02 - Borrowed Dreams

by May McGoldrick

  He tried to focus on her face, but it was all a blur. Her fingers were icy cold when they touched his face and brow.

  “Take the food away,” she ordered. “And bring that washbasin quickly. Give it to me.”

  His gut twisted painfully again and bile rose into his mouth. Lyon felt her arm wrap around his shoulder and lean him forward at the very moment that everything inside of him spewed out.

  It was sympathy and not revulsion that washed through Millicent as the harsh smell of his sickness surrounded them. She wrapped her arm tighter around him and tried to give him some of her own strength. His left hand desperately clutched the basin on his lap. Streams of sweat dripped down his brow and blended into his dark, matted beard. She saw him close his eyes, and she wished she could soothe his suffering somehow.

  “Get a towel and a clean bowl of water,” she ordered the short valet.

  Aytoun’s wide shoulders shook as he continued to retch spasmodically.

  “You! Give me another basin,” she said to the one called Will.

  As she was replacing the basin on Lyon’s lap with a clean one, Gibbs swept into the chamber.

  “Och! By the…” The manservant was at her side in an instant. “Forgive me, m’lady. A minute ago when I left, his lordship wasn’t in such straits.”

  “Just support his shoulders like this, Mr. Gibbs,” Millicent directed. She took the towel and clean water from John. She knelt again beside the earl’s hunched, shuddering body, and started wiping his face and the corners of his mouth with the towel. He continued to heave, though nothing but bile was left in his stomach.

  “This is not really the place for ye, Lady Aytoun,” Gibbs said. “We can be doing all this if ye wish to—”

  “I’m staying.” She did not look up but dipped the towel into the water again and wiped her husband’s face. “Does this happen often, Mr. Gibbs?”

  “Nay, m’lady. The laird has been sick to his stomach twice or thrice over the past few months, but never like this, mum.”

  “What has he eaten today?” Millicent saw Gibbs look up at John and followed his gaze. The man answered with a shake of his head. “And last night

  “A wee morsel. If that, m’lady.”

  “What about the medicine?”

  “His lordship had a healthy dose of it last night,” Gibbs told her. “But none yet today.”

  Will cleared his throat uncomfortably, and John reluctantly spoke up.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon. We give him more this mornin’, but only because ‘slordship forced us,” he admitted in a small voice. “And some more jist now. Only but a wee taste, though, an’ not a minute before ‘er ladyship come in.”

  Millicent fought back the urge to scold the men for their carelessness. The poor man could have been poisoned. She knew, though, that the fault lay not with them, but with her. She had freely married this man. She had signed papers, stood beside his chair before a bishop. She had accepted his family’s generosity in paying her debts, and she had vowed to care for him. But other than providing him with a set of rooms, she had done none of what she had promised.

  Aytoun appeared to be improving slightly. The heaving was subsiding. She gently unclasped his fingers from the basin and wiped his mouth and face with the towel as Gibbs leaned him back in the chair. His eyes remained closed. His face was pale.

  “Would you be kind enough, Mr. Gibbs, to put his lordship into the bed?”

  She stood back while the three men skillfully followed her direction. She waited until he was settled before turning to them.

  “I am very grateful for the care that you have been giving his lordship. From now on, however, I should like to be kept abreast of everything that is given to him, and you will tell me before it is done.” She met the men’s gazes directly. “If his lordship does not feel well, I will be told. If he has no appetite and misses a meal, you will tell me. I shall make a change in my own routine from this point forward. I am planning to spend much more time here than I have previously. Nonetheless, if Lord Aytoun is ailing and I am not here, I want you to find me. It is my express wish that you interrupt whatever it is I am doing. Is that clear, gentlemen?”

  The two valets exchanged a glance and then nodded.

  “Thank you. Would you be kind enough to clear these things away?”

  With a bow, they quickly gathered up the dirty dishes and basins and left the room.

  “Ye do not know what ye are asking, m’lady.” Gibbs’s quiet comment drew Millicent’s attention. “’Tis not without reason that his lordship has gone through so many surgeons and doctors since the accident. The pain is unceasing, mum, and the requirements of his care constant.”

  Millicent recalled the Scotsman’s firm hold on Aytoun’s shoulders, the concern that he showed for his master. She looked at the earl. His eyes were closed. He appeared to be asleep. She stepped away from the bed while the steward went about closing the curtains.

  “I am not being critical of you in any way, Mr. Gibbs. I understand what you have done. I understand the pressures you must have faced watching over him all these months. He trusts only you. When he needs something, he asks only for you. This would put a great deal of strain on anyone, no matter how dedicated they are.”

  “Ye shall not be hearing any complaints from me, m’lady.”

  “I am certain of that.” The last thing Millicent wanted to do was to hurt this man’s feelings and lessen the care that Aytoun was already getting. “I only wish to be of assistance. Perhaps I can ease your burden a little, and do some good, too. This is what I think the dowager had in mind for me. Perhaps it is what she would do if she were in my position and in good health.”

