Patrica Rice (15 page)

Carolyn halted in the doorway to get her bearings. The room was lavishly decorated in flowered wallpaper and sprigged-muslin curtains and a narrow canopy bed in blue velvet. Toys stood on shelves everywhere, and an alcove to the side was obviously intended for the maid's cot. It looked undisturbed at the moment. The only signs of life were near the bed.

Her gaze fell on Jack's haggard face. He had drawn a rocking chair from the fireplace to the bedside and rested with eyes closed and his head against the high back. Lines of weariness etched his handsome face, and his rumpled clothes bore the certain signs of having been slept in. He retained none of the self-assured, polished demeanor with which he met the world. His dark curls stood on end as if he had been raking his fingers through them. His immaculate cravat had been pulled loose and flung aside, and a day's growth of beard bristled along his darkened cheeks. Carolyn bit her lip against a sudden surge of longing and turned her gaze to the bed.

She caught her breath at sight of the pale, motionless figure beneath the covers. Amy looked so tiny and defenseless, and only the spots of fevered color on her round cheeks gave any indication of life.

Her gasp brought Jack's eyes open, and he stared in disbelief at Carolyn's elegant figure posed in the doorway. She had not disposed of her pelisse or muff, and her cheeks still bore the fresh color of the cold outside. He fixed his gaze on her terrified eyes, and denying the relief flooding through him, said, "Carolyn, you have no business here. You must leave, at once."

She ignored his words. Unfastening the frog at her throat, she laid her pelisse and muff on a nearby chair. It was easier if she kept her gaze on the child and not the haunted man at her side. "You need some rest. Go get something to eat and lie down for a while. I'll sit with her."

Jack rose and clasped her arms before she could go closer. "For God's sake, Carolyn, go home before someone finds you here."

Carolyn's gaze finally swerved to meet his, and heat swept through her from the love and anguish she found there. She had never experienced anything quite like this before, and she resisted the desire to fall into Jack's arms and hang on for dear life. She was disappearing into his eyes, and the feeling terrified and thrilled her. Nervously she looked away again, and recovered her strength as she remembered her purpose.

"I've sent to Nanny for her basket of nostrums. They seem to be more effective than most of the medicines the physicians use. We've certainly tested their efficacy often enough. Go rest, Jack. I'll come to no harm sitting here. And I do have considerable experience at nursing children."

Jack clung to her arms, staring down at her bare head with despair and hope. She had no right to be here, but he needed her desperately. Just her presence had brought a return of hope. He felt the strength of her resolve, knew the magnitude of the character behind it, and knew beyond any doubt that if anyone could nurse Amy to life, it would be this woman. But in allowing her to do so, he would almost certainly be destroying her life. Unless ...

He let the possibility of that one exception wash through him like a soothing balm. If she still cared, if she could possibly choose...  He daren't let his thoughts wander to the borders of the impossible. He hadn't had any sleep in thirty-six hours. He was merely dreaming with his eyes open.

"I'll have Mrs. Higginbotham come up. Then I'll send for your carriage. You can't stay."

Carolyn gave him a brisk look, pulled from his grasp, and removed her gloves, all traces of wavering gone. "You would do better to send that woman packing. If it eases your conscience, send one of the nursemaids up. We'll need a constant supply of fresh water. Has the cold settled in her lungs?"

Jack was too weary to fight both Carolyn and himself. He felt singularly helpless staring at the lifeless features of his daughter night and day. He had no notion of how to go on. Carolyn did. He grasped desperately at the offer.

Within minutes he had explained what happened, what the physicians recommended, and the results, or lack of them. Carolyn sat beside the bed as he spoke, touching gentle fingers to heated cheeks, avoiding looking too closely at the man behind her. He had been right when he had said he was just a man. Seeing him like this brought all her foolish fancies home. He was suffering in a way she had never experienced. The lordly rake she had condemned, the gentle lover she had worshiped—both were only small facets of his character. Men weren't so simply defined with a word or two. She had a lot yet to learn. Perhaps her father had protected her too well.

