by Edith Layton
There had been moments when she’d known there was a good physician in attendance, she’d seen a calm and lovely lady who talked good sense, and she’d realized it was really the children at her bedside. Although, to her dismay, she couldn’t fathom why the children had been summoned to her at the earl’s own home if she were not just about to die. So in her fear she’d fled reason entirely for a space, only knowing she must fight out the illness in order to come to her senses again. And through it all, always in dream spasms and often in what she knew must have been reality, she’d seen his face. The Earl of Clune’s stern visage was her one sure touchstone, for it never altered in fact or in fancy, and so much as he’d deceived her she welcomed him, for the sight of his dark face was sanity and sanctuary for her wandering wits.
Yesterday, she’d opened her eyes to a cool, real world at last. Today she was ready to leave, though there were a great many questions she needed answered, and a great many answers she feared. Yesterday she’d been told that the children had been brought to the earl’s house not only to be with her, but because he’d realized it was inhumane to leave them alone. She privately thought it was more likely that if Alfie had decided he must be taken up by the earl, there was little chance that he, or any other living man, however imperious, could have resisted. The earl, she’d decided late last night as she’d finally slipped into her first sweet healthy sleep in this bed, had simply been kidnapped by the Johnson children, just as she’d been commandeered in her turn, and she’d smiled as she drifted to sleep, pleased that in this, at least, he was as vulnerable as anyone.
Early this morning the arrival of her first visitors had enabled her to get a hard look at the shadowy figures she’d seen hovering over her bed when she’d been so ill. Miss Comfort was a sour-faced old lady, to be sure, small and angular, with delicate but pinched features and light blue eyes. But far from being a seducer of lost girls, she was so prim that Victoria wasn’t sure the lady knew precisely what it had been about this wicked “Mother Carey” she’d been taken for that was so dreadful. Mrs. Haverford was a tall, handsome female with hardly any silver in her dark hair, and a wealth of awareness in her large deep, dark eyes. She’d laughed when Victoria stammered a thank-you to the “Countess” when she’d realized the lady urging her to drink her chocolate was none other than the Earl of Clune’s mother. The lady had said, as she’d corrected her guest, that though her eldest was a belted earl due to hereditary law, she herself was certainly no more than she’d ever been before. But even after knowing her for only the space of an hour, Victoria believed there was actually little more any woman could possibly be than the lady already was, since any title, in her case, could never be so wonderful as its subject.
Victoria Dawkins had fallen on her feet, to be sure, just as Alfie had whispered to her last night when he’d been allowed to come in to see that she was herself again. They all had. But she wasn’t eleven years of age, and she knew that everything she saw, touched, and tasted now was as transitory as the fevered dreams she’d experienced just hours before had been. She was not a lady, and she still had nothing, not even a chance to pay her benefactors back. If he should care to offer again, she supposed she could be the gentleman’s mistress, but to be so now would not even be free choice, it would be in the nature of a debtor working off a debt. That would make it worse than immoral, it would lose even that spicy savor, it would be at the last, only unendurable, a pathetic attempt at payment for superior services rendered. Truly, the house of Haverford owed her nothing any longer, Victoria thought, sitting up straight in bed, and she must leave it as soon as she was able.
But when that could be, and what would become of the children, and how she could show her gratitude, and how she could abide receiving even a word more in charity, knowing all she did—these were all questions Victoria struggled with in the bright new morning. Now that everyone had let her alone to prepare for her interview with the doctor, she had the time to sort out her questions. Because she knew she could ask only a few; the rest she’d have to answer for herself.
“Aha. Up and bright as a penny. Do you know me, Miss Dawkins? Of course you do. Wouldn’t shrink back as if you’d just seen something nasty if you didn’t. Needn’t fear. I’ve nothing for you to swallow just now, and won’t bleed you again. There, just open wide. Ah, good. Let me listen a moment. Good. Clear as a bell. Cough, please. Ah. You’ll do,” the doctor said heartily, having invaded the room and her privacy with all the brusque and busy cheer she remembered.
