by Sheila Walsh
‘Only occasionally, and then it was the small things, you know ‒ like the games he and Geoffrey played as children and how they used to get out at night against Grandfather’s wishes by means of a secret passage …’
Her cousin’s eyebrows lifted lazily. ‘You clearly know more than I do, coz. Did he say where this passage could be found?’
‘No. I guess there wouldn’t have been much point. I know that it came out well away from the house.’
‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one day we might set ourselves to rediscover it.’
If I stay that long. But she didn’t say the words aloud.
Benedict took her arm and walked her across the drive towards a path that led round the side of the house and through a small coppice. In the distance there was a horseman riding at a full-blooded gallop across the fields, putting his mount at the fences with a kind of reckless abandon.
‘That will be Aubrey,’ Benedict said off-handedly when she drew his attention to the rider. ‘He always goes neck and crop at his fences. If he hadn’t such a good seat, he’d have come to grief long since.’
‘But … does Selina know how dangerously he rides?’
Benedict grinned briefly. ‘I shouldn’t think so. And I certainly wouldn’t be the one to spoil the lad’s sport. Apart from the occasional dalliance with village maidens, he has little enough outlet here for most of the very natural excesses to which striplings of his age are addicted. Small wonder he is frustrated and given to the sulks. I certainly wouldn’t deny him the right to work off his spleen in the only way open to him.’
‘Oh, what shocking indifference!’ Theo exclaimed, and remembering what she had been told of his own inglorious youth, continued impulsively, ‘I should have thought that you, of all people, might understand and … and try to help him!’
He had stopped in his tracks and turned her round to meet the rather uncomfortable glittering inquisition of his eyes. ‘Indeed? And why me of all people, coz?’
Drat Selina and her spiteful gossip, she thought, feeling a slow blush creep into her cheeks. There was but one course open to her now. She looked back at him unflinchingly. ‘Because I imagine that you will understand better than most the nature of those youthful excesses and their sometimes disastrous consequences.’
His fingers bit deep into her arms, his eyes narrowed to bright pinpoints of light, and Theo was very much aware of the fury lurking just below the surface. He would be a ruthless enemy, she thought with sudden perception, every ounce of her resolution being pressed into holding her own gaze steady.
At last he relaxed. A laugh, albeit harsh and with a hint of reluctance, escaped him. He loosed his grip, one hand slipping down her arm to enfold her own cold one, the other lifting to trace with feather-light finger the curve of her jaw.
‘Oh, cousin!’ he said softly. ‘You, too, have a taste for dangerous living!’
She conquered a momentary light-headedness to say a little shyly, ‘I’m sorry. My wretched tongue! I had absolutely no right upon such short acquaintance to … to fling your past in your teeth!’
This time his laugh rang out with unfeigned mirth. ‘However reprehensible it may have been?’
‘Oh, but I didn’t know that, not for sure … and I do so abhor people who set their store by gossip.’
His finger moved to cover her mouth, effectively silencing her. ‘Selina is undoubtedly a tattle-monger,’ he said with acute perception, ‘but in this instance I suspect she told no more than the simple truth.’ His eyes brimmed with laughter. ‘My past was highly reprehensible. I indulged every excess. One can scarcely blame my family for ridding themselves of such a disreputable youth!’
‘Well, I think it was a dreadful thing to do!’ she declared hotly, removing his finger. ‘You don’t solve a problem by ridding yourself of it … it simply becomes someone else’s responsibility. If they had truly loved you …’
‘Enough, my philosophising young firebrand! I refuse to be preached at. India suited me very well, and anyhow, what’s past is done with.’ Though he still smiled, there was something in his face that warned her not to proceed further. ‘We have problems enough with the present.’ He looked down at the hand he still held and drew it companionably through his arm. ‘Time to go back, I fear, sweet coz. At least life promises to be more interesting with you around.’
There was a quick impatient step on the path behind them, and Aubrey came abreast of them. His reply to Theo’s cheerful ‘Good morning’ was brusque, and he would have hurried past without another word had she not added pleasantly, ‘I was watching you riding a while back. You are clearly most accomplished.’
