The Arrangement (27 page)

I ran up to the other side of the bed and stood looking down into Nicky’s still face. His eyes were closed and he was very pale. I bent over him to touch his cheek with my lips and he didn’t move. Terror washed over me. “What happened?” I said through lips so stiff I could scarcely speak.

It was Raoul who answered me. “According to Mr. Wilson, he and the three boys were riding through the Home Woods when it happened, Gail. The ponies were perfectly calm when all of a sudden, for seemingly no reason at all, Squirt went berserk. He reared and bucked and plunged off the path, knocking Nicky’s head on a low-hanging branch. Nicky came off, and when they ran to see how he was, he was unconscious. Mr. Wilson brought him back home immediately and we sent for Dr. Marlowe.”

The bed was quite high but I leaned over it so that I could scan my son’s face carefully. There was an ugly bruise on his right temple.

“His brain has had a shock, Mrs. Saunders,” the doctor told me gravely. “It is essential that you keep him quiet, even after he wakes up.”

I spoke my deepest fear. “He
is
going to wake up, doctor?”

“Let us hope so,” the doctor said.

My heart jolted.
“Hope so?
Is there a chance that he might not?”

“In these cases, when the injured person is breathing normally as Nicholas is, the patient almost always wakes up, Mrs. Saunders. From what I can determine, he has no serious injury other than the blow to the brain, and we must just wait until that heals itself.”

By now I was so terrified that I could scarcely breathe. I bent my head until my lips were close to my son’s ear. “Nicky,” I said in a voice that was sadly unsteady. “Can you hear me, Nicky? Mama’s here.”

There was no response on the small pale face.

“Gail,” Raoul said softly. “Sit down before you fall down.” I felt his hand on my arm. “Come. I’ve brought a chair for you. Sit down.”

I obeyed the pressure of his hand and sat in the chair that he had placed next to Nicky’s bed. I put my hand over my son’s, and it seemed to me that his fingers stirred slightly under mine. My breath caught in hope, and I looked up at the doctor. “How long?” I demanded. “How long before I can expect him to wake up?”

“It might be a matter of hours. It has even been known to be a matter of days,” the doctor said. “But you must not expect him to remember anything of the accident, Mrs. Saunders. That is a memory he will probably never recover.”

“I see.”

“I will take Dr. Marlowe out, Raoul,” Ginny said, and as she passed me she gave me a gentle pat on my shoulder. “He’ll be all right, Gail,” she said. “You know how resilient boys are.”

After Ginny and the doctor had gone out, I looked up at Raoul and said, “Squirt would never go berserk like that.”

Raoul’s face was unreadable. “What if a bee stung him?”

“He would have run down the path. Squirt’s instinct is always to run. He would not have taken Nicky into the woods. What really happened out there, Raoul?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. Then: “Gail—Squirt is dead.”

“
What?
”

“Apparently he had some kind of a fit. Wilson said he had never seen anything like it; after he threw Nicky, the pony just flung himself down on the ground and threw himself around as if he were having a major colic attack.”

“Colic does not happen that suddenly.”

“Not usually, no, but perhaps Squirt got into something that made him ill.”

I thought for a few minutes. “The only thing I can think of that might cause the kind of reaction you are talking about is deadly nightshade, and I certainly cannot imagine that you allow that particular plant within the vicinity of your stables.”

“Of course I don’t,” Raoul said soberly. “In fact, I can assure you that no horse in my stables has accidental access to any dangerous plants.”

It was a few moments before the word
accidental
registered with me.

“Raoul?” I said fearfully. “You don’t think anyone deliberately tried to hurt Nicky, do you?”

He came to stand next to me and gently smoothed a tendril of my hair behind my ear. “I love your ears and your neck,” he murmured. “They are so finely modeled, so delicate.”

I pushed his hand away. “Answer me! You
do
think someone tried to hurt Nicky!”

I jumped up out of my chair to face him.

His face and voice were very sober. “I don’t know how to answer you, Gail, but I will confess that I don’t like the way that pony died. And I don’t like the way that bridge was damaged, either. John swears to me that it was checked on schedule only last month and that at the time it was fine.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

Then he asked the question that scared me almost as much as Nicky’s accident. “Gail, is there any reason you can think of for someone to wish harm to Nicky?”