“Thank you,” she said as he pulled her coverlet high again, “but when may I leave, sir?”
“Voice always that husky?” he asked suspiciously, and when she nodded, he left off frowning as he took her hand and asked her to grip his. “As I thought,” he replied, nodding, and releasing her hand, “no more strength than a day-old kitten. Leave bed in a week, I should say, if you behave yourself.”
“A week?” she gasped. “But no, surely not. I’m quite recovered. I’ve excellent restorative powers. I must go sooner. I’d meant…I’d thought…that I might leave this house and return to my own lodgings this afternoon.”
“Certainly,” the doctor thundered, “and by so doing, by this evening you might quit this world! You’ve just come through a crisis, young woman. If you leave this room, I leave you to your own destiny, I’ll wash my hands of you. I’m a physician, not a mortician. Take one step through that portal and it would be like stepping off London Bridge,” he bellowed.
“Oh, wonderful, doctor,” an amused voice cut in. “Now you’ve cured her lungs, you’ll have to treat her for shock. Or is this the latest treatment for convalescents, frightening them to their feet so that they won’t malinger?”
“Wicked, ungrateful chit wants to go home,” the doctor explained in a roar.
“Indeed?” the earl said, looking in from the doorway, much interested.
“I do not believe one ought to attempt to do anything for quite some time after such a taking,” Miss Comfort said briskly, materializing from the hallway and entering the room. “I recall my poor Uncle Samuel, pronounced fit as a fiddle by his physician one February morning, after just such an illness, and yet discovered by his housekeeper to be entirely dead in his bed that night. Isn’t that frequently the case, doctor?” she asked, folding her hands and staring down dolefully at Victoria.
“Aye, it might be, but I imagine it depended on just what he was doing in bed with the housekeeper,” the doctor barked, seeing Victoria’s expression.
As the import of his reply began to register upon Miss Comfort and the tip of her sharp little nose turned white, the earl’s mama came into the room, seemingly borne in upon a moving platform of children. Victoria gave a glad little cry and held her arms out, and an astonishingly well-scrubbed and beautifully dressed Sally flew into them.
“Oh, Miss Victoria,” Sally sobbed from her idol’s circling arms as Victoria looked down, amazed and delighted to see that the child’s hair was not just a dirty-blond shade, but rather a lovely light subtle golden-red color. Bobby’s shaggy hair was only a shade darker, she noted as she looked up from the girl burrowed into her embrace. Alfie, however, had almost silvery-white tresses. There was much to be said for the merits of hot water and pure French soap over those of cold water and laundering soap, Victoria realized. No matter what the moralists said of cleanliness and godliness, though the Lord doubtless didn’t mind the difference, it was clear that mortals oughtn’t to forget to consider economics when they applied the old adage. For she’d scrubbed at their hair and faces when they’d been in her custodial care and never gotten such glowing results.
And she never could have envisioned how they’d appear in new clean clothes. Though they hadn’t been dressed as little fops and dandies, the boys looked like young gentlemen in their white shirts and short jackets, and Sally like a miniature heiress in her white muslin dress sashed with pink and her new white stockings.
“You look capital,” Alfie pronounced with pleasure, “and
’ere, Sal, leave off sniveling all over ’er, or she’ll think you’ve been beaten ’stead of fed and ’oused like a queen.”
“‘Here,’ and ‘her’ and ‘housed,’ Alfie, as I told you,” Miss Comfort said at once in perfect governessing tones, as Alfie grinned widely and dropped an enormous wink to Victoria at how successfully he’d diverted both Miss Comfort and Sally at one stroke.
“It’s only that I’m so glad to see ’er…her,” Sally sniffed, drawing back and bestowing a watery smile on Victoria.
“May I come in?” the earl asked politely, but pointedly from the doorway.
“But you are in already, Cole,” his mother laughed, “all but for your boots, which are still on the doorsill. Why ask permission? But, my dear,” she said at once, understanding her son’s comment at last and turning a worried face to Victoria, “we’ve been most inconsiderate, you’ve no more privacy in here than you’d have in a dooryard, no wonder you yearn for home!”
