Finding Bliss (16 page)

Lady Westford continued to celebrate the end of the stuffy
situation while Eric stared at Bliss. She knew he was feeling contrite for his
earlier comments, and she also knew he would make it up to her in the end. The
very end, of course. But for now, she would accept his invitation to dinner.

“What do we owe you for this, sir?” Lady Westford asked the
minute she caught her breath.

“Just step out and give your house directions to my nurse. We’ll
send a bill to you at the end of the month. Which is to say, sometime this
week. And I accept your invitation to dinner. I’ll be bringing my good friend
Lady Bliss with me if that’s alright?” he stated without actually asking Bliss.
Since she’d already told him he would ask she couldn’t very well take offense
at his answering for her, so she didn’t.

The minute the invitation was accepted, the vision of the
dusty room and a darkened hallway loomed in the back of her head. It almost
made her shiver for reasons she couldn’t yet explain.

Bliss put a smile on her face as Lady Westford ushered
Robert back out to the front desk to give their information to the nurse. Bliss
didn’t move. Eric remained back in the room with her as if by design.

“Bliss, may I apologize to you. What I said earlier before
the pea removal was rude and uncalled for. I am very sorry. Will you forgive
me?” Eric’s utter sincerity made her heart trip. She shook her head, throwing
him off just by the sheer refusal. But quickly she explained.

“I don’t have to forgive you. I expected it and knew you’d
be sorry the moment you did it. Besides, you have invited me to dinner. I’m
very glad you are going along with me for once! That’s why forgiveness is
unnecessary.

“We’ll have plenty of time to discussion acts of contrition
on the drive to the Westford’s townhouse. And don’t forget the closed carriage.
And the dinner is at seven, so you’ll pick me up by six-thirty. I’ll be
waiting. And you’ll be late,” Bliss told him assuredly.

“I’ll pick you up in a closed carriage by six-fifteen. And I
will leave early enough to avoid being late.” Eric replied half strained to
hold his tongue to her predictions, looking like he was wishing he could tease
her some more.

Bliss didn’t take it personally this time, however. He was
truly contrite for all the mean-spirited sarcasm earlier. She knew, even if he
did tease her, he wouldn’t be that mean to her ever again. Then a jolt of
something horrifying hit her, robbing her of all sight and hearing for a
moment.

Bliss could see a gun, though it sometimes changed to a
knife and then back to a gun. There was someone holding the weapon on her and
forcing her to walk ahead. Her kidnapper’s face was in shadow, so she couldn’t
discern the features at all.

Then the scene transformed into the dusty room. The darkened
hallway played a role as well. The last piece of the vision involved a red
cloth, a rolling coin and the sensation of being very wet and cold ... the same
feeling she’d felt the moment Russ’s vision of drowning came over her all those
years ago!

“Bliss! Are you unwell? Scarlet! Fetch the salts! Is Lady
Westford gone? Have her fetch them, and you come in here to ...” Eric was
shouting orders so loudly that it rattled Bliss back from the cold depths of a
watery scene before she could see who was in the water. She gave a trembling
shudder.

“No, that isn’t necessary. I’m perfectly fine. There’s no
need to get upset. It was just a stray thought. I get a little … caught up in
my thoughts sometimes,” said Bliss being pointed and yet dismissive to his
concern.

Eric studied her from a closer angle, scrutinizing her face
for signs of trouble. Bliss gave him a smile to let him know everything was
alright. It wasn’t alright, but there really was no need to let him know yet.

She couldn’t say what the vision was about yet, which meant
it was likely about her own future. With all its darkness and now the idea that
weaponry was involved, it was definitely odd and frightening.

Bliss’s visions were often like that when the news was
disturbing: a flicker of something that would develop into more. But the
current confusion gave no hints to the actions that would play out yet.

The best she could hope for was to figure out who the person
holding the gun was and what his connection to her really meant.

