Flowers From The Storm (20 page)

Damn you damn you Maddy girl LEFT me
!

Maddy stood speechless. His glare at her was wild, his jaw bleeding from a long scratch, his shirt front torn into three strips and pulled free of his waistcoat. Larkin stood back and allowed the others to pull him toward the house.

“You let him get too far away from you, Miss,” the keeper said gruffly.

“Oh God,” she said.

“He went after my patient like a bulldog. Unprovoked. Did you see him hit?”

Maddy hadn’t seen it start; she’d only turned from her determined stride around the courtyard track when the man’s screech had risen, loud enough to curdle blood. They’d been rolling in the dirt, and yes—Jervaulx had hit him, beaten him, even after the poor man was insensible.

“No need for the doctor to know about this, Miss.”

Maddy was still hardly able to speak.

“We kinda keep these things to ourselves, the attendants. One of us to the other. Don’t let him get so far away from you again.”

“No,” she whispered, watching as they bundled Jervaulx through the door.

Larkin put his hand on her shoulder. “You see why we don’t put fine clothes on the violent patients, Miss.” He smiled. “We know what we’re doing here, Miss. Tell me if we don’t.”

Master William, the man Jervaulx had beaten, was awake and tied in the infirmary, repeating, “Jesus is the Devil,” over and over again with a muttered vehemence. Jervaulx was in his cell, manacled, sitting bare-chested on the bed with only breeches and the rib bandage for decency. Maddy shut the solid door behind her and stood near him.

“Why?” she asked.

He looked up at her, beautiful and savage, his hair with dust in it, his face still bloody.

She moistened her lips. “Why didst thou hit him?”

He made a groan, shook his head. “
Kill
!”

“No. No—I don’t believe that. Thou couldst not have wished to kill him. Why didst thou attack him?”

He gazed at her as if she were some mysterious vision, then shook his head again, looking down.

“Understand?” she asked.

He shook his head, dropped it lower.

Maddy knelt. “I want to understand,” she said slowly. “Tell me why.”

His jaw worked. “
Kill
.” He lifted his lashes, a brief look, an appeal. “Mnnh…
Me
.” He made a fist and struck his chest as if he were driving a knife into it. His mouth drew back in a silent grimace. He turned his face away from her.

She did not know if it was an answer or a plea. With an uncertain move, she reached out and touched his temple, smoothing his hair back from his lowered face. He flinched as if she surprised him; then after a moment he relaxed into it, leaning against her hand.

“It will be all right,” she whispered.

He made a sound, a strange half-laugh, and shook his head again. Just perceptibly, his body rocked, like a strong tree in the wind—a silent sway, too deep for words.

“Let me clean thy face.”

He made no response. Maddy rose and poured water from the tin pitcher into the basin. The towel was fresh—she’d brought it herself. She knelt again and began to sponge the blood from his face. He closed his eyes. When she finished, she took his hands and washed the dirt from the raw scrapes there.

She rose. The manacles rattled as he put his arm round her hips and leaned his face against her. The chain pressed across the back of her leg; the wristband and his fingers pressed harder. She laid her hand on his shoulder.

For a long time, they stayed that way. It might have been all night but for the loud knock on the solid wood door.

Larkin stood outside the bars. “Doctor found out,” he said briefly. “I’m to take him down to seclusion until morning.”

After breakfast Maddy was called in to Cousin Edward. He sat at his desk, with a large notebook open and a pen in his hand. “This will not do,” he said. “I’m disappointed.”

“I’m sorry.” She was miserably, utterly sincere. “I allowed myself to go too far away from him.”

“It’s fortunate that Master William seems to have taken no serious hurt. His family is connected to the Huntingtons, of Whitehaven, you know. And the duke… well—he seems prone to injury lately. I wonder now if those ribs weren’t somehow cracked in an altercation instead of an accident.” He gave her a questioning look, as if she might be hiding something.