“Oh no, ma’am, never!” Victoria gasped. “I’ve been treated magnificently. It’s not that I’ve ever found any fault here, it’s only that I don’t wish, I cannot wish to be a burden upon you, indeed I only want to repay you for all your kindness, and I know that lying here and battening upon your good offices is not the way to do it.”
Miss Comfort nodded her satisfaction with a statement she completely agreed with, the doctor frowned and cleared his throat for another harangue, and the children fell silent. Mrs. Haverford spoke up at once.
“Nonsense,” she said sharply. “I hope we know our debts. It was a certain poetry lover in our own family,” she said, never even glancing at Theo, who had quietly come into the room unannounced after the others, and who, upon hearing himself mentioned, now turned to exit just as silently, only to find himself blocked by the substantial frame of his cousin Colin, “who set all these unfortunate events into motion. Although,” she added consideringly, “search as I may, I can’t find anything unfortunate in making your acquaintance or coming to know the children, however unpleasant the circumstances that caused our meeting may have been.”
“It’s an ill wind that blows no good,” Miss Comfort said, nodding in concurrence again.
“And how are you feeling this morning, Miss Dawkins?” the earl asked, coming into the room and taking the patient’s hand in his, behaving entirely properly in every respect, as if by his example he might bring some order to the rapidly filling sickroom.
Victoria sat up sharply as he approached, and it may have been that which accounted for her becoming quite pale as he neared her. But then when he took up her hand, healthy color rose in her cheeks again. As the earl mused on whether the sudden pallor was more flattering to her because of the way it pointed up her large golden eyes, or whether the rosy blush was more attractive for the way it gave animation to her face, she hesitantly assured him of her restored health and thanked him for his concern. All he could clearly see of her were her face and her hand, for a voluminous blond lace morning robe covered over her bedgown, and coverlets hid all else, and her long wavy brown hair was pulled back in a single heavy plait. But he found he wasn’t attending to her reply, he was so caught up with the sudden bizarre discovery that despite her wrappings, in a room filled with people, even after his arduous night, he found himself more entranced and in a way more deeply stirred by her than he’d been by the unclad female with whom he’d passed the entire night alone.
For once he was grateful to Miss Comfort when she began to speak of false dawns, and warn of mistaken recoveries, thus drawing the doctor into heated debate again, for as he tore his gaze from Miss Dawkins’ rose-suffused face, he realized that he’d been staring at her too pointedly, and for far too long.
“I think,” he said firmly, effectively silencing the other argument, “that at least I’ll be able to temporarily relieve the room of some crowding. Mama, I’ve family business to discuss. You may stay on, Theo, until I return, if you promise to play nothing more advanced than pick-up-sticks with the children, although I don’t doubt that they could relieve you of next month’s allowance, even at that.”
While Lord Malverne protested his uninterest in any games of chance, Mrs. Haverford detached herself from the children, bade the doctor wait upon her return, and drew her son out of the room with her. She took his arm in hers and led him down the hall to her sitting room, hoping that the children and young Theo might divert Miss Dawkins from the tales of false remissions and sudden ghastly demises that Miss Comfort immediately continued to regale the doctor with.
“Gad, Mama,” the earl sighed, once he’d firmly closed the door behind them and joined his parent on a settee in her sitting room, “I can’t understand why you keep her on. She’s merry as a churchyard at midnight.”
His mama didn’t pretend not to know whom he was speaking of, but only said with gentle censure, “I’ll agree Comfort’s not to your taste, Cole, and perhaps not even to mine any longer. But it’s no good your continuing to say that I should let her go, for I can’t. She’s a good soul, dear. No, don’t sneer, truly she is. Don’t forget, since I cannot, that she stayed with me when I had very little, remember?—when you were out making our fortune. There were other relatives with better prospects she might have gone to. All we could offer her then was a tiny room, and she shared whatever little else she had with us. She’s earned her ease now. I cannot, no, it’s simply not possible for me to toss poor Comfort out now.
