Lace for Milady (18 page)

There was an apologetic muttering on the absence of a blanket, followed by a fresh string of curses sworn off on the stupidity of servants. "Pass the brandy. She’s as white as snow.” More apologetic mutterings. “Well, there’s some in the... Oh, hell, never mind. Help me lift her. Take her feet. Gently, she’s not a side of beef.”

I felt very like one by the time I was stowed in the dog cart, or whatever the vehicle it was that the servant had chosen to negotiate the rough ride through the meadows. Clavering managed the single horse with one hand and held me on to the seat beside him with the other, for I was partially revived and could sit up. In fact, I was feeling better even without brandy and was already beginning to form a few questions in my mind, but was not yet stout enough to give them voice. We joggled through the meadow, into the spinney, where branches of bushes brushed against our sides. Clavering had no hand free to fend them off, nor had I, bound as I was in his coat, with the arms tucked in behind me. Letting go of my waist, he pushed my face quite roughly into his shoulder, asking if I hadn’t the sense to duck my head when it was being lashed with thorns, which was, of course, a gross exaggeration. There were a few harmless leaves touching my hair, no more.

I believe it was his intention to carry me bodily into Willow Hall from the stables, but I was sufficiently myself by that time that I forbade such nonsense. I shrugged myself out of his jacket and suggested he put it on before he contracted lung fever, if he hadn’t already. He returned it to my shoulders and did up two buttons, with my arms clamped to my sides beneath it, then put his arm around my back, and as he had arms like an ape, there was sufficient length left over for him also to hold my waist. In this extremely uncomfortable manner we negotiated the few yards to the kitchen door, which he entered bellowing for Slack.

"Be quiet! You’ll scare her out of her wits,” I said sharply.

“That’s twice today you’ve hushed me. Fine thanks for saving your life.”

“It was the other man who saved my life, and very awkwardly he did it, too.”

“I’m happy to see you’re returning to normal,” he said, then hollered “Slack!” again, very loudly. Slack, not Maude, by the way.

She came hot-foot from her books, and looked closer to fainting then I was myself. She insisted in adding to my discomfort by grabbing my other side, but despite them I made it to the saloon and the sofa.

“The doctor! We must call the doctor at once!” she babbled.

“I don’t need a doctor.”

“Call him,” Clavering decreed. “And get some wine.” She darted off, returning with the wine bottle and no glass. Poor Slack was very upset. Clavering tipped the bottle to my lips. My initial idea of clenching my lips was abandoned when I foresaw the likelihood of having liquid drooling down my chin like an infant or senile invalid. He tipped my head back and a great cascade of wine, too much for my mouth to hold, flowed forth, down my chin, and over my riding habit, bringing me to spluttering rigidity in an upright position.

“Get away before you drown me. I’m not hurt, and I don’t want a doctor, either. Give me your handkerchief.”

“You remembered not to say please. You must be recovering,” he said, and pulled out a handkerchief, to dab at my chin, but as my bosom was also well doused, he handed it to me. No sooner had I daubed up the excess, lamenting the ruin of my jacket, than I was summarily pushed back against the pillows.

“Your turn to be quiet.” He looked about the room for a blanket and, finding none, grabbed Slack’s grey-purple shawl to throw over me.

“I am not in the least cold. I’m hot,” I said, pushing it away.

“You are suffering from shock. Wine and warmth are the treatment,” he said, putting the shawl back on, and lifting the bottle again.

“Would it be possible to have a glass, if you insist on forcing wine down my throat?”

“No. Drink it,” he ordered, and held the bottle again, but I had the wits to steady it myself this time, and got a mouthful without spilling the rest of the bottle. It was then I noticed his hand shaking. It was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. “Have you got the trembles? You’ve been drinking too much.”

“I haven’t been drinking enough,” he replied, and took the remainder of the bottle for himself, still without a glass.

Slack returned to find him at this genteel pastime, and ran off for a goblet, leaving him free to continue the sermon of my amazing display of stubbornness in insisting on trying to ride Juliette. “I have told you a dozen times..." he began.

