The Chadwick Ring (10 page)

Each night Ginevra would have to bite her lip to keep from crying out in pain when she remembered that her husband did not lie in that bed at all, that he slept somewhere in London, in another bed, perhaps in other arms, and she had sent him there.

She clenched her fists as she gazed deliberately at the bright countryside, blotting out unwelcome thoughts. She did not want to return to Queenshaven, not right away. For a few hours she wished to forget her bewildering new life and pretend she was a child again, before she took on so many responsibilities, before her body began to assert itself in ways that puzzled and upset her. She leaned forward and caught the coachman’s attention. He pulled the barouche to a halt and swivelled around on his perch to listen respectfully to her instructions. She said, “I want you to go back to the last fork and take the other turning, Drive us to Dowerwood.”

The driver frowned and touched the tall hat that covered his grizzled hair. “Begging your pardon, milady, but there’s precious little to see at Dowerwood these days. The house is boarded shut, and there’s just the Harrisons living in the old caretaker’s cottage.”

Ginevra brightened at the familiar name. “Harrison! That must be the butler and his wife. They were there when I was a girl.”

The man shook his head. “No, ma’am, the only people at Dowerwood are old Mrs. Harrison and her grandson. Himself died at Lammastide four years ago. They say he never got over the loss of his boy, the young lad’s father, who was killed on the Peninsula fighting Boney.”

“Damned French,” Emma murmured.

Ginevra cast a startled glance at her friend before sinking back against the squabs. She thought for a moment about the butler with his ramrod-straight posture and booming voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She looked questioningly at Emma, who shook her head. After a moment Ginevra continued briskly, “Well, no matter. We will still go to Dowerwood and pay our respects to Mrs. Harrison.” She relaxed as the driver skillfully brought the carriage about and began to retrace their route to the fork half a mile back. As they drove toward that dense barrier of oak and walnut trees, Ginevra mused to Emma, “It’s funny, the things we remember from childhood. I think even now I could pick out Harrison’s voice in a crowd of people. As for his wife, she was our cook. I could not tell you what color eyes she had, or whether she was fat or thin, but I can still taste the gingerbread she used to make whenever Tom and Bysshe rode over for tea.” She was silent for a moment; then suddenly she burst out, “Oh, Emma, why do things have to change?”

Emma patted her hand reassuringly.

Ginevra tensed again as the barouche slipped beneath the overhanging trees of the shady forest. What would she see at Dowerwood? The marquess, the coachman, everyone had tried to prepare her for the worst, and she wasn’t sure she could face it. She had always loved the old
cottage ornee
with its pastiche-Gothic spikes and spires and the heavily draped ivy that made the rooms dark and cool even in high summer. Now would she find the plaster fretwork crumbling, the iron filigree rusted and hanging loose from the eaves?

Slowly the carriage bounced and scraped along the deeply rutted drive now clogged with grass and thistle. Several times the driver had to crack his whip over the heads of the horses to make them pick their way through the mud puddles left by the previous night’s rain. When the carriage finally pulled to a halt in front of the boarded-over front door, Ginevra stared at the house in dismay, all her worst fears confirmed.

Dowerwood, her precious Dowerwood, stood shuttered and closed, abandoned, the mouldering remains of a once thriving residence, as derelict as her dreams.

She pressed her hand to her lips to stifle a sob, and the coachman asked diffidently, “Are you going to be all right, milady? I’m sorry, but I told you how it would be.”

“Yes, you did,” Ginevra said hollowly, staring at the barred entrance marked with the outline of the knocker that had once hung there, “and I’m grateful for your concern. Now, why don’t you get down and take a walk or something, relax. I’m sure you must be very weary of driving.”

The coachman smiled his gratitude. “Thank you, milady. I’d be that glad to stretch my legs a bit.” He climbed down from his seat and tugged the brim of his hat in a deferential salute before he loped off into the woods.

