Carla Kelly (23 page)

The squire struggled to open his eyes, as if a great weight were pressing against them. He succeeded finally, through that sheer force of will that she did recognize as a characteristic of his son. His eyes were dark and muddied by the drug that sedated him, and huge in his fallen face. He stared at her, uncomprehending, and then a flicker of interest came into his eyes. He struggled now to speak, and she leaned closer.

“Your brother?” he asked.

“He will be fine,” she said, speaking slowly and distinctly into his ear.

The squire tried to say more, but the sedative overcame him. He nodded and closed his eyes again. Libby squeezed his hand gently. To her surprise, there was a slight answering pressure from the squire.

She sat with him for most of the afternoon, watching him drift in and out of sleep. Candlow came to her after an hour. He pulled up a chair for a whispered conversation and the good news that the redoubtable Mrs. Wilcox and her husband, Jim— “Who can repair anything, I vow”—were on their way to the Cook estate, plus two stout girls from Holyoke who never let a cobweb escape them.

“After we have done what we can, we will consider the situation further,” Candlow said. “I put the issue to several others who appeared reluctant to help the squire, but were enthusiastic about his son. We shall have all the help we require, Miss Ames.”

“Candlow, you are a wonder,” she marveled.

He merely raised his eyebrows, put his finger to his lips, and left the room, a slight smile on his face that made Libby laugh softly to herself. In a few minutes she heard voices in the next room and the sound of water being poured into a tub. She smiled. Anthony Cook doesn’t have a chance. Candlow is in charge.

Shortly after, Mrs. Weller brought her a bowl of soup and tea, which she drank gratefully.

Mrs. Weller cast her eyes over the squire and then whispered behind her hand. “There’s many as would like to see him stretched out that way with daisies on his chest. More like, you must be one of them.”

Libby shook her head. “No, I am not, Mrs. Weller,” she said.

Tears welled up in the cook’s eyes. Libby took her by the elbow and marched her to the door.

Mrs. Weller sobbed in the hallway. “Miss Ames, there is a dragon downstairs, and now you are unkind. I shall grow distracted.”

“A dragon?”

“Goes by the name of Wilcox, from Fairbourne,” she said, drying her tears. “There she is, telling me what to do and all.”

“I trust you will listen to her, Mrs. Weller,” was Libby’s firm reply.

Mrs. Weller nodded. “I wouldna dare do otherwise, would I?”

Libby shook her head, wondering what this dragon was like that Candlow had found, grateful to him beyond words. Uncle Ames, I shall bully you until you give him an increase in wages, she thought, and even then, he is too good for you and your gouty crochets.

She stayed where she was outside the door for a moment more, enjoying the sound of splashing coming from the doctor’s room. I only hope he does not fall asleep suddenly and drown in his bathwater, she thought as she took a deep breath and went back into the squire’s room.

The doctor came into the room much later, as she rested her chin on her hand, thinking of Benedict Nesbitt. She sat up, startled, at his hand on her shoulder, and for the smallest moment she thought it was the duke.

He went to the bed, looking down on the squire as she had done. She watched the doctor, noting with satisfaction that his face was shaved, he wore clean clothes, and he smelled of eau de cologne. He didn’t have his spectacles, however, and he squinted at his father.

“I left your spectacles in the surgery,” she said. “You handed them to me.”

He nodded, feeling his father’s pulse, resting his head upon the squire’s chest, and then sitting on his bed in silent observation for another moment. “When you go downstairs, send someone back with them, my dear,” he whispered. “And if you will, there is a volume on my desk that I would like to peruse while I sit here.”

“I can stay,” she insisted. “Mrs. Weller brought me something to eat.”

He shook his head. “No. I want you to return to Joseph. Take a good look at his cheek. If it is red and swollen, please send for me. If it is not, here is the prescription I have for him . . . and you.”

He handed her a folded piece of paper, which she opened and held up to the faint light from the window. “Brighton—July and August until the hops harvest. I will write.”

She folded the paper carefully, hurt somehow that he would want her away, but determined not to show it. His advice was sound. She would remove Joseph to the house that Uncle had rented for the summer, and it would be good for him.

“Very well, sir, if that’s what you wish,” she said, and got up to leave.

He took her hand. “Not so much what I wish, Elizabeth, but what I think you—we—need.”

He kissed her hand and said good-bye. She left the room in tears that she did not understand.

