It Happened At Christmas (Anthology)

by Penny Jordan

  ‘What the devil do you mean to do with that?’ her patient demanded angrily, attempting to draw his leg out of the way.

  ‘It is honey, sir. My aunt believed that it has great efficacy in the drawing and healing of wounds.’

  ‘Well, I’m having none of it. Douse the injury with brandy and then wrap it up clean, and let’s have done with it.’

  Marianne could see that he meant what he was saying. Reluctantly she did as he bade. She could not swear to it, but as she secured the clean bandage over the wound she feared that his flesh already possessed more heat.

  ‘I will go downstairs now and bring your supper, sir.’

  His brusque nod told her that he was in more pain than he wanted her to see, she acknowledged as she hurried back to the kitchen.

  A faint scratch at the back door told Marianne that the cat had returned and wanted to be let in. When she opened the door she saw that whilst she had been attending to her patient the sky had clouded over and it had started to snow, the flakes whirling in such a dizzy frenzy that she couldn’t see across the yard.

  Shivering, she closed and then locked the door.

  She had found blankets and pillows in the linen cupboards that would suffice for now, and had made herself a bed up on the settle. The range was stoked up for the night and banked down, and the kitchen clean and warm.

  The baby, more lively now, held up his arms to her and smiled.

  ‘You should be asleep,’ she reproved him as she lifted him from the basket. Surely he was fatter and heavier already.

  Marianne laughed to see the eagerness with which he took the small spoonfuls of soup she fed him, laughing again when he crowed happily at the sound of her laughter. The nurse might have wanted to see him swaddled, but Marianne could see his pleasure in being able to wriggle and kick out his legs.

  ‘My, but your daddy would be proud of you,’ she told him emotionally. There had been so many times during the arduous journey here when she had asked herself if she was doing the right thing, and now that he was here she was no closer to knowing the answer.

  According to the nurse and the doctor, the Master of Bellfield was a man who had treated his late wife cruelly, abandoning her in her hour of need and leaving her to die along with his child. He was a man who had driven away his stepson, surely his rightful heir, and had caused the disappearance of the young innocent girl in his care.

  But then his mill manager had spoken highly and warmly of him, and so had others. Who was to be believed? The baby yawned and closed his eyes. Tenderly Marianne carried him to his basket and laid him in it, kissing his forehead as she did so.

  It was gone ten o’clock and she was tired. Once she had cleaned the housekeeper’s rooms on the attic floor she could enjoy the luxury of its bathroom, but for tonight she would have to make do with a wash here in front of the fire. Even that was a luxury compared with what she had known in the workhouse.

  She started to take down her hair, ready to brush it. She had no nightgown to wear and would have to sleep in her chemise. Perhaps Mr Gledhill might know of somewhere where she could buy some serviceable lengths of flannelette. There was a sewing machine in the nursery, and her nimble fingers would soon be able to fashion some much needed new clothes for the baby and for herself.

  Fashionable ladies might wear the new ‘health’ corsets beneath their expensive gowns, to emphasise the sought-after S-shaped curve that the King so admired, but even if she could have afforded such a garment there would have been no point in her wasting good money on it, Marianne reflected, for she had no one who might fasten it up for her.

  Tears weren’t very far away as her meandering thoughts brought home to her how very alone she now was. All those she had loved had gone, though her beloved aunt thankfully would never know how cruelly her much-loved orphaned niece had been treated by those who should have cared for her. Her aunt’s estate, which should have been hers, had been sold over her head to pay off a bank loan Marianne was sure had never really existed, but at seventeen she had been too young and powerless to be able to prove it.

  Life in the workhouse had come as a terrible shock to a young girl reared so gently. But it had been there that she had met and lost her very best and dearest friend.

  And her husband. Poor Milo. He had fought so hard to live. She had seen how much he wanted to do so from the look in his eyes when he had asked her to place the baby in his arms one time. Tears stung her eyes, but she wiped them away. She was here in Rawlesden now, where Milo had wanted her to be.