Ginevra turned to Emma and said, “I’d like you to go around to the caretaker’s house—take that path and it will lead you directly to it—and see if you can locate Mrs. Harrison.”

Emma regarded her mistress uncertainly. “Are you sure? I hate to...”

Ginevra shook her head. “I’m quite all right, believe me. I ... I would simply like to tarry here awhile, look things over. You go on ahead. Perhaps you can inquire whether Mrs. Harrison can find some kind of refreshment for the driver. He must be hot and thirsty.”

Reluctantly Emma left the carriage and followed the overgrown walkway Ginevra had indicated. Watching her companion absently, Ginevra admired the graceful way she lifted her long green skirt so that the hem would not be stained by the wet, wild grass. She let out her breath in a windy sigh. Emma was a lovely and loving woman, and it seemed a pity that she appeared destined to spend her entire life attending one lone girl, when she ought to have a husband and children of her own. Ginevra acknowledged that Emma might remain single by choice. If the rumor were true, as she had heard, that Emma had loved a young sailor who died fighting the French, then perhaps her friend had decided that it was better to cherish a memory than to risk having new dreams blasted.

Ginevra hopped down from the barouche, wincing as a sharp stone bruised her foot through her thin-soled slipper. She pulled her skirt back far enough to peer down at her small feet in their ridiculously unserviceable shoes. The white kidskin slippers with the long ribbons that tied around her ankles were part of her trousseau, the sort of footgear that a radiant young bride should wear in elegant salons when she received her first visitors into her new home. Certainly the shoes had never been intended to
be worn
while slogging through mud to a farmworker’s cottage. She ought to have borrowed some sabots from one of the dairy maids.

Ginevra tugged off her blue straw bonnet and stared at it. It was also beautiful and utterly impractical, as were all the new clothes her father had ordered for her. Madame Annette, the couturiere, obviously was accustomed only to deal with ladies of leisure. Ginevra’s dressing room was crammed with delicate frivolities of silk and satin, gowns to grace a ballroom, lingerie so sheer that she felt the veriest Cyprian when she glimpsed herself in the mirror as she dressed. She found it hard to believe that only weeks before she had had no clothes beyond the sturdy garments she fashioned herself.

She tossed the bonnet onto the carriage seat and shook her head so hard that her dark gold curls pulled loose from their confining hairpins and tumbled wild and free over her shoulders. She knew she looked the complete hoyden with her hair in her face, she knew she would have to restrain her tresses in some semblance of order beneath her hat before the driver returned, but just for a minute she wanted to be free of restriction. She wanted to close her eyes and remember again for one perfect moment what it had felt like to scramble about in short skirts, with her hair streaming down her back.

She shut her lids tightly and let the faint breeze stir the wispy tendrils that brushed across her face. When she was a child, on a warm summer day like today she would gobble her breakfast in the nursery, go to her mother’s room to say good morning, and then she would rush downstairs and burst through the green baize door into the kitchen. Already the spicy aroma of Mrs. Harrison’s special gingerbread would be wafting with heady richness from the stone oven in the wall beside the open fire. If she was very lucky, the cook would have saved her one last spoonful of the batter to lick while she sat on the back steps and waited for the boys to ride over from Queenshaven.

Ginevra sniffed. Her eyes blinked open in surprise as she caught the smell of ... something ... drifting toward her from the boarded-up manor house. She inhaled again, puzzling, wondering if her vivid imagination had conjured up the scent: not gingerbread, that would have been too much, but definitely the smell of cooking food. Slowly she made her way to the back of the house, passing through the overgrown kitchen garden, pushing aside the feathery fernlike bushes that had once been her mother’s treasured asparagus bed. As she approached the back entrance, she noticed for the first time the thin trail of smoke that issued from the kitchen chimney. Now she could identify the smell as some sort of meat-and-vegetable mixture, a soup perhaps, but one that lacked the full-bodied essence she remembered from her childhood days in Mrs. Harrison’s kitchen.