  He gave a noncommittal shrug. “Good health or not, m’lady, I think the dowager would have sent Dr. Parker running, with his tail between his legs, if she had seen him here today. Ye will have to excuse my way of talking, for I was reared in the Highlands, where we speak plainly.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gibbs. I appreciate your candor.” Aytoun stirred, mumbling in his sleep, and she looked across the chamber at him. “Why do you say that her ladyship would have been displeased?”

  “The good doctor had more interest in his meal than in his patient. Why, he barely looked at the master, and when he did, the rogue even had the nerve to complain about his lordship being but half-awake.” He snatched the glass off the table, saying angrily, “And then he orders us to give him more of this poison.”

  “The solution to this is quite simple. I shall send a letter to London, telling him that we no longer require his services. It was clear to me that he had no interest in coming out here anyway.”

  Gibbs cocked a bushy eyebrow at her. “Would ye do that, to be sure?”

  “Indeed I shall. But we must find another right away. Someone better.”

  “None of them are any good, m’lady.” He sent a thoughtful glance in the direction of the sleeping earl. “Most of them will press ye to have him bled till he comes to his senses or dies. The others will tell ye to purge him till he has no strength to fight. And those are the good ones, m’lady. The rest of them are charlatans and only after the money.”

  “I suppose you would include Dr. Parker among the last sort.”

  Gibbs shook his head. “I’ve no mind to be deciding any such thing. But I can tell ye that ye would have no trouble at all forming a line of his type from here to Bath. All he wants is to be doing one thing: keep his lordship sedated from now till doomsday and send his bill on to the family bankers once a month.”

  “You’ve been with his lordship since before the accident. Do you think he would have been content to live this way?”

  “Not for a minute,” the steward said passionately. “I know if he could do it, he would have ended his life long before now. I think his refusing to eat is part of it. ‘Tis the only thing he can control. If we let him, his lordship would starve himself to death as sure as we’re standing here.”

  “We cannot let that happen.”

 
Millicent’s gaze drifted toward the door. The valets had left it open when they’d gone out. In the hallway, she saw Ohenewaa, standing silently, staring at the sleeping form of the earl. The old woman had kept her distance for the entire week, and Millicent had not pressed her. She had simply let her know tt she was welcome.

  Ohenewaa’s gaze drifted from the bed and came to rest on Millicent’s face. A moment later, like an apparition, she disappeared from the doorway.

  “And we shan’t let him spend his life in a stupor, either,” Millicent whispered to the manservant. “There must be other ways of dealing with this condition. We just need to find the right kind of medicine and the right kind of doctor.”

  ****

  Instead of going downstairs, she walked to her own bedchamber and closed the door. The sight of a person’s suffering was nothing new to Ohenewaa. For more years than she cared to count, pain and death had been all that surrounded her. On board slave ships, on the sun-scorched fields of the sugar islands, inside the walls of the rat-infested shacks she had seen the unspeakable; she had experienced the unimaginable.

  Ohenewaa knew it was fate that she had been sold to Dombey, a doctor of mediocre skill and the deepest self-loathing. She had spent more than forty years with him, until his death. In that time she had always been at his side, assisting him in the islands and on the slave ships as well. She had learned the Englishman’s medicine, what there was of it. But on those long, horrible trips from Africa, she had seen the rituals of okomfo and dunseni and the Bonsam komfo and had carried deep within her the ways of the Ashanti priests, and the medicine man, and the witch doctor.

  Ohenewaa had gathered this knowledge and kept it safe, like the most precious gold, and with it she had tried again and again to help her people.

  Her people. The whites didn’t trust her ways, and she let them be. When Dombey himself had been sick—even though he knew she had gifts—he had sent for his own kind. Ohenewaa didn’t know if she could have helped him. Cures lay in the hands of the goddess. But he did not want her, so she had let him be. Why bend her ways? Why touch the ice?

  But with this woman, Millicent, she could feel the ice inside her melting. Since her arrival, Ohenewaa had spent many nights visiting with the black families at Melbury Hall. The stories they told of Squire Wentworth were horrifying. His brutal handling of the people here was much the same as what she had witnessed on the plantations in Jamaica. His bailiffs had obviously been the same brutes he brought back from there. While telling her all of this, however, every person’s account had been filled with praise for the mistress. Though they had suffered terribly under Wentworth’s cruelty, so had she—and often for her open support of them.

  Ohenewaa had seen many white women of Millicent’s station during her time on the islands. Whether they were a plantation owner’s wife or a pampered mistress, the women there saw the slaves only when they were issuing a command or gathering for the entertainment of seeing a black man whipped, often by other blacks who had sold their souls to serve as overseers. In Jamaica, at a place called Worthy Plantation, she had seen a slave stripped and flogged while a group of white women stood with their children and stared openly at the man’s genitals as he screamed in pain. And it was not the only time. In the islands, she had seen more than she ever wanted to see.

