The Frost Fair (17 page)

“But Mr. Lazenby,” Meg objected, “you've cut in on a very interesting—”

Mr. Mundey, blinking curiously at Meg, smiled deprecatingly and shook his head. “Not so very interesting as the kind of talk that you
young
folk will engage in,” he chuckled. “You've been kind to an old fellow for long enough, my lady. It's time I took myself off.”

Meg's objections were of no avail, and Mortimer, handing Meg the platter, took Mr. Mundey's place with a self-satisfied smirk. “Didn't think I'd let the evening pass without finding a way to see you alone, did you?” he asked familiarly as soon as old Mundey was out of hearing.

Meg's eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, you
did
realize a fellow like me would manage it, didn't you? Even if you
are
the guest of honor and were bound to be surrounded?”

“I can't say I gave the matter any thought at all,” Meg said coldly. “Did you have a special reason for wanting to see me alone? Is there something you wish to confide in me regarding Trixie?”

“Trixie? Don't see why you think I'd want to speak of Trixie.”

“Well, I thought …” She put the platter down on the table behind the sofa, folded her hands in her lap and looked over the young man with an expression calculated to depress his pretensions. “Then what business
do
you have with me, sir?”

His pretensions were not in the least depressed. He leered at her and put his arm on the back of the sofa with a swaggering self-confidence. “Wouldn't exactly call it
business
. Business isn't what I have in mind.”

“Then what
do
you have in mind?”

“You can guess, your ladyship. I mean, Margaret. Better call you Margaret, eh? Can't keep saying ‘your ladyship' when I'm arranging to call on you.”

“You may
not
call me Margaret!” she said in disgust. “And why on
earth
would you want to
call
on me?”

Unaffected by her tone, he grinned again. “Silly question. Why does
any
fellow call on a girl?”

“Girl!” She could hardly believe her ears. “Perhaps I don't fully understand you, Mr. Lazenby. Are you not promised to … that is, haven't you and Trixie an understanding?”

“Oh, is
that
what's worrying you?” With fatuous presumption, he patted her shoulder soothingly. “Ain't a thing between Trixie and me that can't be ended like
that
!” And he snapped his fingers together with so loud a sound that Meg jumped.

She thrust his hand from her shoulder with revulsion. “Mr. Lazenby,” she said icily, “I cannot
imagine
what I've said or done to give you the impression that I would welcome a visit from you. Even if you should come to call merely to confide in me your love for Trixie Carrier, I would refuse to see you. Let there be no possible misunderstanding between us, Mr. Lazenby. I tell you quite bluntly that I will not admit you over my threshold under
any
circumstances.”

His eyebrows rose in mild surprise. “Is this the way London ladies keep a fellow dangling? No need to play that game with
me
, my dear, I assure you. Already have me hooked, y'see. Smitten the minute I saw you, word of honor!”

If she weren't so exasperatedly furious with him, she would have laughed. Never had she met anyone so incapable of self-doubt. “I give you
my
word of honor that I'm not playing a game. The truth is that I find you completely unacceptable as a suitor. And if you persist in this foolishness, I shall be forced to tell Trixie what has transpired here tonight—and in complete detail. Do you understand me, sir? One more idiotic word from you on this matter and I shall tell her everything you've—”

“Meg?” came a faint voice from the doorway. “Meg, my dear …”

Meg turned quickly toward the new sound. Isabel, strangely flushed, stood leaning on the door jamb. “Aunt Bel!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet in alarm, “Good God, what's—”

“I'm afraid I'm … not feeling at all … well. Do you think … someone … might take me … home?”

Ignoring her own pain, Meg limped as rapidly as she could across the floor. “My poor darling!” she cried, taking her aunt in a tight embrace. “What is it?”

But she could feel the waves of heat emanating from her aunt's flushed cheeks. The woman was burning with fever!

“I don't know what's wrong with me,” Isabel muttered through dry lips. “I feel so … dizzy.” She sagged against Meg heavily and began, shockingly, to shiver. “Do you think, my dearest … that that irritating doctor … can have been … right?” And, her body going completely limp, she slid slowly from Meg's hold and slipped to the floor in a swoon.