When she timidly pushed open the creaking door at the top of the steps, she noticed at once how dark and dismal the kitchen seemed, a far cry from the immaculate room she had known in years past. The windows were encrusted with dirt and cobwebs, and the only illumination came from a small fire in the grate, where a tall rawboned woman with grey hair tucked beneath a voluminous mob-cap bent over a kettle. Ginevra cleared her throat. “Mrs. Harrison?” she asked tentatively.

The woman turned, startled, blinking against the bright light pouring through the open door. She clutched her long wooden spoon against her sunken chest as if it were a shield. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

Ginevra stepped closer. “Mrs. Harrison, it’s me, Ginevra Bry ... Glover. Don’t you remember me?”

The woman squinted. “Miss Ginnie?” she echoed uncertainly. When the girl nodded, the woman let out her breath with a sob. “Miss Ginnie! God be praised!” She pulled the girl against her, and Ginevra noticed that her faded blue eyes were awash with tears. Mrs. Harrison hugged her convulsively; then she stepped back to study her. “You’ve grown to be a beautiful woman, just like your mother,” she marvelled, “and you didn’t forget an old woman, even though you’re married to a great lord.” She hesitated and looked stricken. “Forgive me, miss ... my lady. I ... I didn’t mean to be so familiar.” She bent in an awkward curtsy.

“Mrs. Harrison,” Ginevra chided, pulling her upright, “don’t be like that! How can I play the great lady to you, when you’ve wiped my dirty nose more times than I can count?”

The woman relaxed, and her mouth widened into a gap-toothed grin. She cackled, “Not only your dirty nose, missy!” She stared at Ginevra again and nodded as if answering an unspoken question. “I knew you’d come,” she declared. “My Jamie wanted to set out for Queenshaven on his own, but I said there was no need. When I heard you were staying there, I knew you’d come to Dowerwood as quick as you could. I told him I needed him right here.”

“Jamie—he’s your grandson?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Ginnie. Jamie’s a fine lad, strong and quick, a joy for an old woman’s heart. He’s only six years old, but if I’d sent him to Queenshaven for help, he’d have made it right enough, for all that it’s such a long way by foot. But I didn’t have to send him out, because I knew you’d come.”

Ginevra grasped the woman’s bony shoulders. “Of course I’ve come, Mrs. Harrison, and I’ll help you any way I can. Now, tell me what’s wrong. Are you ill?”

She shook her grey head and frowned. “Oh, no, it’s not me, miss. Jamie and I, we’re both in good health, thanks be to God.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Mrs. Harrison said, “It’s the young lord, Master Bysshe.”

Ginevra stared. “Bysshe is here?” she asked hollowly.

“Yes, miss. He showed up two nights ago, drenched with rain, riding some half-dead nag. He said he’d run away from school but didn’t want to tell his father yet, him being on his honeymoon and all. I told him he could stay for just a little while but that I thought as how he ought to go up to Queenshaven as soon as possible. But before I could get him to go on home to face up to his lordship, he fell sick. Terrible sick.” Mrs. Harrison gazed at Ginevra with wide, hopeless eyes. “Oh, Miss Ginnie,” she wailed, “I think it’s scarlet fever!”

5

Ginevra demanded, “Where is he?”

The woman stammered, “He’s ... he’s in the master bedroom upstairs. I swept and aired it for him. I ... I couldn’t expect him to stay with Jamie and me, our cottage isn’t grand enough for—”

Ginevra rushed past her and flew up the stairs, her long hair streaming behind her. She had no eye for the devastation wrought on the house by six years of disuse, the mildewed wallpaper, the obvious signs of mice. She ran down the hallway, past rooms filled with furniture shrouded under holland covers, past a grandfather clock where a fat brown spider crawled along the immobile pendulum. At the end of the corridor she burst through the open door into the chamber where, as a child, she used to visit her mother each morning and again just before tea.

