My Sweet Folly (44 page)

For the next hour, he avoided her entirely. He left the card room, and if he saw her come into the ballroom, he went to the supper room. If she followed him to the supper room, he slipped back to the ballroom and solicited the hand of a wallflower to dance.

He remained with his dance partner after the quadrille, a long-nosed girl with pretty chestnut hair and an air of haughty condescension that Robert suspected hid truly painful shyness. Miss Davenport had little to say, and barely looked at him, keeping her eyebrows lifted while she scanned the room as if some greater personage might appeal to her. But when he offered to bring her some refreshment, she allowed that she would like a cup of tea.

Robert returned to the supper table, allowing his matronly target to catch his eye. She followed him out as if there were an invisible cord between them, bringing her partner along, a tall, blustery sort of man who made Robert’s original target appear as soft as a well-used down counterpane. Robert braced himself for a more difficult time.

They were well-acquainted with Miss Davenport, greeting her and then disregarding her as if she were a part of the potted palm she stood beneath. She stood sipping her tea and examining the far horizon.

“Mr. Cambourne.” His matron, a Mrs. Witham-Stanley, assailed him with barely suppressed eagerness. “I’ve brought Mr. Bellamy to you.”

“Thank you!” Robert said, as if this were something he had hoped for. Mr. Bellamy had a pinched, angry look, but he nodded politely in answer to Robert’s bow.

“Mr. Cambourne,” Mrs. Witham-Stanley said plaintively. “Did you not, a bit ago, tell me that I dreamed of my dear mother, God bless her soul, last night?”

“Lilacs,” Robert said, smiling at her affectionately. “Of course.”

“There, you see!” she said triumphantly to her friend. “My dearest mama used lilac water every day of her life. I knew there was a reason why I put it on tonight! I dreamed of her. Oh, in her own boudoir, I stood at her knee and watched her comb out her beautiful hair. But I had forgotten it, until Mr. Cambourne told me!”

Mr. Bellamy put his forefinger to the bridge of his nose, rubbing. “Indeed,” he said incredulously.

Robert tilted his head, watching Mr. Bellamy. He said nothing.

“I wish that I could recall more of it!” Mrs. Witham-Stanley said. “It was so lovely.”

“If you contemplate it, you will recall more.”

“But however did you know, Mr. Cambourne? That is what we cannot fathom! Mr. Bellamy says I must be mistaken, and yet you
did—”

He shook his head, touching her arm as if he were distracted. “I believe that Mr. Bellamy does not feel well,” he said quietly.

Mr. Bellamy’s dark eyebrows came together to a sharp fold. Robert lifted his hand, almost touching the man’s cheek, and then dropped it away.

“A scrap of the headache, that’s all. When Mrs. W-S tried to tell me that you—”

“Don’t worry over that just now. Give it a color,” Robert said. “Your pain. Does it have a color?”

Mr. Bellamy pursed his lips. “I cannot fathom your meaning.” His whole face seemed to wrinkle into disapproval.

Robert looked steadily at him. “A deep reddish-black,” he murmured. “Heavy and pulsing. Gather it up here. Between your eyes.” He touched his own forehead at the place Bellamy had rubbed his finger against the bridge of his nose.

Bellamy’s cheeks puffed. He moved his lips, as if he meant to speak, but instead he only frowned more deeply.

“Do you feel it there?” Robert asked. “All gathered there?”

Bellamy scowled at him.

“What color is it?” Robert asked.

Bellamy shook his head, frowning so hard that Robert thought he must give himself the headache with that alone.

“Dark,” Robert offered. “Very dark. The color of darkened blood. It’s constricted there, hurting you. Don’t speak. Do you understand me?”

Bellamy had begun to look as if he were holding his breath under water. He blinked, and then after a hesitation, nodded once.

“Good. Now let me have it,” Robert said. “Don’t let it slip away. Keep the darkness between your eyes. Trap it there for me. You must help.” Though Bellamy did nothing in response but stand still, stifling his breath, Robert smiled. “Good man. Keep it there. I know it’s difficult.”

Bellamy made a faint sound, his eyes squeezed shut. His eyebrows were drawn together agonizingly tightly. Robert reached up and touched him between the eyes with two fingers.

“Give it to me now,” he said, increasing the pressure of his fingertips. “Push it out to me.” He bore hard against the man’s forehead, intensifying his opposition until Bellamy would have fallen a step forward if Robert had taken his hand away. “It comes,” he said commandingly. “Keep pushing, until I have it all. Push it to me.” He watched Bellamy’s eyebrows strain together, strain and strain, until at last they lost the strength to maintain it. “Now!” He lightened his pressure a little. “I have it in my hand. Tell me where to put it.”

The man’s mouth worked. He opened his eyes.

“Somewhere that it will hurt no one else,” Robert said quietly.

“Into the pot,” Bellamy said, his eyes darting aside.

Robert bent, without ceremony, and thrust his fist into the center of the fronds, near the soil. He opened his hand. “There. Look. Can you see it?”

Bellamy stared into the pot, along with the ladies. He shook his head, touching his temple. But the scowl had vanished from his face.

“Still, it is there,” Robert said simply. “You must help me keep it there. I can’t do it alone. Your anger will draw it back to you. Mistrust. Resentment. Leave it there. Leave it all there.”

