Drake's Lair (26 page)

“You aren’t dreaming, my lord,” she said. “Dr. Hale brought me. You’ve had a dreadful accident. You must lie still. He will be back directly. You must rest, and mend.”

“M-my head,” he groaned, “…no accident. I was struck… from behind. I was coming to find you… you’re in grave danger…”

There was that word again. Rosen’s warnings echoed through her memory.
Danger
. But how much danger could she be in even if he were mad? Dr. Hale was right. In his altered state, the man couldn’t even part reality from dreams.

“From you?” she couldn’t help asking.

“Why would you say that? Why would you even
think
it?” he groaned.

“You forget, my lord,” she said bravely, attempting to rise, but his hand tethered her wrist again.

“I can bear anything but that fear in your eyes,” he said.

“You put it there, my lord.”

“I’m not mad, Demelza—tormented, but not mad. You have nothing to fear from me.”

She gazed into his eyes, dilated black beneath the ledge of his brow indicating that the pain he was trying to suppress in order to speak was palpable. How she wanted to believe him. How she prayed his ravings were pain-induced, and not the babblings of a madman. It didn’t matter. There was no hope for it. She loved him regardless.

“Let me go,” she said steadily, against every instinct that pleaded with her, begging that she throw her arms around him and invite those lips to taste hers again.

“No,” he gritted, “you’ll leave me—real or apparition, you will leave me. I can’t prevent you. I can only beg you, Demelza, please—vision or flesh—stay until I get past this… until I can explain. That deuced butcher has got me foxed on laudanum… I’m not mad… Promise me you’ll stay.”

She didn’t pull away. The hand that had captured her wrist, though firm, was no longer scalding hot, but warm and moist and gentle. The fever had left him, but the madness and the pain had not. She searched his face. She wasn’t wise enough in such delicate medical matters to assess his sanity. His eyes held her relentlessly, but it was the glimmer of tears in them that unlocked her voice.

“I promise,” she murmured.

Nineteen

It was past ten in the evening, when the bedraggled doctor returned and plodded wearily up the stairs to the earl’s bedchamber. Griggs had wakened from his nap, and Melly hadn’t been able to close her eyes again after her strange conversation with the earl. The doctor wasted no time making his evaluation of his sleeping patient, while she gave account of his progress. When he had finished, he returned the smoking candles to their stand, with a crisp nod.

“It looks as though he’s on the mend, if he doesn’t muck it up,” he said, handing her the jar of salve. She had managed to free her hand in increments, once the earl fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. “Best give him another application while he’s under; it’s helping,” he charged. Then turning to Griggs, he began removing his bandages. “Now then, let’s see how well you’re coming along,” he grunted.

“Are you sure he’s not lapsed back into coma?” the valet urged. “He’s so still.”

“What? You’ve become doctor here now, have you, Griggs?” Hale returned gruffly. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have half-killed that poor old cob of mine, and nearly drowned myself in washed-out lanes, up to my knees in mud trying to coax the poor beast out here through hail and rain and fallen limbs. The fever is down and, from what Melly tells me, she and Shelldrake actually had a conversation. I’ll settle for that. He’s sleeping soundly—naturally, without the laudanum, I might add. His eyes are still dilated, and we’re going to have to be on the lookout for vomiting for the next forty-eight hours, I dare say. But, yes, all in all, I do believe he’s on the mend.”

“Shouldn’t he have the laudanum anyway,” Griggs queried, “for the pain?”

“Do you want to wake him and dose him?” Hale erupted, giving a start.

“Well, no, I just thought—”

“He’s the mad one, not me,” the doctor barked. “He’s asleep. Let him stay so, unless you want to take on the responsibility of holding him down all the night when he starts thrashing and raving again. If he’s unruly when he wakes, dose him then. If we can get him through this, and keep him stable for the next few days, I might just be able to evaluate what’s going on in that jumbled brain of his.”

Melly, meanwhile, stroked the salve on the earl’s blistered shoulder with her lightest touch. She wasn’t ready for another confrontation with him then—if ever—and she took great pains not to wake him. The heat his burned skin generated didn’t seem so scorching now. That, at least, would mend. Why had he summoned her? What could he want with her? More pointedly, why had she consented to stay? He’d almost seemed… enamored. Had he confused her with Eva? Was this nightmare, this pain, all tangled up in his mind with what happened five years ago? Sadly, no matter what the reason, she had to admit that if this was madness, she much preferred him that way.

