke the wafer. Charles Lester informed him that the four parcels had been safely collected and would be unwrapped within the next few hours.
Alasdair nodded grimly. He had little doubt that the men of Horseguards were as skilled and impersonal at interrogation as Paul Denis and his cohorts. It was a satisfying case of the biter bit.
It seemed the business that had begun with Ned’s death was finally finished. Now he could concentrate on Emma without distraction. Or at least, he amended, he could when he stopped hurting so damnably.
It was three days, however, before he was able to get out of bed. He was as weak as an infant, and even without Baillie’s strict instructions to lie flat and give his ribs a chance to knit, he wouldn’t have been able to move around with anything approaching comfort.