Bellamy nodded faintly.

“I hope you feel better,” Robert said.

“Yes,” he said in wonder. “I—yes—undoubtedly I do.”

“Mr. Cambourne,” Mrs. Witham-Stanley said in an awed voice, “what are you?”

Robert hesitated. Then he shrugged. “It pleases me to help.”

“Yes, but—” Mrs. Witham-Stanley’s blue plume bobbed in agitation. “You knew what I dreamed! In my own head!”

“You must tell no one,” Robert said. “It was only a fortunate guess. Now and then they come to me. Now if you will accept my excuses—Miss Davenport, Mr. Bellamy. I’m afraid I must depart.”

Outside the door of the Malmsbury house, Lander stepped from the shadows, joining Robert as he strode quickly down the steps. This was a dangerous moment, leaving the house. They were both exposed; there was no way to know if Robert’s enemies had yet discovered his escape from the hulk. They might lie in wait, determined to dispatch him now without mercy.

As they turned the corner, walking fast, taking a roundabout return to a waiting hackney, Lander whispered, “Any success, sir?”

Robert grinned. After the long evening of tension, the tonic of excitement ran high in his blood. He made a sign of triumph with his thumb. “It may work,” he said under his breath.

He hiked himself into the cab. Lander followed. Robert lay back on the seat with a great sigh, resting his head.

“God only knows, Lander, but it just may work,” he said. Suddenly his pulse was pounding painfully in his head and chest, as if he had taken Bellamy’s headache into his own body. “Provided my heart can stand the strain.”

Folie and Melinda were not allowed to be at home to any callers from the village. Folie supposed that they must be the topic of a deal of speculation, though Lander had assured them that the staff would suffer no dangerous intelligence to leak abroad. Folie could only too well imagine the effect such a circumstance would have on Toot—the occupation of the largest dwelling in the village, obviously built for a pretty sort of parsonage or dower house, by strangers who neither showed their faces nor let their servants talk!

The result seemed to be an unspoken understanding among the villagers that the new occupants must be nursing a grave illness, one requiring absolute peace and quiet. For Folie had noticed from her upstairs window that not long after their arrival, the noise of the traffic in the high street had been muted by a thick layer of straw put down on the cobbles, and once, walking in the garden, she had clearly heard a woman’s voice over the wall, silencing a little boy’s shouts with a fierce, “Hush now! There’s sad affliction here!”

Their hall table was often laden with a pie, or a clutch of tiny, speckled quail eggs, or an offering of tender asparagus shoots left to “tease the appetite of the invalid.” These gifts came with no caller or card, no way to identify the donors—just a simple village kindness that made Folie feel homesick for Toot-above-the-Batch.

She tried to read the improving novels and sermons from the well-stocked bookcase in the parlor, and every day there were newspapers from London and Norwich, but the sense of anxiety that sat at the center of her chest only seemed to grow. After supper they sat in the parlor, Melinda writing her never-ending letters—though she could not even mail them now—and Folie stroking the ferret in her lap, reading the papers. She began, out of pure tedium, to become an avid follower of Norwich city politics, annoying Melinda with informative tidbits about the guilds and the progress of the new paving on streets they had never heard of.

Just before bedtime, she put a tiny harness on Toot and took him for a stroll in the garden. At first, Melinda had objected to this as a perilous and unnecessary exposure to danger, but after joining the stroll for several nights, she admitted that the quiet garden was not quite so hazardous as the unlit, rogue-haunted paths of Vauxhall, and went back to her letters.

To Folie, it was the most bearable part of the long, somber days—she took no lamp, but learned her way along the simple garden path in the dark, Toot gamboling and sniffing, turning somersaults between the budding rose bushes. She had a daft notion that at these times, with the blue shawl close about her in the soft humid darkness, she could somehow feel Robert more clearly, know that he was safe and alive.

It had an old familiarity to it, this idea that she was connected to him over vast distances. She labeled herself a silly noodle, and then went unrepentantly on with her absurdity. There seemed to be no other choice. Whatever invisible tie bound her to Robert Cambourne, it seemed to grow stronger with distance.

“What’s that?” a young voice whispered from somewhere ahead, making her heart leap with alarm.

Folie stared into the darkness. She gripped Toot’s leash and opened her mouth to scream or demand identification, she hardly knew what—but then another childish voice hissed, “Shush! Shush! You looby! Someone’s here!”

A quick thud of feet, a scramble on short legs, and Folie could just make out two small figures racing toward the wall, clambering up onto the garden bench. She hurried down the path, just in time to catch the pantaloons of the trailing culprit, who was hiking himself up off the bench, trying to drag himself over the top. She hauled him down.

He fell backwards at her feet and rolled over, coming face to face with an excited, inquisitive Toot. The little boy froze. “What’s that?” he yelped.

“It is a vicious guard-ferret,” Folie said calmly. “If you move one inch, it will tear your nose to ribbons. And don’t suppose you can get away, for once they bite down, they never let go.”

The small figure lay obediently limp, panting.

“Now, who are you?” she asked.

“Neddie, mum,” he squeaked, while Toot patted his hair and cheek, nuzzling him in a friendly way. “We was on a dare! Don’t let it bite me!”