by Jocelyn Kirk
Bramble stood beside her and sniffed the air. He shook his head and rubbed his nose against his forelegs. He snorted out a great blast of air and put his head to the rock on which he stood.
“Bramble, find Ben!” Rosalie cried again, as the wolf began to make his way to a lower level of the stone pile. Sniffing low to the ground and moving back and forth across the rocks, he slowly descended. Rosalie scrambled after him, focusing on not falling. A howl rang out, and the surprise of the sound made her drop straight down into a sitting position. It was not Bramble who howled, she was sure of that. She could not see the wolf, and she quickly yanked up her dress and tied it at the waist, dropped onto her hands and knees, and moved down the rocks.
“I do have four paws,” she said aloud. Bramble’s tail waved like a flag just ahead. He had reached a tiny stretch of sand, but he had crawled so far into a hollow among the rocks, only his tail was visible.
The howl came again. It was a man! Rosalie staggered to her feet and tried to hurry but fell forward, scraping her face. She tumbled onto the sand and hit hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. She lay still and forced herself to breathe slowly.
The next howl was Bramble’s, as he tried to tell her that he had found Ben. Rosalie took the largest breath she dared to take and scrambled up. “Ben,” she gasped, “Ben!”
It took her no more than a minute to crawl among the rocks and find the wolf. Beyond him lay Ben, his body twisted against a boulder. He was conscious but had the stiff, wide-eyed appearance of shock. His eyes stared upward as she knelt beside him.
“Rosalie, is it you?”
“Hush, Ben, we’ll soon have you out of here.”
“No, no, leave me.”
“Leave you? Don’t be absurd! I’m not going to leave you!”
“Rosalie, let me die. I’m blind, Rosalie. Let me die.”
Rosalie sat back and stared at him. His eyes were wide open but he could not see her—he had recognized her voice when she called out! He had howled when Bramble found him because he didn’t know it was Bramble. How terrified he must have been when suddenly accosted by a large animal!
Brushing away tears, Rosalie attempted to quell her emotions. “Ben, I’m going to get help. Lie still, and I’ll be right back.”
“No, no.” He groaned, but she covered him with her cloak and climbed up the rocks.
By the time Rosalie had scrambled over the nearest boulder field, she saw several people coming toward her. They waved and hurried on as fast as the terrain would allow, and in a few seconds, she recognized them as Elena, Megan, Andrew, and James Scott.
“Did you find him?” Elena cried as they approached. Rosalie motioned them onward and turned back to lead them to Ben.
Megan and Elena had brought quilts, and although they wept copiously on finding Ben blind and injured, they controlled themselves well enough to help the men wrap him tightly. Andrew and James carried him over the boulders and set him gently on the beach.
“I brought the farm wagon!” said Megan. “It’s just beyond those trees. If you can carry him a bit farther, we can drive him to his own home and summon a physician.”
This was done. When Ben had been carefully deposited in his bed and the girls were caring for him, Rosalie built up the fire in the bedchamber recently vacated by the British scientists. She ordered Andrew and James to divest themselves of their wet clothing and go immediately to bed. They did not argue. She returned to Ben’s room and avoiding a direct look at Elena, said, “I’m going to ride to town and fetch Doctor Gibbs. Megan, will you ask Linus Briggs to drive himself and Micah home in your wagon? Their families will be frantic with worry.”
“Yes, certainly,” Megan replied.
“Pray give them quilts to wrap in and hot tea to drink.”
“Of course.”
Rosalie was soon off, and when she returned with the doctor, Ben had gone mercifully to sleep.
“If you will observe here,” Dr. Philip Gibbs said to the anxious, hovering women after he had thoroughly examined his patient, “you will see that he has a severe injury to the head. His body and limbs have no injuries, but he will be in pain for several days because the battering of the sea and lack of fresh water have caused all his muscles to cramp.”
“What about his eyes?” asked Megan with desperation in her voice.
“If you will let me finish, Miss Garrick…”
Megan nodded. She took Ben’s hand and held it, expecting to hear the worst.