A small boy perched on a stool beside the bed, guarding a basin and a pitcher of tepid water, but it was the figure in the bed that captured Ginevra’s attention, a youth who tossed restlessly in his sleep. His long sandy hair fell over his flushed face while his boy-into-man’s body twitched beneath its sweat-stained nightshirt. “Bysshe, Bysshe,” she murmured helplessly, watching his swollen red tongue lick at his pale, parched lips as he gasped for air. She did not need to touch him to know that he burned with fever.

The little boy dampened a napkin in the basin and with great care dabbed it at Bysshe’s lips. Ginevra smiled involuntarily at his stern concentration, and she said, “You it must be Jamie. Did your grandmother show you how to do that?”

The boy jumped up, startled, his eyes wide and questioning. “Are you Ginnie?” he asked.

Ginevra blinked. “Yes. How did you know?”

Jamie tilted his head toward Bysshe. “He called for you. I wanted to go fetch you at the big house, but Gran said she needed me to help her here.” He grinned with relief. “I’m glad you’ve come. Gran has been worried.”

He began to moisten the cloth once more, and Ginevra said, “Here, let me do it.” She sat on the stool and proceeded to bathe Bysshe’s hot, dry face. Some of the buttons of his nightshirt were undone, and beneath the fine sprinkling of new hair on his chest she could see that the trunk of his body was covered with a bright red rash. Scarlet fever. She knew the signs from an epidemic that had begun among the pupils of a dame-school near Bryant House and had then passed to almost every tenant family on the surrounding farms. She had been up for days, nursing the sick, and she knew that there was very little that could be done except to make the patient comfortable—that, and pray that the disease would not become virulent and settle in the ears, or worse, the heart. She glanced at Jamie and quailed as she thought of the risk Mrs. Harrison was taking with her grandson. “It’s good of you to want to help,” she said carefully, “but aren’t you afraid of becoming ill yourself?”

He regarded her with a look oddly dignified for his six years. “No. Gran says I already had the fever when I was little.”

Ginevra nodded. Sometimes infants weathered the disease better than anyone else. “That’s good. So did I.” After a moment she continued, “Jamie, I want you to do something for me. Outside the house you’ll find a lady in a green dress. Her name is Emma. Please tell her that I need her. Then go see if your grandmother wants you. I think she has your lunch ready.”

When the little boy had scampered away, Ginevra returned her attention to Bysshe. She unfastened the remaining buttons of his nightshirt and pulled the soft fabric away from his shoulders. With smooth, soothing strokes she sponged his hot, reddened skin, and she observed with dismay that the water seemed to evaporate almost immediately. As she dipped the napkin into the last of the lukewarm liquid, she wondered fleetingly if she could sell her soul for some chips of ice; at the moment it seemed a fair exchange.

As she bathed Bysshe, Ginevra thought again how unlike her husband his younger son was. With his fair coloring, short nose, and childishly round face, the boy must resemble his father’s first wife; she could see no sign of the marquess in him. When she tried to turn his soft chin so that she could reach beneath his thick, unruly straight hair, Ginevra noticed with surprise that Bysshe wore something around his neck, some medallion or piece of jewelry. Whatever the ornament was, his throes had caused it to fall beneath him, and the ribbon was cutting into his throat, irritating the rash. She slid one arm under his back to lift him, no easy task now that he had grown so, and with her other hand she pulled the long ribbon free. The pendant, she discovered with a frown, was a large gold locket. She wondered if it contained a picture of his long-dead mother, and curiosity made her unfasten the catch. When she opened the engraved leaves, she found herself gazing at an exquisite miniature painted on ivory, the portrait of a young girl in the first blush of maturity, her honey-colored hair falling artlessly over her bare shoulders, just brushing the rise of her breasts revealed by her low-cut pink gown.

It was not Maria Glover. Ginevra now recognized the locket as the keepsake she had sent to Tom when their betrothal was officially announced.

