The Regency Romances of Mira Stables: Part One

by Mira Stables

  Throughout the hours of the long hot afternoon the two girls tended the child as best they could. It was very hot and stuffy in the tiny bed-chamber under the eaves, for the window was not made to open. In her heavy habit Elizabeth was more than uncomfortable, and wisps of hair clung damply about her flushed face. The sponging with lukewarm water had given the child some relief, and she lay more quietly for a while, but they could not rouse her to drink and had to content themselves with moistening her lips from time to time.

  They spoke little, for the sound of their voices seemed to disturb Mally, who would begin to toss and whimper. Once Lucy whispered that his lordship had sent for a physician to come to the child, but since he must come from Slapton it might be late before he arrived. It was indeed past six o’clock when the sound of hoofs sent Lucy hurrying down the stairs, only to come back almost at once with a white, scared face.

  “It’s not the doctor,” she said in an urgent under voice. “It’s his lordship. He wants to speak to you. And oh! Miss, I’m afraid he’s very angry.”

  Elizabeth could see no cause for anger, though certainly she had been out for longer than she had first intended. But since she had dutifully left a message to say where she was gone, no one could complain that she had given cause for anxiety. She went softly down the stairs, thinking only of Mally and the need for quiet.

  The Earl was standing in the middle of the room, his hands gripping the back of a tall Windsor chair with a force that whitened the knuckles. His lips were so tightly pressed together that they formed a thin hard line, and his eyes were slitted in seething fury. Elizabeth shrank back at the sight of this iron visage. She had never seen him in real anger before, and for a moment it seemed to her that the room was charged with the power radiating from his rigid figure. He seemed poised to annihilate any lesser creature that dared to cross his path. Yet his voice was perfectly under control, though the tone was searing as ice.

  “I do not know why you came to this house, Miss Kirkley, or why, having learned that there was dire sickness here, you were so rash and foolish as to remain. But you will return to Anderley at once. Every stitch of your clothing is to be burned immediately, and you will direct your maid to prepare a bath as hot as is endurable. You will then have her scrub every inch of your person until the skin is pink, and also wash your hair. After which you will remain in your own apartments until my physician has seen you.”

  By the time that he had come to the end of these embarrassingly particular orders, Elizabeth, who had certainly been shaken by the mordant fury of the opening phrases, had quite recovered her composure. To know that the Earl had been moved to such wrath—and indeed to the utterance of such extremely indelicate instructions—by his concern for her safety, could only be a source of deep satisfaction. He would surely not have spoken so if she had been to him just a burden dutifully borne for love of her father. Thus she was able to answer him quite collectedly, though her soft tones were just as determined as his thunderous ones.

  “I am sorry to have given cause for anxiety, my lord, and also that I must now incur your grave displeasure by refusing to obey you. I cannot leave that poor girl alone in her anxiety. There is little that anyone can do for the child, but I can at least support and comfort the mother.”

  The Earl’s hands released the chair back. He took two swift strides towards her, caught her by the shoulders and shook her fiercely.

  “Crazy little fool!” he bit out. “You will obey me if I have to tie you on the mare and lead her all the way home. That child has smallpox. Do you think I will allow you to risk contracting the disease by nursing her? God alone knows if you are not already infected, but at least we will take no further chances.” He made as though to sweep her into his arms and put his threat into execution. Elizabeth managed to fend him off for a moment, catching at his sleeve as she said breathlessly, for the shaking had been no playful make-believe, his lordship having put into it much of his pent-up desperation, “My lord, indeed you are anxious without cause. I shall not take the smallpox from Mally.”

  His brow cleared. “You have been vaccinated?” he demanded eagerly.

  She shook her head. “No. But truly I am quite safe. Dr Jenner would tell you so himself. You are forgetting that I lived in Berkeley and that I had the best of doctors. I had the cowpox as a child, when I would insist on learning how to milk. It seems that if one has had that one is quite safe from smallpox. I even helped to nurse one of our maidservants who took the sickness and I came to no harm.”

  He looked down at her, still holding her between his hands, at the flushed eager face, the tumble of soft brown hair about her shoulders for which his rough handling was responsible, and his grim visage relaxed. Quite unconsciously he breathed a deep sigh of thankfulness. Then a rueful twinkle crept into his eyes.

  “And now I suppose it is my turn to apologise for jumping too quickly to conclusions,” he murmured in comical dismay. “Intemperate language and misuse of brute strength. I can only trust that I have not really hurt you. The rest you must surely forgive, since it was only my concern for your safety that so provoked me.” He held out his hands in a gesture of mock supplication as he spoke, and Elizabeth willingly put hers into them, for who could resist the warm, loving look in the grey eyes or the mischievous sideways tilt of the proud head? Though she was pretty sure that her shoulders would bear the marks of those hard fierce fingers for days, and indeed, foolishly, rather hoped that they would, she assured him that she was not in the least hurt but must certainly put her hair to rights. And since a tentative shake of her head completed the ruin, scattering pins all over the floor, the Earl laughed and helped her to pick them up, and the moment of close intimacy was gone.