That fiendish thought faded when the doctor called her closer with the salve to see to Griggs. She crossed the room on tiptoe glancing over her shoulder while she went to be sure she hadn’t wakened the earl, but aside from a fugitive snore escaping now and then, he slept soundly.

“What would we ever do without you, Miss Melly,” the valet said, as she helped the doctor with his hands. “The fire’s gone out of them already. I’ve never seen the like.”

“I made this balm for the Tinker children,” she said vacantly, “They’re always getting too close to the campfires. Pascoe builds them too near the wagons, and those children have no sense of fear.”

“They’ll have gone deep into the woods again by now in this,” the doctor opined. “Their wagons would never stand up to those winds out there. It’s a regular howler.”

Melly frowned. With so much press at hand, she hadn’t thought of that possibility until now. There was no way she would be able to find them deep in the forest in a maelstrom. She would have had to stay even if she hadn’t promised the earl she would. She had nowhere else to go until she could arrange for lodgings at the boarding house—if Maud Endean even had a room to let. She made a mental note to have the doctor inquire.

“I’m going to get one of the footmen up here,” Hale announced, looking down his nose at her, and then at Griggs. “You’re exhausted—the pair of you. Melly, you aren’t going anywhere in this. I want you to go and get some sleep. I’m going to need your help when I come back in the morning, assuming I can get back here on those roads out there. If I can’t, you’re going to be on your own ‘till this blows over. You, too, Griggs, you’ve been hovering here since the fire. We’ll have you down next.”

“I shan’t leave him, Dr. Hale,” said the valet unequivocally.

“Fall down, then,” the doctor barked. “Go ahead! Give me one more thing to do in this godforsaken, hard luck mausoleum. I’m not spread thin enough as it is, eh?”

“I need to stay with him,” the valet insisted. “If he should wake, what use do you think Smithers or Fowler or any of the others would be?” He waved a bandaged hand toward the four-poster. “His lordship doesn’t even know half of them, most came after he left. All due respect, sir, but how do you suppose any one of them is going to make him behave, when it’s all
I
can do, and I’ve tended him for seventeen years?”

The doctor delivered a hard, guttural growl, and threw wild hands into the air.

“So be it!” he brayed. “Bunk on the lounge, but I
will
have Smithers up here to keep watch while you get some sleep. I know you want to help him, Griggs, and that’s laudable, but what use are you going to be to him abed yourself? You’ve got to use your head, man.”

“Shhhh, the pair of you!” Melly scolded. “You’re going to wake him, and then none of us is going to get any rest.”

“
I
will,” said the doctor. “I’m going home, before I get stuck here as well. I do have a practice you know. You can fight it out amongst yourselves, and I’ll tend whatever is left of the lot you when I get back here again. I’ve no time to deal with insurrection. There’s a very sick man in that bed there. Make the best of it with what you’ve got to work with, and deal with it.”

*

Melly dragged herself down to the kitchen for a hot cup of tea before she retired, and Mrs. Laity jumped to her feet the minute she crossed the threshold, looking stricken; as pale as Parian bisque. Circumstance had robbed the color from her painted-doll cheeks.

“Oh, no, he’s better,” Melly cried at sight of her. “He is. The fever is down, and he was conscious for a while. He even spoke to me.”

“You’re not lying to me are you, Miss Melly… to spare me?”

“No, I would never do that. You can ask Dr. Hale yourself if you don’t believe me. He’s arranging for Smithers to spell Griggs awhile. The poor man’s exhausted.”

“Praise God,” the housekeeper said through her handkerchief as she sank back into her chair at the table.

“He’ll have to be watched now for at least two days,” Melly said, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot that always stood at the ready on the back of the coal stove.

“Let me do that,” the housekeeper offered, struggling to her feet again.

“Stay. It’s done,” Melly replied, joining her. “You don’t need to wait on me, Mrs. Laity. I see you still have some, or I’d pour one for you as well.”

“You’re staying?” the housekeeper urged.

“For a little. Dr. Hale has asked for my help. As soon as the storm is over, I shall be moving to Maud Endean’s. He is going to inquire about a room for me when he gets back to St. Kevern.”