He looked at her, surprised and a little suspicious. ‘I get plenty of practice,’ he said grudgingly.
‘I wondered,’ she persisted, ‘if the stable had a horse to suit me, whether you would care to take me on a guided tour of the estate some time.’
Aubrey looked more keenly at her to see if she was joking, then at Benedict, and finally back at her.
‘If you like,’ he muttered. ‘I daresay you’d be all right on the mare. I’ll ask Hoskins.’
He slapped his riding-crop nervously against his leg a couple of times, then begged their pardon, uttered something about breakfast, and hurried on ahead.
‘Very gracious!’ observed Benedict drily. ‘I hope you will not live to regret your magnanimity, cousin.’
‘Oh, he’s just very young ‒ and probably rather shy,’ said Theo, confidently, choosing to ignore the snort of derision which greeted this masterly assessment of Aubrey’s character.
The sound of wheels on the drive effectively put an end to further discussion. A shabby black carriage came tipsily round the bend and was reined in at the foot of the front steps. The gentleman who emerged, his paunch seemingly cut in two by a tightly buttoned snuff-stained coat, was the gentleman she had glimpsed briefly on the previous evening in Purley’s company. So this was Dr Marston. Theo experienced a slight sinking of the heart. At first sight he did not inspire confidence.
As she and Benedict approached, he reached back inside the carriage, wheezing audibly and putting a severe strain upon his coat seams, to offer assistance to his passenger.
‘That’s the barber!’ he urged encouragingly to a woman as stout as himself, though considerably shorter in stature, who was endeavouring to squeeze herself through the inadequate opening, and who at that very moment popped out with the suddenness of a cork, almost flattening him and laughing uproariously at his attempts to steady both her and himself. Then, noticing that they had an audience, she dug the doctor in the ribs with her elbow. His eyebrows, which sprouted incongruously to give him a look of permanent surprise, wobbled upward.
‘Ah, well ‒ here we are then, all right and tight!’ He advanced, bag in hand, and upon being introduced to Theo, beamed at her and made some jovial comment about the stir her coming had caused.
She hardly knew how to reply, but it appeared that no answer was expected, for he went on almost without breath to commiserate with her about her father, and from there passed on to recall how he had brought Master John through many a childish ailment. ‘A positive martyr to the croup he was as an infant. Why, I disremember how many times I was called to him and found him blue in the face, but we battled through ‒ y’r grandma and Nanny Littlejohn, God rest them both … and myself, of course ‒ and in the end, d’ye know he grew to be quite a sturdy lad. Still …’ He must have caught Theo’s feeling of impatience as she glanced appealingly at Benedict, for he cleared his throat. ‘You won’t wish be hearing of that just now, I daresay, eh? So, how is our patient this morning?’
Benedict said that there seemed to be little change.
‘Still, as long as he’s no worse.’ Dr Marston blew his nose lustily. ‘We’ve pulled him through before, and I’ve little doubt but that he’s strong-willed enough to cheat death again, especially now that we have the services of Mrs Minchip. Eh, Sarah?’
The woman had returned to
the carriage to extract her carpet bag and now turned to them smiling and nodding.
‘Are you sure he is competent?’ Theo whispered to Benedict as they all trooped up to Lord Radlett’s chamber.
‘Well, I’ll not say I wouldn’t be happier to have brought a man down from London, but his lordship’s always had Marston, and it isn’t my place to say that he’s probably past his best.’
Theo frowned and reserved her own judgment until she had seen how the doctor did, and was only partially reassured by his examination of his patient, which to her eyes lacked thoroughness. However, he was adamant that he had seen many such cases, and that the next twenty-four hours would be the crucial period. He departed, promising to return that evening, and leaving Sarah Minchip in charge. But not for long.
Less than three hours later, Mrs Minchip was following him down the drive in the stable trap, driven by a stony-faced groom who turned a deaf ear to her screamed imprecations about brass-faced American hussies who were no better than they ought to be.