I looked up at him, making myself meet his eyes. “No,” I whispered. “I can’t, Raoul.”

He said carefully, “There are no…circumstances…attached to Nicky’s birth that might render him vulnerable to an ill-wisher?”

His golden eyes were perfectly nonjudgmental, perfectly steady.

I turned my eyes away from him, back to Nicky. “No,” I said. “There are no such circumstances.”

“Very well.” His voice was quiet. “I had to ask, Gail.”

“Yes.” My voice now was merely weary. “I suppose you did.”

* * * *

I spent the night in the bed of the Countess of Savile, with Nicky lying comatose beside me. There was a connecting door between the countess’s bedroom and the bedroom next door, which belonged to the earl, but no one had even hinted that Raoul’s proximity might be improper. It seemed that the circumstances of Nicky’s illness took precedence over propriety.

Of course, what no one knew was that Raoul never went to his room at all but settled down in a chair on the other side of Nicky’s bed to watch with me over my son. I didn’t even suggest that he seek his own bed; my need for the support of his presence was too great.

“I once took a knock on the head like Nicky’s,” he reassured me. “My horse stopped dead at a jump and I went over his neck and hit the ground headfirst. It took me five hours to wake up, and I survived the ordeal perfectly fine, Gail. And I promise you, so will Nicky.”

I was immensely grateful for his encouragement and clung to it like a lifeline.

It was two hours after midnight when I felt Nicky stir a little beside me. I scrambled to my knees and bent over him.

“Nicky?” I said. “Nicky?”

Raoul was beside me in an instant. We had kept the bedside lamp burning all night, so Nicky’s face was illuminated clearly enough for us to see that his eyelashes were fluttering.

“Nicky,”
I said urgently,
“can you hear me, sweetheart? It’s Mama. Can you hear me?”

His eyes opened. “Of course I can hear you, Mama. Why are you shouting at me?”

“Oh thank God,” I sobbed. “Thank God.”

I felt Raoul’s warm hand on my shoulder.

“My head hurts,” Nicky said. “It hurts bad, Mama. What happened?”

“You had a fall from Squirt, Nicky,” Raoul said. “You have been unconscious for a few hours, and your mother has been quite worried about you. I’m afraid that your head is going to hurt for a day or two.”

Nicky frowned irritably. “I fell off Squirt? I don’t remember that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Raoul said calmly. “Dr. Marlowe said that you probably wouldn’t remember. There is nothing for you to worry about.”

Nicky blinked a few times, as if trying to get us into focus. “Is Squirt all right?” he asked.

“Squirt is perfectly safe,” I replied softly. “Now, can you sit up for a little and have something to drink?”

Raoul and I managed to get Nicky up to use the water closet and to drink some water. By that time Nicky was in tears from the pain in his head and all he wanted to do was lie down again. We put him back to bed and I got in beside him and held his hand.

“Go to bed yourself,” I said softly to Raoul. “You must be exhausted.”

But he sat back down in his chair. “I’ll wait until he’s gone off again.”

It did not take Nicky long.

“He’s asleep,” I said to Raoul some minutes later.

“That’s good.” He unfolded his long body from the chair in which he had been helping me keep watch, stood up, and stretched. He came across to my side of the bed and stood there silently looking down at Nicky’s sleeping face.

I looked up at Raoul.

His hair was hanging down over his forehead, there was a faint stubble of gold on his cheeks and chin, and he looked tired. More than that, he looked worried.

“You do think he is going to be all right?” I asked urgently.

His eyes moved from Nicky’s face to mine and he smiled. “He will be fine, Gail. He’ll have a hell of a headache tomorrow, but he’ll be fine.”

“Well then…” I was lying back on some pillows, looking up at him, and I thought that my heart was probably in my eyes. How could it not have been? I said, “Thank you, Raoul. It was a great support to have you beside me tonight, and I appreciate it more than I can say.”

“Little Gail,” he said. He bent over the bed for a moment and kissed me on the mouth: quick, hard, hungry. “I’ll be next door if
you need any help with Nicky,” he said, and I watched him open the door to his bedroom and go through.