Libby found his glasses in the surgery where she had left them. Mrs. Wilcox—it could only be Mrs. Wilcox—had gathered together the bloody rags and crimsoned water from the surgery and discarded them. The room was tidy once again, and a small fire had been laid.

Mrs. Wilcox came into the room, bringing back the basin clean to set on the shelf. She curtsied to Libby and then shook the hand that was extended to her. “A fearsome task you have set us, Miss Ames,” she said, her voice brusque, but spoken with a lilt that belied the stern look in her eyes.

“Indeed I have, and you are brave to take up the challenge,” Libby said, her voice equally firm. “I only hope that Candlow did not understate the case.”

Mrs. Wilcox laughed. “He said the magic word—Dr. Cook—and we knew we would be happy then.” She put away the basin and flicked at imaginary dust on the glass instrument case. “Dr. Cook sat through a dreadful bout with Jim’s pneumonia this winter.” She paused a moment, as if unable to trust herself with words. “We never did feel that we had repaid him enough. This is our opportunity, Miss Ames.”

Libby handed her the doctor’s spectacles. “He wanted someone to take this to him upstairs, and one other thing.” She went to the desk and picked up the book there, turning it over in her hands. “
Anomalies of the Brain
,” she read out loud. “A little light reading for the doctor.”

Mrs. Wilcox accepted the heavy volume doubtfully. “’Twould make a wondrous fine napkin press,” she said as she flipped through the pages. “Only think how many flower keepsakes we could press there, Miss Ames.”

Libby smiled. “Dr. Cook would be sorely disappointed if we pressed flowers in his medical books, I fear.”

The housekeeper rested the book on her hip. “It will do him good to have a little daughter someday who does precisely that, Miss Ames. Flowers in all these books,” she said, waving her hand at the whole expanse of the bookcase.

Libby watched her in delight, her own discomfort momentarily set aside. “Mrs. Wilcox, I am sure you are right, but as for now, I recommend a vase of flowers on the doctor’s desk in the morning. Think how it will cheer him.”

“You pick the flowers, Miss Ames, and I will find the vase,” said Mrs. Wilcox, starting for the door.

“I would, but I am off to Brighton tomorrow with my brother,” Libby replied, wishing that the thought of a seaside vacation would not bring on that heaviness behind her eyelids.

“Very well, miss, I will see that is it done. Don’t you worry about anything. We will take excellent care of your doctor.”

“Oh, he’s not my doctor,” Libby said quietly.

She walked back to Holyoke Green, having refused the loan of the gig. She wanted to walk off some of the agitation she felt and the curious sense of loss that dampened her spirits. Surely Anthony had known that she would gladly have come every day to sit with his father and take some of this complex burden off his shoulders. He had only to ask, but he had chosen not to. I thought we were friends, she thought, and wasn’t that what friends did for each other? And aren’t we engaged?

Libby thought again about his unusual proposal and felt herself growing cross. If you are such a patient man, then why send me away? she reasoned. Surely we could get to know each other better if I were close at hand.

Ah, well, you said that you would write, she concluded to herself as she walked slowly along the road. And when you do, I will answer your letters promptly, so you will know that I care.

“How much do I care?” she asked out loud, standing in the middle of the road, looking back at the Cook estate. “I wish I knew.”

Joseph was still awake when she returned, Aunt Crabtree sitting with him, deep in her solitaire again. Her brother had taken the bandage off and was admiring Dr. Cook’s even stitches in the mirror, turning his head this way and that. Libby kissed him and examined the wound, noting with relief that there was very little swelling left. The redness was nearly gone.

She held out Dr. Cook’s prescription and he read it slowly, mouthing the words. “Does this mean that we are to go to Brighton?” he asked.

“Dr. Cook decrees it,” she said with a smile that she did not feel. “Mama will cry and scold us both, and then she will see that you sit in the sun until your stitches are ready to come out.”

“Like she used to do with Papa when he was wounded,” he said. “I remember that. Do you know, Libby, I think she enjoys that sort of thing.”

“Oh, I am sure of it,” Libby replied in round tones. “She will be delighted to see you this way.”

Aunt Crabtree looked up from her cards. “She will likely haul me over the coals.” She shuddered delicately. “My brother will hear from me if she does. ‘A peaceful summer with an unexceptionable niece,’ indeed!”

