Captive Scoundrel (4 page)

Jenny looked up. “A doctor came once. He said there was no hope.” But Faith refused to be discouraged.

She established a routine with Beth. Every morning she chose Beth’s dress. Every afternoon she brought Beth a gingerbread man and pointed to its smile. Every night she rocked and sang to Beth as she slept. Until one night when Faith was rocking her, humming…and Beth stiffened and opened her eyes.

Faith faltered. Beth didn’t seem frightened, but she was tense, so Faith continued to hum. Beth gazed about, but didn’t move much. After a while she raised a tentative hand to touch the broach pinned to Faith’s bodice. Then, to Faith’s utter surprise, Beth lifted that tiny hand further to trace Faith’s lips, as Faith had often done on a cookie’s smile.

When Faith smiled, Beth stopped tracing, but didn’t remove her fingers, so Faith kissed them. And there was a spark, just a spark, of something other than fear or mistrust on Beth’s face. Oh her mouth did not change, but her eyes did. They surely did.

Faith pulled the child close. “Sleep, sweetheart,” she whispered. And with a sigh, Beth obeyed.

Faith was still elated the next morning. “Good morning, Justin. You won’t believe what Beth did last night.”

Justin shuddered as if he’d been startled.

Placing her hand over his heart, Faith wondered why he’d reacted in such a way and why his heart beat so fast. Did she frighten him? Was he in pain? Or was it the mention of Beth?

“Beth misses you, Justin.”

He shuddered again. No mistaking it.

“Justin? Is it Beth?”

He whimpered.

Poor Beth. Poor dead baby. Dead baby. Dead baby.

Justin watched in horror as scores of golden-haired baby girls fell toward him.

Their cries split the air tormenting him beyond sanity. They tumbled and plunged. Pitched and lurched. Each of them getting closer, closer to their moment of death.

Horror welled within him.

A scream of anguish tore from Justin, slashing Faith with a keen blade. She pulled him into her arms and held him until his wail of grief ended and his heart against her own calmed.

She held him for a long time, wondering how she could ever hope to heal his tortured soul.

When Harris came in, he read her despair. “You looked exactly so your first morning. I’d think you’d be used to it by now, though God knows, I’m not.”

Later, after Harris shaved Justin with the same devotion he put into everything he did for his master, he poured milk into him, the same way he did the medicine.

Harris gave him the milk more often now, but Faith worried Justin would never get stronger without proper nourishment. “What if we were to give him watered gruel?”

Harris turned to her, brows furrowed, but willing to listen.

“If that works, we could try mushy peas or soft-boiled eggs. Continue to give him milk as often as you do now, but we could try beating a raw egg into it. What say you?”

“You’re probably fooling us both with your crazy notions.”

Faith touched Harris’s arm. “I want him to recover.”

Harris nodded. “Aye. So do I.”

An hour later, Faith had Justin sitting in a chair by the window while she fed him his first gruel, Harris beside her. “Saw a chair in a London shop window once,” Harris said. “A queer thing with a big wheel on each side. Could get him around in a chair like that.”

Faith stopped, spoon in the air. “Can you make one? Or go to London and buy one? Soon? Today? Tomorrow?”

“A body could go blind from the sparkle in your eyes right now. My master would have liked that fire, he would.”

“Not to encourage your Irish blarney, Harris, but I intend for Justin to have the opportunity to appreciate many things in the years to come. Now about that chair?”

“Get right on’t. Holy St. Patrick, he’s eaten it all. I been starving ‘im.”

“You’ve kept him alive. Now, he’s going to get better.”

Beth was the one who got better. With curtains for her room and a rocking horse from the attic, she blossomed. She didn’t smile, but she offered her hand each morning for her walk, took her cookie each afternoon and waited to be rocked each night.

The better part of every day, Faith spent with Justin. She ate with him, talking all the while. When she ran out of stories, she went to the family library for books to read to him.

Harris fashioned a wheelchair and Faith learned how to get Justin out of bed, into the chair, and back, by herself. Cook created new foods for him to eat.

Time at Killashandra flew.

“You look better. You have flesh on your bones and colour in your cheeks. I wish I could see your eyes.” She’d seen them once. They were dark and beautiful, not the sightless orbs of her nightmare. And she wanted to see them again.

Why had Justin responded that first morning? Why, when she’d mentioned Beth? She sighed with frustration, for she had only a suspicion that the later he got his medicine, the more alive he became … which went against every normal precept.

Her suspicion, however, about his meals, reaped benefits. “You have quite an appetite, you know. You’re eating soup, stew and even the filling from cook’s pasties. We make sure everything’s easy to swallow, but I’m beginning to think you’d swallow the spoon, did I leave it there long enough.”

Faith realized her life was fuller now, though she missed her family. Curious notion that. She had not been unhappy at home, yet she had such purpose now.

He knew her scent, violets. He craved her touch, silk. He relaxed to the music of her voice. Soothing angel, touch my hand, cool my brow. Bring me home.

“I would have liked to know the arrogant Duke of Ainsley. But you would hardly have noticed a country miss like me. The ladies probably swooned if you so much as—”

Faith stopped speaking, for Justin’s hand, amazingly, caressed hers. She’d never experienced so intimate a touch. His fingers slid along hers, across the back of her hand, inside her palm. Liquid heat filled her and she sighed.

He sighed at the same moment.

Justin wondered why he could never quite reach the angel. Sometimes hope filled him, hope that he might find his way to her. Then without warning, he would be lost in the cold black pitch once again. Alone.