“Dr. Garrick has a concussion. Do you see that swelling on his right temple? That is fluid collected from the bursting of blood vessels. The fluid is putting pressure all through his head, including the optic nerves. It’s also pressing on his sinuses, and he’ll have a headache for several days.” He turned to Rosalie. “Give him weak tea steeped with willow bark and yarrow every two hours. I’ll send laudanum for the pain.”
Rosalie agreed to abide by his instructions.
Gibbs continued, “If Dr. Garrick were blind on the right side only, I’d feel confident his sight in that eye would be restored when the swelling is gone. But the fact that both eyes are affected is worrisome. There may have been too much pressure for the nerves to recover from. In addition, as he lay among the rocks, he might have been staring into the sun without realizing it.”
Elena was out of patience. “Then what can be done? Surely something…”
Dr. Gibbs sighed again and picked up his bag. “We must wait. If he is able to regain some sight, it will come first to the left eye. Keep the drapes drawn in here. Don’t expose him to sunlight at all. You may burn a candle in this room so you have enough light to nurse him, provided the light is shaded so, if he begins to regain sight, his eyes won’t be exposed too rapidly.”
Rosalie saw the doctor to the door. When they were out of hearing of the others, she took his arm. “What are his chances to have sight again? I pray you, be candid with me.”
“With you, Miss Murdoch, certainly, but I did not want to give false hope to those young ladies. I honestly don’t know if he can regain his sight. It depends on several factors, as I explained. But he’s young and healthy, and if I understood what you told me earlier, he was found in the first light of dawn and in a shaded situation. If he had lain longer among the rocks and been in strong sunlight, I would say that he would be blind for life.”
Rosalie glanced at Bramble, who had followed her downstairs. “You, my dear Bramble, may perhaps have brought about a miracle by finding Ben before it was too late.”
Dr. Gibbs produced a rare smile as he glanced at the wolf. “All things considered, Miss Murdoch, my opinion is that Dr. Garrick will see again with his left eye. With the right eye…perhaps, perhaps not.”
Dr. Gibbs took his leave, promising to return later. Rosalie crept downstairs and settled her aching body in the parlor. Bramble curled beside her, and four hours passed before either awakened.
****
Elena dozed in a chair next to Ben’s bed. Megan had gone to her own room to rest, and Elena had promised to call her if Ben awakened, but she herself had fallen into a light sleep. She stirred in her chair; something was hurting her. She half woke and realized her head had fallen forward and her neck ached. She stood up, stretched, and walked about the room.
Ben moaned in his sleep, and she returned to the bedside. Looking down on him with tears in her eyes, she was astounded at the swelling of love for him that filled her heart. Nothing else mattered now. If Ben recovered and refused to marry her because she was a bastard child, it did not matter. Nothing could cause her real grief except his failure to recover.
She became wrapped in her own memories as she gazed at him. “I always did love him,” she said aloud, “perhaps from that first moment I met him when he admonished me so justly for my treatment of Willa.”
Elena sat on the side of the bed. She was tempted to lie down next to Ben and wrap her arms around him, but she knew she would fall asleep. She walked about the room again, trying to find some en
ergy in herself that simply was not there. She felt sucked dry, as if the storm had taken more from her than she could bear.
The house was quiet. She wondered where Rosalie had gone, and then realized she was probably asleep. But a footstep on the stair made her heart jump; she was not looking forward to speaking with her aunt.
Rosalie appeared in the doorway. Bramble edged past her to greet Elena and investigate the man in the bed. Finding it was Ben, the wolf rose onto his hind legs and put his forepaws on the bed.
“No, no, Bramble, darling,” whispered Elena. She gently pulled on his ruff and Bramble dropped down. Ben did not stir.
Rosalie walked to the bedside and looked down at her friend. “The swelling on his head looks worse, do not you agree?”
“Yes,” Elena replied with a tone of hopelessness in her voice.