‘I did do the right thing, didn’t I?’ Theo pleaded, still shaking from the effects of doing battle with the fat woman, whom she had discovered comfortably ensconced in a chair near the fire mouthing lewd ditties to herself with an empty gin-bottle beside her, while her patient lay half off his pillows with his bedclothes in a tangle.
Benedict, perched on a table near the bed, arms folded, was eyeing her with something like awe. ‘I am all admiration,’ he said as Theo confessed how she had, in a rage, bundled the woman’s things together and summoned a pair of footmen to remove her. ‘The poor old besom will probably have convinced herself by now that you are some demonic manifestation of her befuddled gin-sodden imaginings.’
But Beau was less charitable when she presently sought him out in the library to make a similar confession of what she had done. With a peevishness that he was at little pains to conceal, he informed Theo that she had gone beyond the bounds of what was acceptable.
‘You have not been twenty-four hours in this house and already you treat it as if it were your own! I thought you a great deal too forward from the first, but I was disposed to overlook any little shortcomings in view of your irregular upbringing. But now …’
Theo had been resolved to endure his censure, only too aware that she had acted precipitately, but his damning of her character was not easy to accept, involving as it did an implied criticism of her father.
‘We will leave my upbringing out of this, if you please, sir,’ she said passionately. ‘I accept that it was not my place to dismiss Mrs Minchip, but if you had come upon her as I did … in short, my reaction was instinctive. However, I still believe I was right. My concern was solely for my grandfather …’
‘Who, thanks to your meddling, is now without a nurse,’ he interposed with thin-lipped sarcasm. ‘Please God, he is not also without a doctor, since I doubt Marston will rejoice to find his authority undermined!’
Theo took a deep breath and looked down at her hands, which were clasped tight to stop them from trembling. ‘I will undertake to nurse Grandfather,’ she said, continuing before she had time to change her mind, ‘And as for the rest, I believe that we should send to London for a doctor more competent to advise upon his condition.’ She looked up with a touch of defiance. ‘And Cousin Benedict agrees with me.’
‘Does he, indeed?’
It was odd, she thought inconsequentially, that such a silly posturing dandy could look quite so menacing when he chose to do so. Perhaps it had to do with the absurd height of his collar points, which imprisoned his head in such a way that he must needs look down his nose at one with those heavy-lidded eyes.
‘Benedict, of course, has his own reasons for wishing to keep my uncle alive,’ he said in his most silky voice. ‘But what are yours, I wonder?’
‘I have none … beyond simple humanity.’ In spite of herself, she stammered slightly.
Beau’s lip curled. ‘And if I do not give the scheme my blessing, I shall be dubbed inhuman, I suppose.’
‘Don’t be childish, Vincent!’ Unnoticed by either of them, Great-aunt Minta had come into the room. She crossed to stand beside Theo as if declaring where her sympathies lay. ‘Marston’s getting older ‒ we’re all getting older, if it comes to that! Set in our ways. Takes the young to show us the right road.’ She nodded at Theo, bright-eyed. ‘You’ve done well, John’s child ‒ if you hadn’t thrown that besom out, I’d have done it m’self!’
When Dr Marston returned later in the day, it was immediately evident that Mrs Minchip had already had her say and had given a wildly inaccurate account of her dismissal. It required considerable tact to acquaint the doctor with the truth and then to broach the delicate question of a second opinion without setting him all on end.
That this was amicably accomplished was due in no small measure to Theo. Benedict later teased her with having emptied the butter-boat over the old codger ‒ ‘Turned him up so sweet, coz, it was a privilege to witness it! I’ll swear, by the end he’d taken the whole thing to be his own idea.’
Theo retorted that if it were so, then she was more than pleased, for her greatest fear was that Dr Marston might feel matters had been taken out of his hands; indeed, in those first crucial minutes soon after his arrival, she had glimpsed a faltering, an uncertainty, behind his bluster, which had prompted in her the impulse to bolster his confidence.