“It isn’t a matter of money, either, for just the other day I hinted at how time was passing and mentioned the considerable pension you’d provided for her, only to set her mind at rest on the subject, should she wish to leave us, you understand. But then I took one look at her face, and I vow, Cole, I thought she’d sink as fast as that unfortunate uncle she was just going on about. But only think, where would she go? She’s made her life with me, this is her home now. Life is not kind to aged, unmarried, unpropertied females,” she added sorrowfully.
“And there’s no need for her to go, either,” she said more forcefully. “You don’t live with her, Cole,” she reminded her son, tapping his knee lightly to make him attend to her, “and then too, things aren’t so bad now. Victoria’s here, poor child, and even though she’s been ill and won’t be herself for some time, I like her very well. And the children! Who could resist those children? Comfort quite likes them all too—even Victoria, I know, though she’d rather perish than admit to it. Sally’s her especial love, she dotes on the child, though not a soul who didn’t know poor old Comfort as I do could guess it, since it’s true her fondest smile looks vinegar-begotten. But we’ll all rub on together very well now, I think, Cole. Who would have thought such a muddle could have worked out so well?” she asked in wonder. “Why, I haven’t been so entertained in ages.”
The earl smiled at his mama’s enthusiasm, and wondered again just why she’d never cared to remarry. At any age, she was still a fine-looking woman. Some gray shone in her dark tresses, true, but the silvering only served to soften her strongly marked features, and her dark eyes, which he forgot were mirrors of his own, could still speak volumes in a silent language that many a younger woman would have given her own eyelashes to learn.
“Ah, but how well you do rub on together, there precisely is the rub, my dear,” he said softly, and then very swiftly, for they often didn’t need to waste words between them, he explained that which Theo had said was the world at large’s latest pleasure to gossip over.
“But how stupidly cruel!” his mother exclaimed at last. “And, Cole, only think, you’d have to have been…what? Oh, Lud, I’m such a nit with mathematics…ah, seventeen, I think, to have fathered Alfie. I suppose it’s possible,” she muttered thoughtfully before she jerked her head up from the fingers she’d been counting on to cry, “oh, Lud! Just look where such reasoning gets even me. It’s shocking. And as for your intentions toward Victoria…” But here she stopped and lowered her dark lashes over her eyes.
“Dear discreet Mama,” her son laughed, �
��I do look a great deal, I’ll admit. I’m alive, you know, and she’s very good to look upon, even in a sickbed. But I scarcely know the girl! And I’ve never exchanged a private word with her since she’s come here, and I promise you, I’d never land a mistress of mine upon you.”
“But a wife…?” his mama said slowly, peeping up at him as mischievously as a girl herself.
“I am not in the market for a wife,” the earl said in beleaguered tones, “so since I haven’t any of the delightful plans for her that the world seems to think I cherish,” he continued rapidly, “I’ve come this morning to have you help me think of some way, short of marriage, mistress-ship, or murder, that I can honorably dispose of the problem of Miss Dawkins.”
Before she could voice her outrage at his cold assessment of the situation, he went on calmly, “Now, what I’ve been wondering and wanting to ask is if you have anything against ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” she asked, confused and silent for a moment before she laughed gleefully and cried, “Ghosts! Of course, the very thing! Clever Cole. It’s time you took up residence at High Wyvern Hall, whether it’s supposed to be ghost-ridden or not. It’s been deserted since the old earl died. And what a perfect place for Victoria and the children, far from the city, far from tattle-bearers.”
“But not far from me, and so never far from gossip if I lived there too, dear noodlehead,” her son said affectionately. “The same conditions would prevail, because so long as your dear Comfort stays on with you, Miss Dawkins remains clearly redundant in the world’s eyes. I’d thought rather that I might go there and discover whether there are any families in the area that could use a governess-companion. Then she could be near the children, because I also believe we might find some family living on the estate willing to foster a parcel of infants as well. There’s room for a legion of them at the Hall, and we could continue to look after them there.”