Chapter Twelve

Dr. Fraser was summoned to Knight's Haven in the wee hours of the morning. Despite the hour, he came promptly through a chilling rain to examine the woman who had so adamantly refused to accept his advice two days before. Isabel was not even aware that he'd come—her high fever had driven her mind into a foggy, half-conscious state somewhere between sleep and delirium.

From their places at the foot of her bed, Meg, Geoffrey and Lady Carrier watched anxiously as Dr. Fraser felt Isabel's pulse and listened to her labored breathing. It was clear even to the untutored observers that the poor woman was in pain. Her breath seemed to come in shallow little pants, but periodically the shallow breaths were inadequate, and she gulped deeply for air. At those times, her hand fluttered to her chest as if to keep the pain in check.

“It's the pleurisy,” the doctor said, turning from the bed and leading the onlookers from the room. “The vauntie female, like as no, has had pains in her side fer days.”

He explained that the only treatment he could provide was to strap her chest to keep her from breathing too deeply, thus limiting the pain. Other than that, there was nothing much to be done but to try to draw the fever down and to keep the patient calm and quiet. “She has a strong constitution,” he told Meg reassuringly. “Gi'e the lass time and care … she'll come round.” He then requested Geoffrey's assistance for the strapping and ordered the women to their beds. Lady Carrier obeyed, but Meg insisted that she would sit up with her aunt till morning and that
she
was capable of assisting the doctor in Geoffrey's place. Unable to dissuade her, the two men accepted the inevitable and assisted her back into the sickroom.

Meg held the limp Isabel up against her shoulder as the doctor and Geoffrey tore a sheet into strips and wound them tightly about the patient's chest. The discomfort of the handling and the constricting effect of the strapping woke Isabel from her stupor for a moment. After a paroxysm of coughing, her eyes fell on the doctor. “You!” she muttered faintly. “Go 'way! Don't want … your … assis … assis … help.”

“Wheesht, woman, stop yatterin'!” he ordered curtly as he continued his labors, the seriousness of her condition having not the slightest softening effect on the brusqueness of his manner. “Some folk dinna ken when 'tis time t' save their breath.”

In a few moments, the task was completed, a strong sleeping draught had been forced down the patient's throat, and she'd been settled back upon a pile of pillows with a comforter pulled up to her neck and a cool, wet cloth placed on her forehead. While Geoffrey accompanied the doctor to his waiting curricle, Meg settled herself on a chair near enough to the bed to enable her to change her aunt's compresses without getting up. When Geoffrey returned, a whispered debate ensued about which one of them was more capable of remaining awake through the rest of the night to care for the patient. The argument resulted in a stalemate. Geoffrey took a chair on the other side of the bed, and the two exchanged not another word for the rest of the night.

Some time after dawn, Meg must have drowsed off, for the next thing she knew it was daylight, and Geoffrey was lifting her in his arms. “Hush, my dear. Don't say anything,” he whispered as he carried her out of the sickroom. “I'm taking you to your room so that you can get a few hours of sleep. Mrs. Rhys is with your aunt now. Poor Isabel is so soundly drugged that she won't wake for hours. I assure you that you'll not be needed.”

Meg was too weary to object. She was exhausted from lack of sleep, her ankle ached from the abuse she'd given it earlier, and her spirits were utterly depressed. Her thoughts were a confused jumble of nightmarish fears and guilts. They seemed to circle in her mind like a chorus of accusing voices. Her aunt might
die
because of her own weakness and neglect. If only she'd forced Aunt Bel to obey the doctor … if only she'd seen the illness growing in her aunt's chest … if only she'd stayed the night at the Horse With Three Tails Inn like a person of sense … if only she'd remained at Isham Manor and faced the consequences of breaking her engagement like a woman of character …

Geoffrey carried her into her room and laid her gently on the bed. “Don't look so terrified, Meg. Dr. Fraser assures me that there is every chance—”

She had not yet taken her arms from round his neck, and his face was very close. Never before had she seen in his eyes such a look of tender concern. Something inside her—some last vestige of strength or self-control—gave way, and as her arms slipped down from his shoulders, she suddenly found herself clutching in panic at the lapels of his coat. “G-Geof—” she stammered fearfully and, without the slightest warning signal either to him or to herself, dissolved into a flood of despairing sobs.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and let her head fall on his shoulder. “Don't, Meg,” he said softly into her hair. “It will all come right, I promise you.”