She felt him hovering behind her, fearful of what would happen should he leave his daughter unguarded for even a moment. She touched a hand to his sleeve, daring to meet his eyes just this once. "Go, Jack. You have done everything humanly possible. The matter is in God's hands now."

He needed to be reminded of that. Nodding, he pressed her fingers. Not daring to say more, he left hastily in search of a maid.

Telling himself he would nap only a few hours, Jack collapsed, still dressed, on a guest bed near the nursery. When he had fully recovered his faculties, he would decide what to do with the obstinate Miss Thorogood. She would certainly be missed by dinner. He had no illusions that she had told anyone where she was going, or she would have been prevented. Somehow, he would have to find a way to spirit her back into the safety of her own home. When he woke.

It was nearly midnight before he opened his eyes again. It took a minute to recollect why he slept in a strange bed with all his clothes on. He hadn't been that drunk in years. When the memory came, it was with a rush of pain and fear, and he hastily swung his legs to the floor.

Amy's room was lit by a branch of candles. In their flickering light he watched Carolyn wring out a cloth in a washbowl and gently place it over his daughter's forehead. A worried frown lined Carolyn's brow as she worked, and he could see that she was biting her lip. In fear, he turned to observe Amy more closely.

She was tossing restlessly. As he came closer, he could see the fine sheen of perspiration on her small face. Even as he watched, he heard her low moan, and the bottom seemed to fall out of his stomach.

"What is wrong? What can I do?" he whispered hoarsely, coming to stand beside the bed.

Carolyn glanced up at him in relief. "Her fever is rising rapidly. We must keep it down. Call some of the servants and have them bring up snow to add to the washbasin."

Jack looked at the empty cot where the maid should be and shook his head in disbelief. Where in hell were his servants? Furiously he went in search of a maid. His daughter could be dying, and they all lay cozy in their beds. He would fire the lot of them on the morrow.

He forgot his temper a little while later as he cuddled his unconscious daughter on his lap while Carolyn applied the cold compresses to her brow. Amy seemed to lie quieter in his arms, and he felt better holding her close. She was so damned small and helpless. She needed him to protect her, and he hadn't done a very good job of it. Perhaps this was God's way of telling him he didn't deserve love. He'd certainly failed the child's mother. And Carolyn. He looked up to watch the grim lines of worry on her lovely face.

"I meant to send you home hours ago," he murmured more to himself than to her.

"I wouldn't have gone." Carolyn carefully packed the latest bowl of snow into a cloth. "You needed sleep, and Mrs. Higginbotham is useless. I'm afraid I yelled at her."

The idea of yelling at that redoubtable matron had never occurred to Jack. He lifted a surprised brow at this delicate lady beside the bed, gently applying compresses, and wondered what other secrets she hid. How much did he really know of her, after all?

"Did you yell at the maids too? I thought I specifically assigned them to helping you while I slept."

"They're sweet, but they haven't a brain between them. Mrs. Higginbotham dismissed the one who spoke up earlier, and she told the other to go on to bed. Then she went off to bed herself." Carolyn offered a small grin. "I gave her her marching orders, but she didn't seem to think they were final."

"Did you, now?" Jack leaned back against the wooden headboard and made Amy more comfortable in his arms. Carolyn's proximity and the faint scent of wildflowers soothed him. Under other circumstances, they would have aroused him, but not when his daughter lay ill in his arms. He just needed Carolyn's reassuring presence close at hand to let him know all would be well in a little while. "You're developing quite a nasty temper, my love."

Carolyn didn't even give him a second glance at this endearment. She'd heard his honeyed words before. She had yet to see proof of them. "I've always had a nasty temper. You just never came across it before."

"I think I've encountered it once or twice of late, and I remember a particularly brilliant tantrum that haunted my worst nightmares for years. Had you shown Mrs. Higginbotham that fury, she would be out of the house by now."

That caused Carolyn to meet his gaze. In this light, she could discern little of Jack's expression, but what she saw made her vaguely uneasy. His light words had a peculiar intensity. Ignoring his reference to another time, she kept to a safer subject. "I'm sorry I did not let my tongue fly, then. She is your servant, so I held back."