“On, no. It was Jervaulx himself who showed me that a chair fell.”

“That may be, that may be. Still… Larkin was slow to report this—and you also, Cousin. I’m afraid that I must give you both a check.”

She kept her head down, receiving the reprimand humbly. He wrote in the book.

After a pause, her cousin went on. “Your reports have been positive. The duke has not offered you any violence?”

Maddy didn’t lift her eyes. “No violence at all.”

“You aren’t uneasy in him?”

She raised her head. “He has not been violent toward me.”

“Still, I believe we must restrict his movements for a time. You will continue to serve him, but only with restraints or a male attendant present. We shall see if that suits. I had felt it was going so well. Really, I am surprised to have it reported to me that it was Master Christian who provoked the scuffle rather than Master William, who’s been in the very midst of a bad paroxysm for the past fortnight.” Once again, he gave Maddy a searching look.

“I did not see who provoked it,” she said.

“Next time, you will be more careful.”

“I will. I will. I’m so sorry.”

She’d tried to explain to Jervaulx where they were going. She had no idea if he understood. He had that look of tautness, of a man frozen but burning inside. With both his hands laced together to the elbows in leather gauntlets, he gripped the strap inside the carriage and stared out the window, as intense as he had been with the mathematics, fixing on ordinary things, a haystack, a millwheel, watching them pass as if they were enemies that might leap upon the vehicle without a moment’s warning. He was a mobile explosive ready to set to spark; Maddy sat across from him and her father and prayed from moment to moment that it would not happen.

Larkin rode on top of the carriage, much too distant to provide real security or aid. Having embarked on this course of supporting Jervaulx, Maddy found it beyond her control now, caught up in the doctor’s tests and experimental trials. The duke had been so subdued for the past fortnight since his fight that Cousin Edward had decided to allow him more freedom with Maddy in the carriage.

She was, by her mere presence, to elicit civilized behavior from him, nevermind that she was no genteel and noble lady, but only plain Maddy Timms. Nevermind that they tied him in gauntlets that anyone could see drove him to the edge of control. Nevermind that when they came to the first change, a busy posting-house with a yard full of travelers and horses and shouting ostlers, he pushed back in his seat and expelled harsh breath between his teeth, refusing to get out, and looked at her with terror and anger and a rigid-jawed shame, then turned his face away.

Maddy pulled the curtains closed on the carriage. When Cousin Edward came to the door, she told him that the duke did not wish to take refreshment here. Cousin Edward, sometimes foolish and sometimes not, looked from her to the dim corner where Jervaulx sat, his gaze malevolent and silent, like cat’s eyes that turned and caught lantern light in a cellar.

“We’ll stop a little farther on,” her cousin said.

Maddy let go of her breath. “I’ll stay here then, if thou wouldst take Papa in to tea.”

When they stopped again, it was in a small and ancient village snugged down in a wooded hollow. The midday street was empty, the public house quiet and dark inside its open door. Maddy helped her father from the carriage and turned back, surprised to find Jervaulx rising, awkward in the gauntlets but apparently ready to follow.

He disdained aid in descending. When he stood in the street, he looked up the curve of the road.

Half-timbered brick cottages with skewed slate roofs and garden walls seemed to warp themselves to the contour of the hill, a treacle flow of buildings instead of a neat, straight modern line. Jervaulx looked back at Maddy. His jaw tightened with effort. “Pah…” he managed, and then, “
Lost
.”

“Not at all, not at all, Master Christian,” Cousin Edward walked up to them. “You mustn’t be concerned about that. We’ve come a little off the main road, but we know precisely where we are, I assure you.

Chalfont St. Giles.”

Jervaulx made an exasperated snort. “
Lost
.”

“Indeed, we’re not lost. Not a bit.”

“St. Giles…” Her papa mused, as if he couldn’t quite recall something.

“
Lost
,” the duke said emphatically.