Rosalie turned to her. “Perhaps this is not the best time, Elena, but I must speak with you. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
Elena nodded and sat down abruptly in the chair next to the bed. “I’m exhausted, Aunt Rosalie.” She looked up at the woman standing before her and added, “But I cannot call you ‘aunt’ any longer, it seems.”
Elena rose again, for she knew she could not be discourteous enough to remain seated in the presence of Rosalie. She walked across the room and back again. Rosalie smoothed the covers on the bed and waited.
“I don’t know what to call you,” said Elena. “You’re not my aunt, but neither are you my mother, for you elected to give me away to be reared by your sister.”
Rosalie took a breath. She knew she must not argue or defend herself. “Perhaps you could simply call me ‘Rosalie.’ ”
“No, that does not suit me. In the strictest sense of the word, you are my mother.”
Rosalie busied herself brushing back Ben’s hair and applying a wet cloth to the swelling on his temple. If she said the wrong thing, Elena would fly from her like a sparrow from a hawk, so she said nothing until she had taken a few moments to think.
“Elena, your anger toward me is understandable. I can’t justify or excuse what I did. But do me the favor of carefully considering my next words.”
Elena nodded.
“When Andrew and I were courting, we were constantly under the watchful eyes of my parents. Being as fine a man as Andrew is, he would never have breached my father’s trust by attempting any assault upon my virtue.”
Elena turned away. “I’m not sure I want to hear these details.”
“I tell you only because I want you to understand that—how can I say this—we had no plan to behave in opposition to the principles we had been taught. An unusual set of circumstances—my father’s illness, the weather—caused us to be alone for an entire evening.”
“Aunt Rosalie, please…”
Rosalie shrugged. “We were very much in love and what happened, happened. I can’t regret it because the result was you, our beautiful, kind, clever daughter. How could I ever regret bringing you into the world?”
Elena burst into tears. She fell to the floor on her knees and buried her face in the bed quilt. Rosalie wanted to touch her and comfort her, but she remained aloof, allowing Elena to release her emotions.
“Do you want to know why I’m so angry?” Elena cried, trying to keep her voice low but finding it nearly impossible. “It’s because I had two parents who are the most wonderful people in the world, and I was deprived of them! You deprived me of them! Why did you not write to Andrew and tell him you were with child? You gave his daughter away without even telling him he had a daughter!”
Rosalie stared at her in shock. “That is not true! You’re forgetting, my love, that I had been told he was dead. I had no reason to doubt the information I received from Tom Hatten, and—”
Elena interrupted her. “But you should have doubted it! How could you have simply accepted the word of the man your own father had dismissed for wrongdoing?”
“I can’t refute your words, Elena. I have only these excuses: I was eighteen years old and very naïve. Also, I did not know what I know now, that Miriam paid Tom Hatten to send me that letter. I had already written to Andrew to tell him I was with child and beg for his return, but I received the letter from Hatten just a week or so after I had posted mine.”
Elena was instantly contrite at her own harsh words and accusations. “Did you? Then I must apologize for my outburst. I wronged you, and I’m sorry.”
“I have no doubt now,” continued Rosalie, “that Tom Hatten intercepted my letter to Andrew. The fact that I did not hear from Andrew or see him again confirmed what I had been told of his death.”
Elena turned away and once again began pacing the room. All the tragic circumstances of her birth could be attributed to one person: Miriam. Rosalie and Andrew had given in to their passion on one occasion—and they had been wrong to do so—but how could she excoriate them when she herself had shown insufficient strength of character to halt Ben’s lovemaking? He had been the strong one on that rainy afternoon when he proposed to her!
Elena took a breath and faced Rosalie. “I think it is right. Now that I understand the entire situation, I think it is right that I accept you as my mother. We have both been harmed by the machinations of Miriam, and although I addressed her as ‘Mother’ for twenty years, she had behaved, unknown to me, in such a way that she did not deserve to be anyone’s mother. She deprived me of the wonderful parents I should have had and did all she could to raise me as a shallow, insipid, selfish egotist, who would choose a husband not for his goodness, but for his social status and money.”