“Praise God—that you’re staying on—that is.”

“Temporarily,” Melly pronounced. It would be cruel to raise her hopes.

“Your old rooms are all made up… I was hoping. And Zoe will be only too glad to stay with you.” She leaned across the table and whispered even though they were alone, “His lordship let her keep her abigail’s wages you know. She was that pleased.”

“Did he? That was generous of him.”

“He’s never been stingy, Miss Melly, a whole lot o’ other things, but not that.”

“Yes, well, I’m happy for Zoe, but I won’t need her. I hardly need a chaperon here now, and I’m not up to chitchat. I just want to sleep… and wake up in my cottage in the vale to find out all of this has been a bad dream… a horrible nightmare, over at last. If that could only be, I’d hug myself, and kiss the walls, and thank the stars every single day for the rest of my life.”

“Ahhh, miss,” the housekeeper soothed.

“But, I’ll wake in that bed up there—” Melly went on, “—the last place on earth that I want to be, and the only thing that will be real is the nightmare.”

“You’re just worn to a raveling,” the housekeeper returned. “Why don’t you go on up. The bed’s all turned down. I left you a lamb’s wool carriage robe on the chair, and I laid out that pretty peach nightdress of the countess’s for you. It suits you so well.”

“It doesn’t suit me at all,” Melly snapped. “And I wouldn’t have anything that… woman had on her body anywhere near mine. I’ll sleep in my frock first. I have done for days among the Tinkers’ you know, and I’d be there asleep in it now, but for… for…”

She burst into tears then. Something she absolutely, positively never did. She had never been a watering pot, and she wasn’t about to become one now. After a moment, she wiped her eyes ruthlessly, and got to her feet.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Laity,” she said. “I’m tired, and cross, and I’m railing at circumstance. I certainly didn’t mean to take it all out on you.”

“You can have one o’ my nightgowns, lass,” the housekeeper offered. “It won’t fit you, that’s for sure—you and three others maybe—but I won’t have you sleeping up there in your frock, with a perfectly good gown in my drawer. I’d never forgive myself.”

“You’re very kind,” Melly said, smiling, “and I don’t deserve you, but I will take that nightgown if you wouldn’t mind and go up before I fall asleep right here at this table.”

*

Melly didn’t need to consult the cheval glass to see that Mrs. Laity was right. The nightgown was roomy enough to fit her three times over. She almost laughed looking down at the white batiste skirt, like a billowed sail dragging on the floor, and the neckline falling off her shoulders. But for her breasts to hold it up, it wouldn’t have stayed on five minutes, and even at that it was precarious. Thank the stars no one was going to see her. Without hesitation, she snuffed out all the candles but one, crawled in between the sheets, and pulled the counterpane up to her chin. She wiggled her toes. In spite of herself, she had to admit it was better than curling cramped with little Val in Tisa’s wagon.

She started to drift off almost at once, hypnotized by the candle flame teased by the drafts, throwing flickering puddles of light on the Persian carpet. She listened to the rain tapping at the windowpanes. Falling in horizontal sheets driven by the wind, it seemed as though a giant’s hand were hurling pebbles at the glass. All at once another sound bled into the rest—the sound of raised voices in the hallway outside her locked bedchamber door.

“Please, my lord,” Griggs was shouting, over a rumble of other raised voices, “You’ve got to go back to your bed. You’ll undo all the doctor has done to mend you. I shan’t take responsibility when he demands and account.”

“Not until I’ve seen for myself,” the earl roared. “Now get out of my way! Don’t paw at me. I don’t want to hurt you, Griggs, but I’m not going back ‘till I’ve seen her with my own two eyes. I will not be patronized!”

A thunderous pounding at her door followed, and Melly bolted upright in the bed, every fiber in her body trembling.

“She had better be in there,” the earl warned. “If you’ve lied to me, so help me, God, I’ll—”

“Miss Melly!” the valet’s broken voice shrilled, “for pity sake open the door a crack, so we can get him back to bed before he does himself a mischief.”

“The devil you will!” the earl thundered. This followed by a frantic pounding at the bedchamber door that moved the polished wood panels visibly.

Melly threw back the covers, swung her feet over the edge of the bed, and snatched the carriage robe from the back of the chair. Tossing it over her shoulders, she padded to the door tripping over the hem of the diaphanous nightgown on the way.