“No, Your Grace, you have told me at
least
a hundred times, and I am mighty tired of hearing it. I had not the skill to handle her. I shouldn’t have persisted against your omniscient warnings.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,
and Amen.”

“You’re not to try it again.”

“Never again. I’ll give her back to Lady Inglewood, and may she break her head as she nearly did mine. Yes, it would serve me well if I had. Sorry to disappoint you. But if your clumsy friend had helped me instead of moving his arm just as I thought he was going to catch me..."

“He did exactly the right thing. He would have had her stopped in a minute. He nearly had his hands on the reins. Why you took it into your empty head to throw yourself off a runaway animal in full gallop when you had managed to hold onto your seat that long is beyond me. Next time..."

"There isn’t going to be a next time. I have heeded your dozens of warnings.”

Slack came back with the glasses just as the bottle was emptied, and was scurrying off for another bottle, but Clavering called her back. "Tell me what happened,” she said to him, and he proceeded to give her a highly coloured and totally inaccurate account of my mishap.

“I knew it! I have told her a dozen times..." Slack began to tell him.

I sighed, defeated, and closed my eyes. They decided it was rest the invalid now required, and fell silent. I heard a chair being brought to the edge of the sofa and someone sat down. When I felt my cover being straightened and the hair brushed from my forehead, I assumed it was Slack and reached out for her hand. But, of course, when I felt a hairy paw I realized my error.

“Too late,” he said, as I tried to jerk away, and he held on to it tightly.

I looked around the room for Slack, but she had deserted us. “She’s gone to see to boiling water,” he told me.

“I’m not having a baby,” I pointed out.

“I’m glad to hear it,” was his unfeeling reply.

I should have had an answer but was suddenly too tired. I was dizzy from the fall and perhaps the wine, gulped down in haste. I think I slept, or rested anyway. Later Slack came in and told me the doctor was delayed, but would come around after dinner.

“That is totally unnecessary,” I told her, and sat up. Finding no reeling in my head, I put my feet on the floor and pushed aside the shawl.

“Are you hungry?” Slack asked. “It’s nearly dinnertime, but I didn’t have the table laid.”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“You have something, Maude,” Clavering told her. “I’ll stay with Priss. Better for her not to eat till the doctor comes."

“Would you like a plate?” she asked him.

“Later.”

She left, the idea being that they would take shifts minding me, as if I were an unruly child or wayward moonling.

“How did you come to be there, at the chapel with that man?” I asked. I had been thinking about this and other things ever since the trip home in the dog cart.

“I am having it shored up, the loose stones mortared into place for safety’s sake.”

“Lazy Louie isn’t a stone mason. He’s a smuggler.”

"
That wasn’t Lazy Louie.”

“Yes, it was. I’ve seen him on that big black stallion before, and you called him Louie, too.”

“How do you come to know an unsavoury character like that?”

“I don’t know him, except by sight, but you seem to be on much better terms with him. What was he doing there?”

“I told you. His uncle from Hythe does that sort of work, and Louie is going to get him to come to me. He was looking it over for his uncle, to give him an idea of the nature of the job.”

“Why did you say it wasn’t he?”

“I was afraid you’d take into your head to go thanking him the next time you see him, and he is not the sort of fellow you ought to be talking to.”

“Eel! Officer Smith says Louie is one, and you’re another. You didn’t want me to see him. You said—Oh, I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember? You said for him to go away, because maybe I hadn’t seen him. What are you up to, Clavering?”

“Rescuing maidens in distress, and being given a hard time for it.”

“And there was brandy, too.”

“Louie always reeks of brandy. An occupational hazard.”

“No, I don’t mean I smelled it. You said something. You asked the groom for brandy. What would you be doing with brandy at Belview? You shouldn’t buy smuggled brandy.”

“I don’t. Someone gave me a bottle, which I keep for medicinal purposes.”

“And when he hadn’t brought it, you said there was some—somewhere else..."

“You were dreaming. I said nothing of the sort. You were supposed to be unconscious. Why were you frightening the life out of me if you were wide awake the whole time?”