  After she had tidied herself she came back to him and they consulted together soberly as to what was best to be done. Elizabeth stood to it firmly that Lucy knew and trusted her, so no one else, however willing a nurse, could really take her place. To this the Earl eventually yielded. But he insisted that before resuming her post she must first go home, change her habit for a more comfortable dress and eat her dinner. Then she could have herself driven back to the cottage in the light chaise so that she could bring with her various commodities to supplement the limited resources of the cottage. He himself would remain, at least until Bassett came home and possibly until the doctor arrived, so that Lucy should not be left alone. Elizabeth went back to the sickroom to explain these arrangements to Lucy while the Earl saddled up for her.

  As he put her up she could not resist teasing him a little. “You will not, after all, tie me to the saddle, my lord? I will do my best, I promise, not to fall off!”

  He looked up at her quizzically. “Vindictive little wretch! I thought I had been forgiven! A more generous nature would not advert to past injuries. Be careful, Miss Kirkley, for next time you rebel I shall not waste time on issuing threats!”

  She laughed, and rode through the gate that he was holding open for her, tossing back over her shoulder, “Behold me in a positive quake of terror at the thought!” And with a gesture of playful salute from her whip she was on her way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  All through the grim hours of the night as they fought the losing battle for the child’s life, Elizabeth drew strength and courage from a new spring of happiness within herself. She would not yet examine its source. This was not the time nor the place. All her conscious thoughts were devoted to her self-imposed task, but she would not have denied that her genuine sorrow for Lucy was shot through and lightened by the knowledge that the Earl was waiting in the room downstairs, ready to lend aid and support in any crisis. He had ridden back to Anderley after the physician had seen the child, but had returned shortly before midnight, having turned a deaf ear to the indignant protestations of Lady Hester, who had very reasonably pointed out that he would be of no use at all in a sickroom and might indeed be very much in the way.

  “I know,” he acknowledged. “But I cannot leave Miss Kirkley, who is not even a mem
ber of my family, to carry alone a burden that is rightly mine. If, as there seems grave cause to fear, the child should die, I can at least deal with the necessary arrangements, for Miss Kirkley will have her hands full with the mother. The poor creature is near demented with grief and anxiety, and her father, decent fellow though he is, is little comfort to her. He has never reconciled himself to Lucy’s situation, and though I am sure he does not positively wish the child dead, he would certainly regard its death as a benevolent dispensation of Providence. So naturally he cannot enter into his daughter’s feelings as Miss Kirkley apparently does.”

  “Really, Richard, you are growing foolish beyond permission,” returned his sister, seriously exasperated. “To concern yourself with the well-being of your servants and tenants is doubtless very right and proper. But to carry it to these ridiculous extremes is out of all reason. Do you propose to act nursemaid for every sick child on the estate? You are like to be kept busy! And in this case especially your attentions must present a very odd appearance and cause a great deal of talk. As if it were not enough that the whole neighbourhood is already agog over Timothy’s absurd infatuation.”

  “Which reminds me, where is Timothy?” enquired his uncle, coolly ignoring the rest of the speech.

  “He is spending tonight and tomorrow with the Considines,” said Lady Hester austerely. “It seems that the young people are all bent on an expedition to Semerwater. Someone seems to have taken a notion that with the level of the lake fallen so low it may be possible to discern traces of the drowned village which is said by legend to lie beneath its waters. Elizabeth was included in the invitation, of course, but she does not seem to have taken to the Considine girls, and I could not think she would find it amusing to watch Timothy dancing attendance on Miss Bentley, so I was really quite thankful that she was out when the scheme was decided on. Though to be sure she would do far better to make one of an innocent pleasure party than to be nursing the child of an abandoned creature like Lucy Bassett.”

  “Now, Hester! You are permitting your very natural annoyance with me to outweigh your sense of justice. You know very well that you sincerely pitied Lucy, and I know equally well the many kindnesses that you have shown her, so let us not dispute further on that head. You shall deplore my mistaken notions of philanthropy as much as you please to our good neighbours.”

  “That is all very fine talking, Richard, but if only you had taken a wife like a sensible man there would have been no need to involve yourself personally in this sort of philanthropy. Your wife would have dealt with it,” retorted his sister, in mild triumph at having scored a point that admitted no argument.

  “Now there you are very right, my dear,” agreed the Earl as one much struck. “Perhaps I should reconsider the whole question of marriage. But it is, as the Prayer Book reminds us, not to be entered into lightly. So the consideration may wait until tomorrow, and meanwhile I will bid you goodnight. If I am not returned by morning I will send a message to let you know how we go on,” and the door closed quietly behind him, leaving his sister, her mouth half open, a prey to mingled amazement and speculation as to his meaning. But after devoting a few moments’ thought to the puzzle she decided comfortably that he was only funning. One really could not expect a man of his age to change his mind about the matrimonial state, and his remarks had been much too flippant to be taken seriously.

  It was a lonely vigil that the Earl kept in the cottage kitchen, with only the occasional sound of soft footfalls overhead and the chirring of the crickets on the hearth to vary the sound of heavy rain. Bassett had long ago gone to his bed, for a man who rises betimes and works out of doors till close upon dusk needs his sleep. Installed in the high-backed chair, the Earl sat gazing into the glowing embers, and though his reflections appeared to be serious they were not, apparently, sad, for once or twice the hint of a smile touched his mouth.