  A dab of salt on her finger, brushed round her mouth and then rinsed away, would have to serve to clean her teeth for tonight, and she summoned the courage to push her sad thoughts to one side. She must ask Mr Gledhill if he would authorise an advance on her wages, she decided, so that she could buy a few small personal necessities.

  She was so tired that her eyes were closing as soon as she lay down on the settle beneath the blankets she had found.

  Outside the snow whirled and fell in the biting cold, obliterating the landscape in deep drifts.

  Marianne woke abruptly out of the dream she had been having. Her body felt warm but her mind was not at rest. She thought about the man upstairs and the ominous heat she had felt round his wound. Pushing back the blankets, she swung her feet to the floor.

  It was not her responsibility to worry about him, but somehow she could not help but do so.

  That flushed and discoloured wound and what it might portend was preying on her mind.

  He would be sleeping, of course, she told herself as she lit a lantern, her toes curling in protest against the cold of the stone floor. And no doubt he would be angry with her if she woke him. But she knew that she would not rest until she had done as her aunt’s training was urging her and checked the wound, in case her fears weren’t merely in her imagination.

  The lantern light cast moving shadows on the stair wall, elongating her own petite frame, so that it almost seemed to Marianne that as she climbed the stairs others climbed them with her.

  In turn, that led her to think of the other women who had climbed these stairs before her, like the master’s neglected wife, her heart perhaps even more heavy than her body as she fought against her too-early labour pains.

  And what of the wife’s niece? Had she too climbed these stairs in dread?

  This house had known so much unhappiness and so much death. It needed the laughter of happy young voices to drive away its sadness.

  The lantern highlighted darker patches on the landing wallpaper she had not noticed before, where a trio of paintings must have once hung. The chill of the unheated space drove Marianne on until she reached the master’s bedroom. She paused before turning the handle and opening the door.

  A fire still burned in the grate, but surely it wasn’t just its glow that was responsible for the flush burning on the face of the man asleep in the bed. His breathing was rapid and unsteady, his body jerking in small spasms, as though even in his sleep he was in pain. His face was turned towards the window. On the table beside the bed she could see the bottle of brandy and an empty glass.

  Marianne shivered. Were her worst fears to be realised? Putting down the lantern, she walked over to the bed. Leaning down, she placed her hand against its occupant’s forehead and then snatched it back again as she felt its heat, knowing that she would have to check his wound. She could smell the brandy he had drunk, no doubt to help him sleep and to dull the pain.

  If the feverish heat of his face was anything to go by then his injury had indeed turned putrid. As she went to the other side of the bed Marianne prayed that she would not see on his thigh the tell-tale red line her aunt had warned her meant that the poison was spreading.

  She prayed also that the brandy he had drunk would keep him asleep, because this time she intended to have her way and make sure that some cleansing honey was applied to his wound.

  He winced when she removed the bedcovers, his face contorting in a spasm of pain, but he did not wake. In
the light of the lantern Marianne could see what she had hoped she might not. His thigh was swollen, its flesh drawn tight and shiny, but when she looked closer she saw thankfully there was no red line. It smelled of heat and blood, but not of putrescence.

  She worked as quickly as she could, using boiled and cooled water to draw the heat from the wound, and then covering the site with honey before rebandaging it.

  She had worked so intently and so swiftly that she was slightly out of breath, her own flesh warm from her exertion.

  Thankfully, through all that she had had to do, the Master of Bellfield had never once opened his eyes, although she had heard him groan on several occasions. Now, with her task completed, she replaced the covers and then, like any good nurse, went round the bed to its head, so that she might straighten the pillows and draw the sheet up to cover at least some of that disturbing breadth of male chest.

  Busy at her task, she leaned over her patient and then froze in shock as suddenly his eyes opened and his hand curled tightly into her hair as it lay against his chest.