She bit her lip, puzzled and pensive. In the traumatic days following Tom’s death, she had forgotten all about the miniature, even when she sent her ring back to Lord Chadwick. She wondered how Bysshe had come to wear it. Why should he want to? As she pondered, the boy’s lids suddenly flew open and he stared up at her with fever-bright brown eyes. His face twisted into a troubled scowl, and he lifted one hand weakly to stroke her cheek.

The effort seemed too much for him; his arm fell back to his side. “Ginnie,” he croaked, “this time ... this time you’re not a dream.”

Ginevra’s eyebrows rose sharply, but she answered quietly, “No, Bysshe, I’m not a dream.”

He sighed hoarsely and relaxed. “I knew ... you’d come to me,” he murmured, swallowing painfully. “I knew the old woman was ... wrong. You wouldn’t ... you couldn’t be ... with ... with
him
,” His eyes drooped shut and he drifted back into an uneasy sleep.

When Emma and Mrs. Harrison appeared at the doorway, Emma picked up the near-empty pitcher and vanished back into the kitchen to draw fresh water. Mrs. Harrison stood twisting her apron nervously. She asked, “Was I wrong to let him stay here, Miss Ginnie? He told me there was some kind of quarantine laid on his school and if he went back there he’d have to stay all summer. Should I have made him go back? It wasn’t my place, and he didn’t seem to think there was any danger, and ... and sometimes it does get lonely here, with just Jamie for company.”

Ginevra shook her head impatiently. “No, of course you weren’t wrong, Mrs. Harrison. If anyone was at fault, it was Bysshe, for leaving Harrow, although I expect he will fare better here, away from everybody, than he would in a crowded infirmary.”

“He didn’t seem sick at all when he first arrived,” the woman continued. “He was happy and laughing. He said he hated school and it felt good just to get away, even if it did mean riding through a downpour. But ...” Here she hesitated and regarded Ginevra uncertainly. “The strangest thing happened, I hardly know how to credit it. It must have been some kind of awful mistake. Master Bysshe, he was teasing and joking—it did me good to hear my Jamie laughing at his pranks—then he made some remark about not being anxious to make the acquaintance of his new stepmother, her being a—begging your pardon, miss—a London tart.” She colored furiously at Ginevra’s astonished glance. “I know he didn’t mean anything by it—boys do have the strangest notion of what’s funny—but I lit right into him. I told him I didn’t care if he was a viscount now that his brother was gone, he had no cause to speak that way about a decent woman, especially not since she was an old friend of his. When he asked me who I meant, I said to him, ‘Why, Miss Ginnie, of course,’ and for the longest time he just stared at me as if I was addlepated. Then he stormed out into the rain again, and when he came back two hours later, he was feverish.”

Ginevra blanched as she listened to this recital. When Mrs. Harrison finished, for a long moment the only sound in the musty room was the rasp of Bysshe’s labored breathing. Ginevra looked down at him and choked, “My God, he didn’t know.”

“No, miss,” the woman said impassively.

Ginevra inhaled deeply, too shocked to feel anything beyond an icy numbness. She gazed at the youth lying on the bed. He had grown since she last saw him, he must be close to six feet tall now, but even the loose nightshirt could not disguise the adolescent thinness of his body. Bysshe, her old friend—her new stepson. Why hadn’t Lord Chadwick told him? Was it because he suspected! that his son was no more prepared to accept the altered relationship than Ginevra was? She sighed, “Thank you for telling me,” and she dipped the napkin into the basin again.

She was still at Bysshe’s side two days later. Emma and the coachman had returned to Queenshaven to fetch the servants and supplies necessary to make Dowerwood habitable during Bysshe’s convalescence, but Ginevra did not stir from the room, even to sleep. She drowsed in an armchair and prayed for his fever to break. When it gave: no sign of doing so, and more ominously, when Bysshe began to complain that his ear pained him, Ginevra asked Mrs. Harrison to send someone to the nearest town to find a physician.