“I wasn’t wide awake, worse luck. Only half.”

He didn’t say a word, but I noticed his eyes flickering to the grate in a worried way.

“Burne, what is it about?” I asked, hoping to entice him to tell me by using a dulcet tone and his preferred name, for it was becoming plain that something strange was afoot.

“What do you mean?” he asked, unseduced by either tone or name.

“I mean your meeting with that man, and having brandy, and lying about it. I mean men disappearing in your meadow, and your talk of building a Roman temple when there aren’t enough stones there to build a decent-sized dog kennel. And certainly not enough stone to protect with mantraps. And another thing, why is it I never fall into a trap in that meadow? That’s twice now I’ve been there, and never a sign of a trap.”

“I’ll see if I can’t arrange to place one in your way next time you go sniffing about.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Actually it’s not the few stones I want to protect; it’s the Roman foundation under those few stones above-ground. There’s a piece of mosaic floor in fairly good condition for one thing.”

"That doesn’t explain anything.”

“What are you suggesting?” he asked. “That I lie in wait in the tall grass, to kidnap any hapless victims who trespass? Kill them and dispose of the bodies? That I am in league with Lazy Louie smuggling brandy from France? Would you like a keg?” he asked in a conspiratorial voice.

“No, but I don’t doubt you could arrange it if I did. For medicinal purposes, of course.”

“Anyone in the village could arrange it. Your friend McMaster would be happy to help you. My views on the matter are pretty generally known, and
I
might have a little more trouble than others.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of
smuggling,
Clavering. On that point at least you are above suspicion. Is there buried treasure in the meadow—is that it?”

“Yes, a priceless Roman mosaic. What idiotic notion have you hatched now, Prissie?”

It did sound rather idiotic all of a sudden, and I rapidly changed to another point of some little mystery. “You said a long time ago, when you asked us to Belview, that you would be going back to London very soon, to Parliament. What keeps you on here?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Don’t try to pretend it’s me and Slack.”

“Slack has nothing to do with it, but don’t, pray, tell her I have been leading her on.”

“Neither have I anything to do with it. And you haven’t raised your offer for Seaview for
weeks,
either.”

“I have thought of a cheaper way to get it.”

“I knew that was what you were up to! I told Slack so.”

 
“Did you indeed? That was a little previous of you.”

“What do you mean? You’ve been trying to deceive us that you’re our friend, lending us the clavichord and so on, so that we’ll be beholden to you. Giving Slack the run of your library..."

“Well, upon my word! I knew you were the most stubborn woman God ever created, but this is the first time I ever realized the extent of your conniving, scheming brain—and laying the whole of it in my dish, if you please! It would not have occurred to me to
manipulate
you in that under-handed way.
My
scheming, if it even merits the word after what you have thought—is quite open and aboveboard.”

"Except for the part of it that takes place underground with Roman mosaics, or in secluded meadows with smugglers. Never mind. We’ll argue tomorrow. My head aches.”

“I won’t be here tomorrow.”

"You're not leaving!”

He smiled softly and took my hand. “Do you know, I think that is the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me, and the strain of uttering it has given you a migraine. I will be back soon.”

“What was nice about it?” I asked, for I had certainly intended no compliment.

‘The anxious tone, Priss. Very nice.”

“I was not anxious.”

“You don’t have to apologize.
Au contraire.”
There was no point in arguing with him, and besides, my head did ache. Slack must have gobbled her dinner. She was back within minutes, carrying a tray for Clavering, from which he ate at a table in the room. The first meal he had ever taken with us, and what a ramshackle meal it was, sitting alone at a deal table in a corner. He remained till the doctor came, not so much later. After a brief examination, the doctor left a quite unnecessary sleeping draught, which I never did take, but which Slack kept for an emergency. As soon as Doctor Sloane was gone, Clavering, too, arose to take his leave. Slack, with some misguided idea of tact, decided to leave us alone, for which I upbraided her severely later.

Privacy was not in the least necessary for our last words. “Recover quickly,” was his parting solicitude, delivered in his customary curt, commanding way.