  ‘Why do you come here to torture me like this?’ he demanded thickly. ‘Why cannot you leave me be?’

  Surely he could not really be meaning to speak so to her?

  Marianne guessed that he must be lost in some memory from his past, of another woman. Why should that knowledge bring her such a sharp pain?

  ‘Why?’ he repeated, plainly expecting her to answer him.

  ‘I…I’m sorry,’ Marianne apologised. ‘I had no choice. It had to be done.’

  ‘How sweetly you take the words from my mouth, and how fiercely I long to take the breath from yours.’

  He could not possibly mean such words for her. He might be looking at her, but surely either the pain or the brandy must have turned his brain and he was confusing her with someone else. His ward, perhaps, his wife’s niece, the beautiful young girl who had loved his stepson and who some said the master had lusted after so dreadfully that he had pursued her to her death?

  Marianne tried to pull away, but it was too late. He was too strong for her. Somehow he had managed to raise himself on his pillows.

  Marianne closed her eyes on a small sob as his hands slid into her hair, constraining her whilst he kissed her as a man should surely kiss no woman but his wife.

  Shockwaves of feeling rushed through her body, stiffening it to outrage, and then softening it to something she did not know or want to know—something yielding and wanton and oh, so pleasurable that she wanted to cast herself upon its waters and let it take her where it willed, like a small craft being guided by the hands of another and taken with the current into the secret shadows.

  She felt his hand move, sliding down her bare shoulder to the strap of her chemise, urging it downwards, the intensity of his kiss mirroring the intensity of his desire to expose the female flesh of her breasts. She was surrounded, possessed by his heat and his urgency. She could feel it in his kiss and in his touch, and she shuddered to see the strong male hand covering the pale flesh of her breast whilst he kissed her throat and then her shoulder.

  Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell against him, bare flesh against bare flesh. What she was permitting was wrong, a sin, and yet…

  ‘You have possessed me—do you know that?’ His words were slurred and thick, the cry of a man in torment as he pressed fierce kisses against her skin.

  She must stop this. She raised her hand to push him away, and then felt beneath it the thick softness of his hair. Her palm rested against his head, holding him to her as she leaned over him. This was so wrong—and yet hadn’t she known deep down inside herself that she was drawn to this darkness and to him? Her chest rose with the passion of her thoughts and her breathing.

  ‘Why do you do this to me?’ His angry cry filled the room. He turned from her as though in revulsion, and then cried out again, this time in pain, as he moved his injured leg while reaching for the brandy.

  She tried to stop him but it was too late. He had raised the bottle to his lips to take a deep draught from it before collapsing back against the pillows, his eyes closing and his grip on the bottle relaxing, enabling Marianne to remove it from his hold and then straighten her chemise.

  It could surely only have been her concern for his wound that had kept her in his hold instead of struggling to break free. It must only be that concern; she could not, dared not, allow it to be anything else, she told herself fiercely. He was asleep now, thanks to the brandy he had drunk, but it was not an easy sleep, she could see. And neither would her own be. Not now and, she suspected, not ever again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARIANNE looked from the bed, where the Master of Bellfield lay in an uneasy sleep, his breathing shallow and punctured by wild, unintelligible mutterings, to the view beyond the window.

  It had snowed heavily during the night, and now everywhere was blanketed in thick white snow. Piled into huge drifts by the wind, the snow had left the house cut off from the town. The Master of Bellfield, though, was unaware of this.

  She had been so afraid of facing him this morning, after the events of the previous night, but when she had eventually found the courage to push open his bedroom door she had very quickly realised that her concern should be for the deterioration in his health, not her own guilt.

  She had gone back downstairs, hurrying to pick up the telephone, hoping to summon help, but the line had been dead—she assumed as a result of the heavy snow.