Somehow this person wanted to hurt Bliss, or at the very
least wanted her to believe he would in order to get something he wanted. A
ransom perhaps from her father? Or maybe it was something to do with one of
Uncle Ozzie’s business contacts she met at one of the many dinners?

All Bliss could do now was wait until the assailant revealed
himself or his motives so that the vision would show her more. Cold fear
dwelled in her bones at the idea of what it might mean.

Eric, Bristol, Late March 1811

Eric watched Bliss and her friend
leaving the office with concern. Something had happened in the exam room. He
knew it as well as he knew the bones of the human body. But the worst part
about it was that to ask about the incident would be almost as telling as
admitting to her that he believed her predictions.

He couldn’t let her know that he harbored any trust in them.
It would prove disastrous, especially given her last important warning about
his impending marriage! He continued the afternoon by reading through Dr.
Stemley’s notes on the three patient cases.

The stitches were given to an fellow from one of the stews
near the river, so it was highly unlikely that he would see that one again when
the stitches needed to be removed. Often his worst traumas came from some tavern
brawl or pub dispute that resulted in fisticuffs or a knife wound. But the men
were usually sailors on leave from their ships, or they had no money to pay
their medical charges. They usually skipped out on the follow-up care.

The child with the chicken pox was the eldest in a family
with three other small children. He knew that he would likely see the others
sooner or later if their lesions or pox became uncomfortable or needed tending
because excessive scratching let to some type of infection.

Most mothers wouldn’t bother with the diagnosis or the
medical assistance because they had been trained by their own mothers to know
how to handle such conditions of childhood. But this mother was from a wealthy
family of means and probably had no trust in her nanny or children’s nurses to
handle the illness. Eric put a note on his patient ledger to check with them
the next week just in case.

One of his elderly ladies came in to have him listen to her
lungs that afternoon. She was often given to bouts of difficulty breathing, and
Eric encouraged her to stop working in the barn with her husband and stay away
from the dusty environs of the hay. She kindly refused to heed his warnings,
unable to let her poor man do all the work alone at his age.

They were not exactly poor, but they lacked extra money for
paying help. Eric prescribed a steam for her in the office and asked her to
consider only helping out one or two days a week to give her lungs time to
recover each episode. The woman grumbled, but agreed to try.

At last the office hours ended. Eric
made a hasty retreat to get ready for his evening. The streets were fairly
empty, so he walked at a brisk clip the entire way to his suite of rooms. Once
inside he deliberated for a little while over what would be most appropriate
for him to wear.

In the end he chose his brown trousers and a hunter green
frock coat over a muslin shirt. He tied a tan cravat in place carefully and
surveyed his look in his small mirror in segments. Satisfied that he looked
presentable enough to escort a lady to dinner, he checked his watch.

It was already nearing six. He decided to leave early, just
to be certain Bliss wouldn’t get to look at him smugly if he arrived even one
minute later than six-fifteen. He hurried down to request a rented carriage
from his landlady.

The woman owned several older carriages she’d acquired
through estate sales and liquidations when her renters couldn’t make their
bills. She rented to her less-affluent tenants on a first-come, first-served basis.
Eric managed to get a Berlin carriage for a fair price.

On the way to Whisper Chase, Eric felt his palms growing
sweaty with anticipation. He chuckled out loud at his nervousness. He’d known
Bliss for nearly twenty years, but the fact remained that despite all her
efforts to insinuate herself into his world he still felt somehow distant from
her.

She was the daughter of a peculiar, well-respected and
wealthy duke. Though he
would
admit that Lord and Lady Penwood weren’t
average by ton standards in the way they related to people in general. They
understood the common man’s ideology. That made them more real to the regular
people they dealt with from day to day.

Eric’s father had often commented that more of the ton
should behave as the Penwood’s did. Lord and Lady Penwood raised a family with
real values that blurred the lines between the upper, middle and lower classes.
Their employees were allowed to marry and work for hourly wages, and the duke
and duchess included them in the running of the estate as though they belonged
as part of a large, extensive family.