Shaken as she was, she could feel the tightening of his arm around her waist. With a surprising sense of comfort, she let herself sag against him, weeping unrestrainedly into his shoulder. It was a strange sort of unburdening; a tension which had held her emotions in a frozen grip for many hours suddenly seemed to melt. She had never before leaned—either emotionally or physically—on anyone else in time of trouble. There was something soothing and secure in this unfamiliar act of sharing her distress with someone else. She
liked
the support of his shoulder, the strength of his arm, the pressure of his face against her hair. She felt a large part of her inner turmoil pour out in what seemed an endless flow of tears.

But this behavior was completely unlike her, and when at last she was able to bring herself back into some sort of control, she lifted her head and turned her face away from him in deep embarrassment. “I'm t-terribly sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes awkwardly with the back of her hand. “I don't know what came over me …”

He took her chin in his hand and turned her face to him. “What came over you, my dear, is only weariness and worry,” he said brusquely, brushing her tousled hair back from her forehead. He stared at her for a moment and then abruptly let her go. Getting to his feet, he added, half to himself, “We should neither of us refine on it.”

“I suppose you're right.” She looked up at him with a shaky, rueful smile. “But isn't it ironic that, immediately after you'd confided in me your difficulties with the women in your family, I should
add
to your conviction of female incompetence by collapsing in your arms and bursting into tears in that missish way?”

He shrugged and turned to the door. “If you think that I find a perfectly understandable display of emotions to be a sign of female incompetence, you have a great deal to learn of me, ma'am.” He paused a moment at the door and glanced back at her. “Shall I send a housemaid to help you undress?”

She peered at him for a moment before answering. There was something in the coolness of his tone that gave her a twinge of pain. Before her display of waterworks, she had been sure she recognized the signs of real tenderness in his face; now, however, he seemed suddenly curt and distant. Was it possible that, despite his reassurances to the contrary, he'd been repelled by her show of weakness? Was he truly as much of a misogynist as all that?

But with a brush of her hand across her forehead she dismissed the questions from her mind. Geoffrey Carrier was not her concern. Her beloved aunt lay on a sickbed down the hall, struggling for her very breath—
that
must be her first and only concern. Anything else was a superfluous and inexcusable distraction. “No, thank you, sir,” she said, weary but firm. “I shall manage very well on my own.”

Isabel's fever remained alarmingly high for two days, and the poor creature appeared to be burning up. Her lips were dry and parched, and she muttered incoherently as she moaned and tossed about through the dark hours of the night. Unless drugged with laudanum, she was unable really to sleep, and she tugged and pulled weakly at the bands which constricted her chest. Watching her, Meg felt herself torn apart with fearfulness and helpless sympathy.

She left the bedside only when forced to do so by Geoffrey or Mrs. Rhys. Actually, Mrs. Rhys was of greater use in the sickroom than she. The housekeeper had an inborn talent for nursing. She kept the room aired without permitting the slightest chill to reach the area of the bed; she managed to prevail upon the patient to drink her medicinal draughts and liquid nutriments when no one else could do so, merely by propping Isabel up on her arm and keeping up a stream of meaningless but cheerful chatter as she poured the liquid down Isabel's throat; and she changed the damp bed linen so frequently and with so little disturbance to the patient that Meg could only gape with admiration.

Geoffrey, too, was overwhelmingly helpful. Somehow he always seemed to take over the sickroom in the late-night hours, demanding that Meg and Mrs. Rhys snatch a few hours of sleep. Meg, who always found him dressed and available whenever she needed him, wondered when he himself managed to get to sleep.