Amy stirred in his arms, and Jack returned his gaze there, brushing a strand of ebony hair from her dark complexion. "She will have to go. I just didn't know how to go about interviewing governesses or nannies. I don't know very much about children, I suppose."

Carolyn sat in the rocker and replied softly, "You know how to love them. That is what counts most."

At the gentleness of her voice, Jack relaxed slightly, and closing his eyes, leaned back against the bed. "I don't know what I would have done these last years without her. She is the only softness, gentleness, that I know. I hold her, and she smiles at me with all the love and trust in the world. I needed her faith to keep from losing mine."

Tears came to her eyes, and Carolyn had to look away from the man on the bed. He was so large sprawled across the child's narrow mattress, but he looked perfectly natural. She wondered how many nights he had sat just like that, rocking his infant daughter to sleep. "Her mother?" she heard herself asking.

Jack didn't look up. His mouth tightened into an ironic curve. "If you wish more evidence to cast me aside, that tale ought to do it." When she made no reply, he shrugged and continued. "The poverty in India is excruciating. Many times worse than you see on a London street. Servants can be had for the offer of a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. I was saving every brass farthing I could put a hand to, so I led a very simple life, two rooms and one old ayah to look after me."

He felt Carolyn rise to change the soaking compress, but he didn't open his eyes. He would have this story told and done with. There would be no more illusions between them. "With nothing better to do in the evenings, I was drinking heavily. I won't go into details of what life is like down there, but drink kills a lot of us. I suppose my ayah feared losing her lucrative position, or perhaps she sought a second income or a measure of comfort for another. Whatever her inscrutable reasoning, she brought a young girl to me one night when I was half out of my mind."

Jack opened his eyes then to watch Carolyn's expression at this revelation. He was going far beyond the bounds of propriety to speak these things, but he wanted Carolyn to know all that he was. He had fooled her when she was younger, filling her head with romantic fantasies while concealing the harsher side of his life. It had been an act of desperation at the time, just as the truth was now. Perhaps he was older but no wiser. Carolyn's expression told him nothing, and he took that as permission to go on, though he felt as if he were cutting his own throat once again.

"She became my mistress. There is no polite way to state it. I had no intention of marrying her. She filled a place in my life that was empty, but we scarcely spoke the same language. She was young and ignorant and became pregnant immediately. It made her happy, so I suppose that was what she wanted. She knew it would give her a position of comfort for the rest of her life in my household. That's the way things are done down there."

Carolyn made a small noise that sounded almost like a sob, but he couldn't stop now. It all had to be said. "She died shortly after giving birth to Amy. It was only then that I learned my mistress was also my ayah's daughter."

A soft exclamation indicated Carolyn heard and understood, but she made no other reply to this tale of Amy's origins. It was a tawdry tale, at best. He could have done as so many others had and left the child behind, but just as he had been unable to send the old woman and babe away at birth, he could not do it four years later. With a sigh, Jack snuggled his daughter closer, clinging to her warmth.

“You took the child from her grandmother?” she asked, still looking for a reason to condemn him.

He shook his head. “She was stabbed in the marketplace one day. Amy has no one but me.”

Carolyn shuddered at the horror of such a life. "I'm glad you told me," she offered once she recovered her composure. She hoped he couldn't see the tracks of her tears. The thought of his loneliness in that horrible place of exile and the mother willing to sacrifice her child to a life of infamy rather than allow her to starve tore at her heart. She was glad he had saved Amy from such a life. "Will you adopt her?"

Jack looked up and caught her eye. "I think that depends on several things," he answered slowly. The telltale blush did not rise to her cheeks and he saw only curiosity in her eyes. His hopes plummeted, but he clung fiercely to their remains. "Yes, I will probably adopt her."

Carolyn did not understand the sharpness of his words, but she was not given time to consider it. Amy began to shake and moan, and perspiration poured freely from every pore, drenching her night shift. There wasn't time to do anything but act.

Afraid to expose her to the chilly night air, they wrapped her in blankets until she lay still once more. Then, hastily removing wet garments and finding dry ones, they returned to the previous routine of applying compresses. Within the half-hour she was shaking again. Steadily they worked throughout the night.