Let me touch you, silken angel, the way you touch me.

Take my hand. Lead me home.

Faith saw Justin’s beautiful dark eyes once again. Fear of frightening or alarming him, or of ending the fragile moment, filled her, but she couldn’t remain silent. “How do you feel?” She grazed his cheek with the back of her hand. “Sometimes you seem so close, at others, so far.” She blinked to clear her vision. “Do you even know I’m here?” He caressed her hand, yet his eyes held no spark. He was as one blind, and the tears she’d tried to hold back, coursed down her cheeks.

A crash startled her. Harris saw her face. “Oh God, he’s dead. I’m late and he’s dead. I killed him.” Harris fell to the bedside and wept in his sleeve.

“Harris, what are you babbling about?”

“Stable boy got hurt. Had to tend the lad. Missed the eight o’clock dose. It’s gone half past. I’m late. You’re crying. My master’s dead.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“He’s not dead, you dear old man,” she said helping him to his feet. “Now raise him so I can give him his medicine.”

Faith thought Harris would collapse when Justin opened his eyes and looked him full in the face. “Don’t drop him! I know you’re surprised.” She put the vial to Justin’s lips. “This isn’t the first time. He’s opened his eyes before. Tears have coursed down his cheeks. He’s grabbed my hand and held tight. I think he’s getting better.”

The expression on the old man could only be termed fearful. He was afraid to hope.

“Now, mind,” Faith cautioned. “This is only the second time. It also happened the first morning I was here.” The later Justin got his medicine, the more he responded; it was a paradox. And with it came a warning Faith could not name. “Harris, let’s keep his progress to ourselves for now.”

Harris accepted each change in Justin’s care, but when Faith suggested he be bathed in a tub of hot water everyday, she could tell he was close to calling her mad. “You sure got some strange notions, Missy. But if you say do it, I will.”

“And if I tell you to jump in the bay?”

“If you say it will help my master, I’ll do it.”

His confidence touched her. “After his bath, we’ll exercise his legs—move them back and forth at knee and hip. That will make it easier for him to walk later. My grandfather’s doctor insisted on this.”

A few days later, Justin’s doctor finally came, but the horsy-smelling quack said, fresh air, hot baths, good food, were bad for a patient in a coma. Just give him the medicine.

Faith lay in bed that night, her mind in turmoil. The doctor was wrong. Justin was getting stronger, gaining weight. He looked healthy, distinguished, his dark, wavy hair shiny. Oh, how she wanted to see the crinkles in the corners of his dark eyes when he laughed.

Faith rose and donned her dressing gown, frowning all the while. Justin was better when his medicine was late. Had she not proved that? The doctor had named Justin’s illness a coma. She had never heard the word until today. What did it mean?

In the library, Faith found A Dictionary of the English Language by Dr. Samuel Johnson. “Coma, a state of physical torpor. Extreme sluggishness or stagnation of function. A state of profound sleep caused by disease, injury, or poison.”

Faith’s hand shook as she sat in a massive leather chair. Disease. Justin showed no sign of affliction, though that was not proof against it.

Injury. His wounds from the carriage accident were healed. Faith steepled her fingers, closed her eyes.

Poison. Her grandfather’s doctor said to keep his medicine away from the children. Medicine for one could be poison for another. Could Justin’s medicine be poisoning him? He likely required a large dose, but what would that be? She wasn’t asking that quack. And she couldn’t call in a new doctor; the cost would alert…Vincent—she could no longer call him the duke. He had as much as stolen the title, had he not? With his brother still alive?

And there she had it.

She must face her fears and consider the evidence. Vincent would irrevocably keep both title and fortune if Justin died. If the medicine was poison, real poison that she gave to Justin while Vincent was out of the country, no one would suspect him of…Oh, Lord.

Vincent brought a dressmaker to Killashandra before bringing a doctor. Yes, he’d shown more concern over her clothes than he did the comfort and care of his brother and niece, but misplaced priorities did not a murderer make.

Faith heard a noise. Waited. It came again. From above.

Dismissing her fear, she raised her candle. An upper balcony marched along the outer perimeter of the library. A circular staircase, leading to that gloomy level stood in the centre.

It came again. A rustle. A swish. Ghost-like.

Faith shook her head and placed her foot on the first stair, and when no goblin flew down to snatch her up, she continued to the top with no worse than a racing heart. Leather chairs faced a fireplace with swords and duelling pistols mounted above.

Something pulled at her skirts. She shrieked, and a cat hissed.

Faith scooped up the feline. “You frightened me, little one.

Is this your room?” She gazed about, her fear slipping away like mist at dawn. No answers here, unless…She petted the cat. “If you could speak, you could tell me what you know. What ails him, pray? Disease, injury, or poison?”

But the ebony feline merely licked her thumb and purred. Faith held that cat for a long time accepting the warmth and companionship it offered, until she reluctantly set it down.

The door to her right, she discovered, opened to the hall to her room, though not at the back where she and her charges were hidden away.

Were they? Hidden? She hadn’t considered that.

Back in Justin’s room, Faith sat on his bed and took his hand, knowing if he died, so would some fundamental fragment of herself. “Of all my patients,” she said. “I lost one. My grandfather. And I came here thinking if I could save you, I could atone.” She brushed his hair aside. “Now I want to bring you back for you, and for me. Selfish, I know. Justin, if I stop your medicine, you could die. But is this…existence of yours enough?” She touched his heart, felt the beat she could stop with a wrong decision. Her own accelerated. “Lord, tell me what to do. Please. What right do I have to make such a decision?”