The woman shook her head in disgust. “He’ll not come, miss. He hates to leave the gin shops, even to tend those who need him. And believe me, the young master would be better off without the kind of treatment that one would give him. A real toper, he is.”

Ginevra said wearily, “We have to try. All I can do is give Bysshe sponge baths and dose him with laudanum if the pain gets too bad. Surely even a bad doctor could do more for him than that.”

But as soon as the man appeared, Ginevra regretted calling him. He was old and cadaverous, dressed in a rusty black frock coat that reeked of ragwater and strong snuff and other foul odors Ginevra preferred not to identify. As Mrs. Harrison had predicted, he was drunk and unclean and surly because he had been summoned to a “run-down old farm.” The nails of his palsied hands were filthy, and they ran roughly over Bysshe in the most cursory of examinations, terrifying the boy in his weakened state. When the man took from his ancient medical bag a knife to bleed Bysshe for his fever, Ginevra saw with disgust that the blade was still stained with dried blood from his last patient. “Stop!” she ordered, just as he moved to slit the vein. “I don’t want you to touch him.”

He turned on her with a resentful glare. “If you won’t let me go about my business, why did you drag me here?”

“There must be some way to treat him without bleeding him. He’s already very weak.”

“Interfering female,” the man muttered querulously. “Bleeding and purging, that’s the cure for everything. I ought to know: I’ve been a doctor these thirty years and more. I served on the staff of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Do you think I’ll let some silly chit order me about?”

Behind him Mrs. Harrison snapped, “Mind your tongue, you ... you swill-bellied old cabbage head. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

The physician regarded her balefully; then he turned his bleary eye on Ginevra, noting her stained dress and disheveled hair. He shrugged insolently. “Who’s she? Some young lightskirt, no doubt, hiding away from her keeper. Everyone knows the quality ain’t been near this place in years.” He grabbed Bysshe’s arm again. “Now, let me get on with this, since you’ve dragged me all this way. You ought to be grateful I’ve come, a man with my qualifications.”

Once again Ginevra stayed his hand. “I want you to leave him alone,” she said quietly but firmly, and unconsciously she straightened her shoulders with a creditable imitation of her husband’s supercilious air. “You’ll be paid for your time, never fear. I shall see that you are recompensed as befits a man of your remarkable ... credentials.” She paused. “St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, did you say? I believe my father told me about it once. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but is that not the place where patients are required to deposit a burial fee of some nineteen shillings, refundable in the unlikely event that they recover?”

The man’s visage paled, then reddened fiercely. “Just who do you think you are, to talk to me that way?”

Ginevra smiled coolly, and she was wryly aware of making use of her new rank for the first time. “I am the Marchioness of Chadwick,” she said, “and I serve notice to you now, before witnesses, that in future, should you dare to practice your quackery on any of my people, whether here or at Queenshaven, I will have you hounded from the district like the mountebank you are.” She nodded curtly and turned away. As soon as the door slammed behind the departing physician, she began to tremble.

From the bed Bysshe regarded her with glassy eyes and chuckled weakly, “You tell him, Ginnie.” Then he tugged at his earlobe.

After Ginevra had once again forced the bitter tincture of opium down the boy’s swollen throat, she asked Mrs. Harrison, “How does it happen that an incompetent sot like that is able to maintain a practice?”

The woman sighed in resignation. “The war, milady. We had a good doctor—young he was, and quick—but he died in Belgium, and there was no one to take his place, except ... well, you see what we ended with.” Her faded eyes strayed to the sleeping youth. “I don’t know what’s going to become of him if we don’t get someone soon who can help him.”

Ginevra nodded, following her gaze. Like most countrywomen of her class, she was skilled enough to bind minor injuries, to treat common ailments, but she had no illusions about her capabilities in the face of life-threatening infection. Bysshe needed a physician, a good one, and he needed him at once. If anything happened to the boy, she would never be able to face his father again.