‘No need to be sending to London,’ he said gruffly. ‘There’s a very good man staying at present with the Grailys over at Long Winton. I was chatting with him a couple of days since … very impressed. Got a few too many new-fangled notions for my taste, of course … but then I’m too old a dog to be learning new tricks.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Matter of fact, had it in mind to suggest he take a look at his lordship … so, if you’d care for me to ask …’
It was agreed. Over the matter of Theo’s decision to take over the nursing, he was less easy to convince. He threw Benedict a look best described as a plea for help, which Benedict out of sheer perversity dismissed with a shrug, and in desperation he resorted to bluster.
‘Sentiments admirable, ma’am … commend you for them, indeed I do. But y’re a gently nurtured young lady and your grandfather’s an old man … there are things to be done for him …’ He was floundering badly, harumphing in his throat. ‘Ye won’t wish me to be indelicate, I’m sure …’
Theo felt quite sorry for him, but there was a maddening, mocking glint in her cousin’s eyes that hardened her resolve.
‘Dr Marston,’ she said crisply, ‘you may be as indelicate as you please. I am not in the least squeamish. I nursed my father almost single-handed during the final weeks of his life, and I very much doubt that there is anything that you can tell me now about the needs of an acutely ill man that will have the least power to shock me.’
The doctor’s grizzled eyebrows wobbled alarmingly, then he uttered a short bark of laughter. ‘Well, well! By Jove, y’re a true Radlett and no mistake! I can see there’s to be no dissuading you!’
By the time he arrived on the following morning with his colleague, Sir James Darcy, Theo had already supervised the removal of her belongings to the dressing room adjoining her grandfather’s room so that she might be close at hand both day and night. In addition, she had set about organising the household to meet Lord Radlett’s needs in a way that, had she not possessed a captivating ease of manner, must have set many tempers on end.
As it was, with Purley already her willing slave, she was able to gain the guarded approval of Mrs Hadley, the housekeeper, and with their joint co-operation a regime was well on the way to being established for looking after his lordship which was designed to cause as little disruption as possible to the smooth running of the house. In this, Maddie was her staunchest ally, having developed an earnest admiration for her.
Selina, jealous of the affection which Theo was already in a fair way to enjoying and knowing it to be something to which she could never aspire, expressed the somewhat barbed hope
that she would not wear herself out in a vain cause.
‘Not a bit of it,’ Theo exclaimed cheerfully. ‘To own the truth, I am glad to be occupied. I have not been used to inactivity and was in danger of becoming dull.’
She liked Sir James on sight. He was, she supposed, a man between forty and fifty years, erect in his bearing and with a keen eye and directness of manner that appealed to her instantly. Beau, in an unexpected volte-face, had insisted upon receiving him, which he did with a gracious condescension that was largely wasted upon Sir James, who had little time for empty pleasantries and did not trouble to conceal the fact.
With his patient, however, it was a different story. He asked a great many searching questions, and no observation was thought too slight for his consideration if it might assist him in making his diagnosis. In this he deferred to Dr Marston with a degree of tact that made Theo think particularly well of him, for she suspected that he was not a man who suffered fools gladly. He cast a particularly acute eye upon herself when her role was explained, but what he saw must have satisfied him, for thereafter he included her in any discussion as to treatment. He was also at some pains to reassure her that although there were as yet few visible signs of improvement, his lordship’s pulse was surprisingly strong for a man of his years, and he had every hope of a happy outcome if she did but follow his instructions.
Sir James’s confidence was contagious. Under Theo’s ministrations the sickroom became less and less a place of gloom; she kept the curtains partly drawn back and would sometimes hum to herself as she sat sewing near the bed. Occasionally she would even talk to the unconscious man ‒ about his son, and the life he had made for himself in the New World ‒ of his struggle to bring up his daughter after his wife had died bearing her, and of how well the daughter considered he had acquitted himself in so doing.
Selina, putting her head round the door on the following afternoon, driven partly by curiosity and partly by sheer boredom, was astonished to hear a soft trill of laughter; more astonishing still, she realised that Theo was quite alone, sitting in a chair close to the bed with her arms resting on it in a most casual way.