  Twice now she had checked the Master of Bellfield’s wound, hoping that she might see some improvement, but on both occasions she’d been forced to recognise that there was none. Just the pull of the bedding against his skin had been enough to make him cry out in agony, even through his unconsciousness.

  It was plain to see that the wound had become putrid, though thankfully as yet there was no red line. Where the flesh had sealed tightly it pulsed and throbbed and burned against her hand.

  Marianne looked towards the fire, knowing what she must do.

  The wound needed to be opened and the poison allowed to drain out. It was a task for a doctor, or at the very least a nurse, not someone like her. But there was no one else, and nor could there be whilst this snow lay imprisoning them here. Her employer’s condition was worsening, and if she delayed until the snow had gone…

  But what if by attempting to lance the wound she made matters worse? The snow could not lie for ever. Might it not be best to simply wait…?

  For what? For him to die?

  She thought of the baby downstairs, and she thought of her dead husband and the promise she had made him. What she must not think of was last night, with its dark, hot sweetness and her own wanton surrender to it.

  A harsh agonised cry from the bed had her banishing her own thoughts to go over.

  ‘Lucinda…I must go to her…The baby…’

  He was sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide open as he spoke, but Marianne knew that he was not seeing her. She had seen fever like this before, stealing over a person and then consuming them, until there was nothing left other than the pitiful agony of their breathing and then the harsh rattle of death.

  ‘Shush…shush, sir,’ she quietened him gently. ‘All will be well.’

  The pillows on which he had been lying were soaked with his sweat. She could not delay much longer. The wound must be lanced.

  Marianne checked that she had everything that she needed, her stomach coiling tightly and her heart hammering against her ribs as she stared at the small sharp knife lying on the tray in front of her. Alongside it lay clean bowls, and next to them new bandages and more honey. She had scrubbed her hands with the hottest water she could stand and carbolic soap. The bedding lay folded back to reveal her patient’s leg. She looked at the bottle of brandy. She had poured some into a glass, ready, knowing the pain she was about to inflict.

  Picking up the knife, she held it in the fire’s flames, waiting until the tip glowed red before removing it and going over to the bed.

  Th
e pulse of the wound was like a wild thing now, the putridness beneath the sealed flesh clearly visible. She took a deep breath and then, as swiftly as she could, slit the seal to the wound.

  Pus spurted from the broken seal. Nausea clogged Marianne’s throat at the sight and the smell of it, but she ignored it to work quickly and determinedly to remove the poison and make the wound clean.

  Only when she was as sure as she could be that the poison was removed did she pick up the brandy bottle and dash some over the still open wound.

  The man in the bed gave a great cry of pain, and this time when he looked at her Marianne knew that the Master of Bellfield knew exactly who she was. To her relief, though, the pain was such that his senses quickly deserted him, leaving her to apply the honey and bandage the cleansed wound.

  The air in the bedroom smelled of brandy and heat and her own fear, Marianne recognised as she cleared everything away.

  An hour went by, and then another, as her patient slept—surely a little more easily. Marianne had to force herself to leave the bedroom to see to the baby and her other responsibilities, telling herself that sleep was the best healer of all, as her aunt had used to say. Except that sleep also stole life away…But she must not think of that.

  Downstairs in the kitchen she fed the baby and told him how much his father had loved him, and why she had brought him here.

  The baby slept in her arms. Her gentle words to him lingered in her mind. Had she done the wrong thing in waiting? Should she have confronted the Master of Bellfield with the truth right from the beginning?

  ‘Your father begged me to bring you here because this was his home,’ she told the now sleeping baby softly, confiding to him the secret of their presence here and the worry that lay on her conscience.

  The Bellfield Hall Milo had remembered and talked to her of so often had been a happy home for him as a boy. He hadn’t been able to remember his father, who he had told her had been killed by a runaway carriage in Manchester. He had, though, told her of his anguish when his mother had died in childbirth, and her child with her. He had told her too of the anger and the bitterness he had felt against his stepfather.