The jobs at Penwood Manor Estate were the most sought after
in all of England, to hear it told. The senior Dr. Benchley agreed with most
that the world would be a much greater place if more of the wealthy classes
behaved as the Penwood’s did!

Eric had envied Bliss and her family his whole life. They
were the ultimate in familial love and companionship. Eric fought with the
uglier pangs of jealousy when he was a boy and continued to yearn for the sibling
love and the abundant parental support that all the children of the Penwood
estate, including the working classes, enjoyed.

That jealousy was likely the primary reason he held Bliss at
arm’s length even when she continued to write to him throughout his medical
training and college years. He never once returned a letter of hers. It made
him feel guilty now to think of the wasted chance to get to know her better.

The carriage suddenly came to an abrupt halt. Eric peered
out the window to see what it was that caused the change. A vendor cart had
overturned in the street, spilling produce all over the cobbled lane. Several
men and a few shopkeepers’ wives were hurriedly gathering the bruised fruits
and vegetables in order to clear the way. It was slow, and at one point Eric
debated going to help if for no other reason but to hurry them and not delay
the passage of traffic.

By the time the street cleared enough to allow carriages to
pass, it was well after the time he’d told Bliss he would arrive. Instead of
being angry about the lateness, Eric found himself smiling at how Bliss’s
prediction came true. He let himself remember the times in the past when her
interference proved fortuitous.

The girl was obviously very clever or very intuitive. She
would have made a magnificent scientist with her ability to predict the
outcomes of various scenarios. Not that he believed that it was anything more
than deductive reasoning on her part.

Some factoring in for luck could account for ninety percent
of all the things she’d ever suggested and been correct about. It was only the
other ten percent that made the hair on the back of Eric’s neck prickle.

Denying Bliss’s ability was difficult when you looked at
that ten percent. But there was one thing that made his denial real to him. If
she was really able to see events that would happen in the future, then why
hadn’t she been able to prevent his father’s own untimely death? The idea haunted
him.

Bliss had saved her brother’s life once. What was it that
made Russ’s life so much easier to hold onto that in turn excluded his father? Wasn’t
her most admired supporter worth the bother? He could only avoid laying the
blame on her if he discounted that she had any real knowledge of future events.

For that reason he continued his role as the skeptic to keep
his father’s death an accident and not the preventable misfortune by the aid of
a silly little girl with notions of precognitive talent.

When he arrived at Whisper Chase it was six-thirty on the
nose. He didn’t bother explaining his delay. He watched Bliss exiting the door
as soon as the rented carriage came to a stop. Eric opened the door and stepped
down to assist her into the carriage. She held a very large, very serviceable
umbrella in one hand and her reticule in the other.

“We’d best be off. If we don’t leave immediately we’ll be
late. And I truly hate to be late when it’s so easily avoided, don’t you?”
Bliss asked taking no pains to hide her smug smile.

Eric shook his head and handed her up into the carriage. Once
they were seated and the door secured, they took off at a clip.

Bliss, Bristol, Late March 1811

That afternoon Bliss’s mind was
assaulted by hazy premonitions. The fact that something loomed on the horizon,
something dangerous and frightening, made her tense. Eric was late, of course.
But even knowing that he
would be
late didn’t help the time pass any
easier.

When he finally pulled up, Bliss left without a word to Aunt
Pen or Uncle Ozzie. They knew she had plans at the Westford’s home, and they
knew she was being escorted by Dr. Benchley. His status as an old family friend
seemed to take the edge off of their concern for the propriety of her going
without her maid.

Eric’s demeanor was aloof during the fifteen minute ride to
Lord and Lady Westford’s home. They chatted in fits and spurts about what each
of her siblings were currently doing. After the first five minutes the topics
were all exhausted.

Bliss told Eric how wonderful he was with the little Lord
Westford that afternoon. He told her he learned all of his skills with children
from watching his father handle the majority of her siblings. It made Bliss
blush when she remembered that a large majority of their visits were linked to
some form of childhood mischief on her part.