Cousin Edward was soothing. “No, no. We are not lost. Larkin, you’ll see to the duke. Have a care about handling him—I’m a bit concerned about his mood.”

Jervaulx stood behind Cousin Edward, looking down on him with a caustic scowl. “Damned blockhead,” he said clearly. “
Lost
!”

“We shall find our way,” Cousin Edward responded in a level tone. He scanned Jervaulx critically. “We may have a manic episode developing, I fear. Disrespect and invective are frequent early signs. We’ll leave the restraints in place.”

“Will you follow me, Master Christian?” Larkin took the duke’s arm. Jervaulx stepped back, twitching free of the touch. He glanced once at Maddy, a dark look, as if she’d betrayed him, then walked away toward the public house with Larkin trailing like a bulldog behind a thoroughbred.

She moistened her lips. “Dost thou wish to take tea, Papa?”

Her father turned his head, drawn from a thoughtful silence. “Tea? No, not at all. Shall we walk a little way for fresh air, Maddy girl?”

It seemed startling to hear her father’s pet name for her spoken so clearly and easily. Somehow, Jervaulx’s tortured intonation had become more familiar—or more significant: an effort of will merely to utter the syllables, and therefore each one momentous.

She took her father’s arm, still feeling agitated. They walked a little way in silence until Maddy finally exclaimed, “I hope that he isn’t about to become disorderly.”

“Disorderly? The duke?”

She had never told him about the fight in the courtyard. She smoothed the cuff of her sleeve down, rolling the edge in her fingers. “He did seem… rather turbulent. Perhaps— instead of thee and me—Cousin Edward would consent to have Larkin ride with him.”

“Thou art frightened?”

Her father’s surprise made Maddy feel a little ashamed. “Thou dost not know him, Papa. He’s forbidding in a passion. He isn’t rational. And he’s very strong.”

“He sounded to me quite rational,” Papa said. “He called Cousin Edward a blockhead.”

“Papa!”

He stopped, holding her back with a strange little smile. “Where are we? We’ve walked up a hill, have we not? Is there a cottage to the left—red brick, with a chimney facing on the street, and a multitude of vines on the garden side?”

“Oh. Yes—one more house up the way. Hast thou been here before?”

“Upon the chimney… is there a sign?”

Maddy looked. “Milton’s Cottage.”

Her father said nothing. She hesitated, gazing at the modest village home. Understanding dawned.

She burst into a laugh. “Oh no—he
is
a blockhead! And so am I! We aren’t lost at all, are we?” She made an imitation of Cousin Edward’s soothing reassurance to the duke. “ ”Why, you mustn’t worry, Master Christian. We know precisely where we are, Master Christian. Chalfont St. Giles.“
ParadiseLost
.”

“The very house where Milton wrote it. Thy mother and I stopped to visit among the Friends here when thou wast only a babe in arms.”

“What simpletons the duke must think us! His face when Cousin Edward kept saying we weren’t lost!

Oh, Papa…” She bit her lip as the laughter died and her voice broke. “Oh, Papa—how he hates it, what’s happened to him.”

“He needs thee, Maddy girl.” Her father laid his hand over hers. “He needs thy faith. Even when thou art frightened.”

“I didn’t think—I haven’t been sure—I’ve been praying. I was so certain before, but now…” She shut her mouth tightly. Her father stood silent, his hand still.

He kissed me, Papa.

How she wanted to say it, but could not. She would repulse him beyond forgiving. The duke was his friend—and Maddy… she hadn’t even tried to prevent it. She thought she must have lured Jervaulx, that the Devil had gotten into her, too, and made her look at the duke and see comeliness in his earthy shape.

A woman minister had spoken out in Meeting just weeks ago, when it had meant nothing to Maddy, when she had hardly been listening, words that came back now with vivid precision, as if God wished her to recall them in perfect detail: “All our joys, pleasures, profits— all things delightful to the flesh—they be but vanity and vexation. We become silent, not answering to obey the lusts of the carnal mind.”