The following morning Raoul instituted a search in the stables to see if anyone knew what Squirt could possibly have eaten to have precipitated such a violent colic attack. The inquiry produced no results.

I wanted to keep the news of Squirt’s demise from Nicky for one more day, but Raoul thought that he should be told. It was a measure of how enthralled I was becoming with the man that I acquiesced and broke the bad news to my son.

Nicky was very upset. I knew he would be, but, as Raoul pointed out, he would be upset whenever I told him and it wasn’t fair to allow him to go on thinking that his pony was alive when he wasn’t.

Raoul’s words made sense to my head, but it broke my heart to see my child’s pain.

Nicky spent the day in the countess’s bedchamber, receiving short visits from the nursery set but mainly sleeping. That evening, as the adults gathered in the drawing room before dinner, Ginny asked me if I wanted Nicky moved upstairs to the nursery for the night.

“He’s slept a great deal today and the doctor said he would probably sleep through the night, but if you’re worried, Gail, it would be very easy to have one of the nursery maids sleep in his room to keep an eye on him.”

I was just about to say that I would stay with Nicky myself when Raoul spoke. “Oh, leave the boy where he is for another night, Ginny. The other children wake up so early that they will disturb him, and Dr. Marlowe wants him to stay in bed for at least another day.”

“Very well, Raoul,” Ginny said pleasantly. “It will be as easy to set up a trestle bed for one of the nursery maids in the countess’s room as it would be in the nursery.”

He smiled at her. “That won’t be necessary. I’m sure Gail will want to spend the night with Nicky again.”

Silence descended on the drawing room. I looked around bravely and surprised an expression of what looked to be profound worry on John’s face. Roger looked dismayed, Harriet looked morose, Mr. Cole looked angry, and Ginny looked thoughtful.

Powell appeared in the doorway and said, “Dinner is served, my lady.”

We formed our nightly procession and paraded into the dining room. Ginny and Raoul discussed what had to be done to repair Austerby before she and her family could return to live there. John occasionally joined in with a suggestion, and the rest of us made an effort to converse among ourselves with at least a minimal degree of politeness.

I thought with some nostalgia of Mr. Macintosh’s uncomplicated meals and my equally uncomplicated days at Deepcote before the Earl of Savile had driven into my stable yard and turned my life upside down.

* * * *

After the gentlemen joined us in the drawing room, Raoul, Ginny, Roger, and Harriet sat down to play whist. I did not know how to play whist and John very kindly offered to walk with me in the garden.

Mr. Cole had disappeared after dinner and no one was interested enough in his whereabouts to inquire after him.

There was a mist off the lake and the night air was chilly enough for me to wish I had brought a shawl. Before I quite knew what was happening, John had taken his coat off and hung it around my shoulders.

The warmth was welcome but the intimacy of the gesture surprised me. I looked up at him with a question in my eyes.

He gave me a rueful smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to usurp Raoul’s place.”

The darkness hid the rush of color to my face. It was perfectly clear that the entire Melville family knew that Raoul and I were lovers and the situation was not a very comfortable one for me. Raoul, of course, could not know that. He probably had affairs like this all the time, with women of the world, who took such arrangements with perfect
sangfroid.
As long as appearances were maintained, the world of the
ton
did not care what went on behind the scenes. And Raoul was very good at maintaining appearances, as witnessed by the way he had just used Nicky’s illness to get me into the room next to his for the night.

Unfortunately, I was not a woman of the world.

I replied to John in a revealingly small voice, “His lordship has been very kind to me.”

“I wonder if he has.” John’s voice sounded rather grim. “It’s clear as a pike to me that you’re not the kind of woman to take an arrangement like this lightly, Gail, and I don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

Well, I was going to get hurt, but that was quite my own fault.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said in an attempt at lightness. “All I really need is a new place to set up my business. Nicky and I shall be fine.”

John said abruptly, as if he had not heard my words, “He won’t marry you, my dear. Apart from the social gap between you, there is the matter of Georgiana and the child. I saw what their deaths did to him, Gail. I really don’t think he will ever allow himself to go through that again.”