They caught the mail coach in Holyoke the next morning in the dark. Only the direst of threats kept Joseph from climbing to the roof to sit with the other young men, and he pointedly turned away from her and closed his eyes as soon as they started.

The coach traveled back past Holyoke Green and the Cook estate. A light burned in the squire’s room. In her mind, Libby could see Anthony sitting there, his eyes and heart on his father.

“You must attend,” she whispered out loud, and hunched herself farther into the corner as the tears rolled down her face. Something told her that he would not write. He had sent her away until the hops harvest, when everyone in Holyoke would be too busy for social calls. And then winter would come, with its freezing cold blowing in from the Channel and the steely rains that swept the lands and made her restless. Lydia would likely be married and gone.

The doctor would change his mind and look elsewhere. He would never make her an improper offer, of this she was sure, but when he had time for reflection, calm reason would take over and he would renege. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.

“And all because I know you will not write,” she said to the glass window of the mail coach. Her words fogged the glass until she could no longer see the house of Dr. Cook or the road the chocolate merchant had traveled away on.

17

“REALLY, my dear boy, if we had known you would be such quelling company, we could have arranged for you to run alongside the carriage and bark at the wheels.”

The duke looked up from his silent contemplation of his hands into Eustace Wiltmore’s vacuous face. He wondered why he had never noticed before how Eustace’s voice grated like fingernails on slate, or that irritating way he had of ending each sentence with a little raise of his eyebrows.

Lydia touched the duke and twinkled her eyes at him. “I think he is contemplating the narrowness of his escape, are you not, my lord?”

He turned his gaze upon Lydia, wishing that he had a quizzing glass to stare her up and down. “I have you to thank for so much,” he murmured, hoping that Lydia Ames would have the good sense to let it lie there.

She did not. “Eustace, my love, he looks as Friday-faced as Libby. She did not think it a funny joke, either.”

The duke rolled down the glass and leaned his head out the carriage window. “Stop this vehicle,” he commanded.

The carriage stopped and he got out without a backward glance. The coachman, his eyes alive with curiosity, handed him his shabby bag, while Eustace scolded him from the carriage and Lydia Ames put in her mite.

He merely stood there, face an expressionless study, bag in hand, until the coach rolled on.

He walked slowly toward the next village, ignoring the offers of rides from carters bound for London and farmers and their loads of hay. He knew that his knee would begin to pain him after too many miles, but he wanted to feel discomfort. He remembered lessons of his youth from the vicar, stories of penitents rolling about in sackcloth and ashes to atone for misdeeds that didn’t seem half so serious. When did any Old Testament graybeard have to gaze into eyes as beautiful as Libby’s and watch them fill up with tears and know that he had been the author of such humiliation?

And yet, it had been a perfectly reasonable offer. He had made it several times before with signal success. None of his previous charming confections had paled at the thought of just such an alliance as he had offered Libby Ames.

“Libby Ames, I have it on good authority that I am a wonderfully proficient lover,” he shouted out loud, setting down his bag with a thump. “Women don’t exactly beat a path to my door, but no one’s ever been dragged there kicking and screaming, either.”

No one answered. He stood there in the empty road and realized that if Libby Ames had been standing before him, she would not have answered either. Again he saw before him those beautiful eyes, hurt beyond his comprehension.

He picked up the bag again. And after all, Nez, you block, whose word do you have on your masculine prowess anyway, except those beauties you have kept so comfortably? Were they about to tell you anything but what you wanted to hear? Don’t flatter yourself. And they weren’t so beautiful, either.

Only one thing would do now, and the thought moved him to pick up his stride. There was a village not far, and what was a village without a public house? He would take off the rough edges with a tankard of ale. His mouth began to water. He would order a pint of Kentish brew so dark it looked black, with the bitter taste of homegrown hops and malts, the ale that peeled the skin off thirst and mellowed the mind.

He came to a village and wiped his lips in anticipation. And there it was before him, the Cock and Hen, a prosperous inn with a thatched roof and sign swaying invitingly in the slight breeze. From the looks of the place, he could procure a private parlor and not be bothered by stares or conversation he didn’t wish to partake of.

He set his foot upon the threshold and stopped, pulling out his watch and looking at it. Nine o’clock, by damn. The fragrance of sausage and eggs assailed his nostrils and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had been too distracted for breakfast at Holyoke Green. He would indulge himself now and have that ale later, when it was hot and he had worked up more of an urge for it.