Rosalie’s face shone with happiness at Elena’s next words.
“Mother…I love you.”
“My dearest, most precious daughter!” Rosalie cried, pulling Elena into her arms. “Never a day or an hour or even a moment passed in which I did not think of you!”
As the two women embraced, they heard a slight noise from the doorway. Megan walked in, rubbing her eyes from sleep. “Has he awakened?”
Elena turned to the bed and gazed at the sleeping man. “No, he has not.”
“Dr. Gibbs should be here again soon,” said Rosalie.
Megan nodded. “Come downstairs and have tea and muffins. I’m sure your appetite is as small as mine at the moment, but we must eat something, all of us.”
Elena and Rosalie followed Megan to the kitchen. Just as they were finishing their small meal, Dr. Gibbs pulled up in his gig. The women followed him to Ben’s chamber and found Ben was just waking. Dr. Gibbs attempted to give him laudanum for his cramping muscles, but Ben refused.
“What difference does a little pain make, when I’m blind?”
Elena attempted to soothe him, but he jerked away from her caressing hand and turned his back on them all. “Leave me! Your pity makes my suffering worse.”
Dr. Gibbs waved a hand at the tearful women. “I would like to be alone with my patient.”
The women withdrew, and Dr. Gibbs settled in the chair next to Ben’s bed. “Mr. Garrick, I just attended a stillborn birth, treated various injuries on the farms, and pulled a rotten tooth from a screaming child. I have no further patience. It’s likely that sight will return in at least your left eye. These histrionics of yours are premature and remind me of the screeching of women in labor.”
Ben turned toward the voice. “You are lying,” he said. “You are lying so I can be nursed back to health without giving too much trouble to anyone.”
“I am not lying. I make no promises, but—”
“I give you warning. If I’m still blind three days hence, I will end my life! Go ahead, give me laudanum! Leave a great bottle of it so I’ll have it when I need it!”
Dr. Gibbs calmly answered, “Very well. You might want to take a bit now to relax your muscles and speed the healing of your head. If it serves to reduce the pressure on your optic nerves, you might very well see again by tonight.”
Ben was silent. If I have a chance to see again, I must do all in my power to make it happe
n!
Dr. Gibbs’ voice softened. “The more you rest and try not to upset yourself, the sooner your concussion will heal. If you toss about and yell, you will cause a rise in your own blood pressure. This will make your situation more difficult.”
“That’s why you brought laudanum, not to treat the pain in my back and legs.”
“Yes. I was quite sure you would rant and rave and make yourself worse.”
Ben grunted. “Then give me a dose.”
Dr. Gibbs complied. He left the bottle of laudanum and told the women how much and how often to give the patient.
Ben lay quietly for the remainder of the day. Rosalie, understanding his feelings, tried to prevent Elena and Megan from fussing over him. This proved quite difficult until an event in the early evening distracted them all.
Chapter Fifteen
The Duchess of Simsbury
Willa was astounded to be actually married to an English nobleman. Her emotions were confused and conflicting, and various thoughts and ideas scurried through her mind as they trotted toward the inn.
“Your Grace—” she said as the carriage entered Mystic.
“You are my wife. You must address me as Lionel.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. You did tell me that earlier.”
“Did you wish to inquire about something?” he asked, taking her hand and kissing it.
“Yes, I’m thinking we must call on my pa and ma. They don’t know I’m wed.”
“If you like. But I have already visited your family.”
“What? You have not!”
“Indeed I have. I made it my business to meet them several weeks ago. I intended to marry you and wanted to inform your father of my plans. Also, I wished to see your mother. If she was slender-built, as you are, I felt quite certain you would be the same as you grew older.”
Willa glanced at him. “I-I don’t understand what you mean.”
He leaned over and kissed her. “Unlike many men, the women who attract me are very slender, as you are. I hoped you would always remain so, and your mother’s being the same indicates that you will.”