  Some time in the early morning hours Elizabeth came softly downstairs to warm some milk in the hope of persuading Lucy to drink it, for the girl had taken nothing all day. To the query of his lifted brows she shook her head sadly.

  “When—if—it is necessary,” he said heavily, “Dr Hartwell gave me a draught for Lucy to ensure that she gets some sleep. I fear that it will fall to you, my poor child, to persuade her to swallow it.”

  Elizabeth looked troubled. “But where is she to sleep, my lord? As I judge there are but the two rooms upstairs. If—if anything happens we can scarcely—” She broke off, not wishing to put her fears for Mally into actual words.

  “It might be best to carry her back with us to Anderley,” said the Earl thoughtfully, “until other arrangements can be made.”

  The girl nodded agreement. “Yes. I believe you are right. Indeed I would not care to leave her alone if the worst should befall. She loves Mally devotedly—and she is talking very wildly.”

  The Earl glanced up sharply. “In what way?” he asked.

  “Oh! Blaming herself for what has befallen. It is her ‘sin’ as she chooses to call it that is being punished. For my part I do not see how that can be so, else why should Mally’s father, who is at least equally culpable, go scot free? But she seems to feel that she has added to the burden of her guilt by not having Mally baptised. I did not perfectly understand how that came about—she was rambling away to herself—but I gathered it was something to do with her father and the incumbent of the parish, who appears to be a very stiff-necked sort of clergyman, well versed in prophecies of hellfire and eternal damnation.”

  “Old Barnett? Yes—he would be. Why in heaven’s name didn’t the wench appeal to me? Derwent would have christened the poor little brat, just for the asking. Is it too late now? I could have him back here within the hour—no! I forgot. He’s gone off to Coldstone. There’s no resident priest there, so he visits regularly to do what he can, and won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth was carefully pouring the milk into a mug. “You are very kind, my lord,” she said, with such patent sincerity that the Earl felt positively embarrassed. “I wonder—I have heard, though I have never known it done—that when a child lies at the point of death, baptism may be administered by a lay person.”

  She looked up at him enquiringly, her eyes beseeching. It was plain to see which way her thoughts were trending. Had the situation been other than it was, the Earl’s expression of sheer horror must have been comic. To a man of deep if inarticulate faith, the suggestion that he might be called upon to administer one of the Church’s solemn sacraments was sacrilegious. Thrown completely off balance, he actually stammered. “D-do you mean—oh no! I could not. I am not fit.”

  She did not argue or seek to persuade him, merely bowing her head in submission to his scruples. After a moment he said uneasily, “Do you think I ought to offer? Indeed I would very much rather not,” and in his diffidence he looked young and vulnerable as Elizabeth had never seen him, so that a rush of tenderness filled her heart.

  “You must do as you think right,” she said gently. “No one would expect you to perform such a solemn act unwillingly.” She moved towards the stairway, explaining that she must take the milk to Lucy before it cooled.

  But even as she began the steep ascent a dreadful, almost inhuman wailing assailed their ears. Elizabeth hastily put down the cup, gathered her skirts and fled up the stairs, the Earl following swiftly on her heels.

  Lucy had flung herself face downward on the bed, her arms wrapped about the pitifully contorted body of the child. The eerie keening had broken into a storm of sobbing, and it was only with difficulty that Elizabeth was able to draw her away. The Earl bent over the sickbed. Too late, now, for human aid. Gently he straightened the twisted little body, wiped away the blood that had gushed from the child’s nose, and drew up the sheet over the quiet face.

  At the finality of this action Lucy began to struggle in Elizabeth’s restraining arms, crying out that it was only a convulsion, that her baby wasn’t dead, until she had sobbed herself into exhaustion and allowed Eliz
abeth to half lead, half carry her from the room.

  It would be a long time before the misery of the journey to Anderley would fade from Elizabeth’s mind. Lucy was quieter. It seemed as though her in-bred respect for the Earl prevented her from making too great an outcry in his presence. But now, it emerged, she was obsessed by the fear that her child would be denied the right to burial in consecrated ground because she had not been baptised. On and on went the hoarse monotonous voice, pleading, praying, then with a sudden twist of mood resigned and hopeless.

  The Earl, fully engaged in the task of guiding his horses along shadowy lanes illuminated only by the feeble light of a watery moon, had no attention to spare, even if he caught the burden of Lucy’s plaint. It fell to Elizabeth to soothe and comfort, and she felt herself sadly ill-equipped to do so. She dare not make a confident promise that all would be well, being quite ignorant of the law in such cases. At last, in desperation, she reminded Lucy of the story of Christ bidding His friends to let the children come to Him, and this at last seemed to bring the girl a measure of comfort, for surely a priest of Christ’s Church would never go against so clear a command? The weary voice fell silent, save for an occasional plea for repeated reassurance. Elizabeth could only be thankful, for she felt that it was for wiser heads than hers to resolve the situation.