An hour later, full to bursting with the best sausage this side of the Channel, eggs, and bread so fine that he smiled at the memory, he started off again. The bag he left in a dark corner of the taproom. There was nothing in it of value. He strode along, arms swinging, on the road to London, enjoying the scent of flowers on the breeze and wondering how people managed who never set foot in Kent.

Up ahead somewhere, he knew there was a pub with a pint, and he would find it when he was good and ready.

Women be damned, and you, too, Libby Ames, he thought. Do you seriously think you will get a better offer? Anthony Cook would like to tuck you in his bed, but I don’t think his father will approve, and the doctor seems to want the esteem of that prickly man. He chuckled. Not that Anthony Cook is God’s gift to females. You had your chance, Libby Ames, and you muffed it.

That bit of self-righteous absurdity was enough to carry him another ten miles closer to London. By the time he arrived at the next promising village, he was more than ready for that pint.

He asked for a private parlor and received it. He sat down in the soft chair with a sigh, flexing his aching knee. In another moment, the keep brought in a tray with a tankard full to the brim with the specialty of the house.

Nez eyed the beautiful brew. “Bring me another in ten minutes,” he said. “I have worked up a thirst you wouldn’t believe, sir.”

The man nodded and left him to his cup. Nez regarded it as a long-lost comrade and raised the tankard to his lips, more than ready for that first drop of bitterness to roll down his throat.

There he sat, poised, ready, but unable to swallow. He rolled the ale around in his mouth and then spit it back in the cup. Two strides took him to the window, where he dumped the brew onto the roses blooming below. He leaned on the sill then, the cup dangling from his hand.

He had stopped drinking under tyranny from Anthony Cook and then to please Elizabeth Ames. As he watched the foam froth into the ground, it finally occurred to him that he was now abstaining to suit himself.

He was still there, smiling to himself, when the landlord returned with the second pint.

“Sir, are you well?” the man asked when he didn’t move from his contemplation of the roses.

Nez looked up, startled. “Yes, yes, I am fine.” He glanced at the tankard of ale the landlord was setting on the table and shook his head. “No, sir, I think I’ll not have that, after all. Can you tell me where the mail coach comes?”

He had thought about renting a hack, but the strain on his knee would likely still prove too much. Better to tough it out on the mail coach. Likely he would be sufficiently entertained. He would meet any number of “genuine articles” on the mail coach and have stories to tell Libby . . . He shook his head as another wave of desolation washed over him. No stories, no Libby.

His arrival in London after dark was unheralded by anyone other than the porters who loitered about the posting house. When they saw that he had no bags to be hauled somewhere at an extortionate rate, they ignored him. He hailed a hackney cab and was deposited at the entrance of the ducal manor.

Luster met him at the door, staring in surprise. “Sir! We have been wondering where you were,” the butler said, not precisely dancing up and down in excitement, but rubbing his hands together in evident relish. He eyed the duke’s casual attire with some disfavor, taking in Major Ames’ old trousers and the boots and shirt that had left from Clarges Street two months ago in much better condition.

“Sir, your clothes appear to have fallen upon hard times,” he said. “Cheedleep will probably dissolve into a nervous state if he sees the condition of your boots, so perhaps you will wait in the library while I prepare him, your grace.”

Nez smiled at his butler, eager for Luster to take another good look at him. He elaborately ignored the sidelong glances that the butler cast his way as they walked together to the library. Luster opened the door and stood aside while the duke entered.

“Beg pardon, my lord . . .”

“Yes, Luster?”

“Your grace, I can’t quite account for it, considering your clothing, but you are looking rather splendid, if I may say so,” the butler said. “Not that Cheedleep would agree, if one considers your rig-out. Wherever you went appears to have suited you, sir.”

“Thank you, Luster,” Nez replied, taking a glance at the stack of letters that had accumulated on the table. “You look pretty well yourself.”

“Now, sir, may I get you a drink? Sherry perhaps, or something with a little more hair on it?”

Nez ruffled through the pile of outdated invitations. “There is so much here I am glad I missed. Tea will be sufficient, Luster.”

The butler stared, forgetful of thirty years’ training. “Tea?”

“You know, Luster, grows in China, comes in a pot?”

“Yes, your grace—certainly, your grace.”

The duke looked up from a collection of frenzied dispatches from Gussie. “Luster, one thing else. In the morning, will you see that my wine cellar is cleaned out and the contents sent to the Earl of Devere?”

Luster blinked and swallowed.

“It is a wedding present to my friend. He will be needing it more than I will in the coming years. That will do now, Luster,” the duke added kindly when the butler appeared unable to move.

The duke drank tea, laughed over Gussie’s messages that grew more incoherent, the more recent the date, and then sat in thoughtful silence as the fire on the hearth turned into glowing coals. He rang the bell to summon Luster one more time.

“Tell me, Luster, earlier this summer, did you receive a visit from a one-legged man by the name of Amos Yore?”

“Sir, we did not,” Luster replied.

“Then let me speak for my curricle after breakfast.”

“Certainly, your grace.” Luster stood there another moment and cleared his throat. “Sir, your sister has been, shall we say, interested in your whereabouts. Might you wish to drop her a message?”

The duke shook his head. “Not until tomorrow afternoon, when I am safely out of here again.”

Luster nodded and a well-mannered smile played about his lips.

“If there is nothing more, your grace—”

The duke stopped him. “There is actually, Luster, and it is of a personal nature.”

“Sir?”

“Luster, how important is it to oblige one’s relatives?”

The butler clasped his hands behind his back and gazed upward. “Sir, I suspect that in consequence it falls somewhere between the burning of Moscow and the Congress of Vienna. More or less,” he added.

“I was afraid of that. Good night, Luster.”

And pleasant dreams, he thought. From now until the end of my life I can only wish that I would waken to the sight of Libby Ames coming into my room with a pot of tea and two companionable cups. I can dream about the pleasure of watching her at the window in deep appreciation of another summer morning in Kent, the breeze just blowing her hair. When I am old and still dreaming, she will yet be young, sitting beside the bed and asking how I find myself.

I am love’s fool, he thought.

***

He found Private Yore at the same corner on Fleet Street. Nez noticed how the man whisked the begging cup out of sight when he stepped down from his curricle. The man would not meet his eyes.

“Private Yore,” he barked, “since when did it become a habit of yours to disregard orders?”

“Sir?” asked the private, sitting up straighter, brushing at a stain on his army-issue cloak.

Nez squatted on the pavement by his former private and looked him in the eye. “When I give you a piece of paper to take around to my residence, I expect it done, Private.”

The flush rose in Yore’s face, leaving darker patches of color in his hollow cheeks. “I thought I did not need your help, sir,” he said, his head high.

“I think you do, Private, and you know how I am when I am crossed,” Nez said, his voice low. “I am worse than the Iron Duke himself.”

The invalid was silent.

Nez looked about him at the men of business hurrying down the sidewalk, looking everywhere but at the beggar. He sniffed the odor of sewage, observed the dirt on the pavement. “Nice corner, Yore, but your view is somewhat limited. What do you do when it gets cold?”

“We’ll find out this winter, won’t we, sir?” came the reply. “Last winter I spent in hospital.”

“Infamous place, wasn’t it?” the duke said, making himself more comfortable, heedless of the stares and not at all concerned, for once, what people thought. “One would think that England could do better for those who defend her.”

Yore nodded and held out the cup again to his regular customers on Fleet Street. “You know, sir, if you remain here, it will be difficult for me to earn enough for a meal tonight.”

The duke go to his feet. He took up the crutch that leaned against the wall and held out his hand to Yore. “I have a better idea, Private,” he said.

The duke dined that night in his kitchen. It was the first time he had ever visited belowstairs, but Yore had become adamant to the point of tears about eating upstairs. Bullying him would have served no purpose. Yore was tired and hungry and his stump pained him. Better to eat belowstairs than make the good man regret that his former commanding officer was out to kill him with belated Christian kindness.

The food tasted better belowstairs. Nez made some remark upon that fact to the cook, who hovered about the table, eager to please, genuinely delighted to see firsthand the effects of his cuisine on the master.

“It is always better when it is hot, my lord,” said the cook.

The duke nodded and wondered what kind of eccentric he would be thought if he took all his meals in the kitchen from now on. The idea had merit. Since I will henceforth be known as the peer who does not drink anything but water and lemonade, I suppose I could hardly suffer any more if the word circulated that I took my mutton family-style with my servants.

His great pleasure was watching Yore eat. The man was weary to the marrow, but utterly intent upon what was placed before him. Nez could tell by the look in the private’s eyes that the modest spread that the chef had created on short notice was more than Yore saw in a week.