  Ohenewaa walked to the table on which she had already collected bowls and bottles of seeds and herbs and liquids. Jonah had bought some of the ingredients back for her frm his last trip to St. Albans. The black women of Melbury Hall who had brought seeds with them from Jamaica, or gathered them during past spring and summer months, gave other herbs to her. And even though it was winter, Ohenewaa had found other useful things as well in the kitchen and in the woods and fields around Melbury Hall.

  Her collection was growing.

  Tonight, instead of working with her herbs, Ohenewaa moved to the hearth and crouched before it. She spread some leaves from a nearby basket on the coals and picked up four stones.

  There was a soft knock on her door.

  Ohenewaa threw the stones on the floor before her and called to Lady Aytoun to enter.

  *****

  Startled by the sight of the room, Millicent forgot to ask how it was that Ohenewaa had known it was she at the door. The simple guest room at Melbury Hall had been altered greatly. It was now a place somehow ancient and mysterious. Everything was changed. Jars of varying sizes sat on tables and on the floor. Dried herbs hung above the hearth. The closed draperies dimmed the chamber, which was lit only by the fire. Fascinating and exotic scents infused the air. But Millicent saw nothing menacing or frightening. In fact, the chamber had a calming, serene atmosphere.

  Shaking off her surprise at the change, Millicent focused on her reason for coming. There would be time in the future for satisfying her curiosity about the woman and her ways.

  “I am at the point of defying traditional English methods of medical treatment. I was wondering if there is any insight you might give me.”

  Ohenewaa continued to stare at the stones spread before her. Millicent quietly approached the hearth.

  “Dr. Parker believes the only thing that can be done for Lord Aytoun is to keep him sedated with opium. My concern is that the drug is doing nothing for him. In fact, I wonder if it is doing him more harm than good.” She sat down on the edge of a chair. “You worked with Dr. Dombey for a long time. If I were to cut back on the medicine, if I were to eliminate it completely, would I seriously hurt him? Could he die because of my meddling?”

  Ohenewaa picked up a half-burned leaf from the hearth and waved it over the small stones. “He is drowning in a sea of mists. You have not seen him as he is.” The dark eyes looked up and met Millicent’s. “Are you prepared to see him and deal with him as a whole person? Do you have the courage to free his mind?”

  Millicent remembered the rumors, the accusations, and the scandals. She had told her friend Rebecca that the Earl of Aytoun was not the man he had once been. Of course, the Aytoun she had seen had been a man continually sedated by drugs. Was she ready to face a changed man? She thought of the broken creature doubled over the washbasin.

  “Yes.”

  Ohenewaa studied the stones for a long time and then seemed to smile to herself. “You can take away the laudanum,” she said, gathering up the stones. “And no, ‘twill not kill him. Your instincts are correct. Heal the mind first.”

  “But what of the pain? Is there anything else that I should give to him instead? I do not want him to suffer unnecessarily.”

  “We must wait and see.”

  Millicent looked about the room again, taking in the aroma, the bottles, the dance of the shadows over the smoke in the hearth. There was a presence in the room, a power that she could not explain. She turned her attention back to the old woman. “Your knowledge is not bound by the limits of English medicine, I believe. Is there anything you would recommend that I do to help improve his lordship’s other ailments?”

  “Wait until you have taken the first step. This will be a monumental one. We will talk again after that.”

  Reluctantly, Millicent rose to her feet. There were so many other questions that she had, but she understood Ohenewaa’s concern. Nothing could be done for the earl until he had gained the full capacity of his mind. “Thank you.”

  Ohenewaa nodded slightly; her gaze was fixed on her fire again. Giving a last glance around the room, Millicent started for the door. Just outside in the hall, she was surprised to find two of the African women waiting.

  Millicent stood aside and watched them enter. One was carrying a bowl and pitcher of water, another holding a folded linen cloth. The former slaves at Melbury Hall respected Ohenewaa. They treated her like a queen or priestess. And Millicent could see why. She had felt the power of the old woman, too.

  CHAPTER 8

  Not having a steward to run the affairs of Melbury Hall was taking its toll on Millicent’s time. Jonah was a wonderful help, but with the planting season approaching, many
decisions that would affect them all needed to be made. Millicent knew she needed to speed up the process of finding a suitably experienced steward. Sir Oliver Birch was already contacting potential applicants, but London was simply too far away from the farmlands of Hertfordshire.

  Sitting in the small study that she used for estate business, Millicent glanced at the guttering candle as she finished writing her letter to Reverend Trimble at Knebworth Village. He knew much of what went on in the surrounding countryside, and she hoped he might offer some help or some advice.

  Millicent glanced up when she saw Violet enter.

  “Can I help you get ready for bed, m’lady?”

  “I am too restless to go up yet.” She sealed the letter in her hand. “But why don’t you go up yourself? You look tired, Violet. You probably are not getting much sleep since we moved those two girls into your room. I am sorry.”

  “No, m’lady. We’re settled in nicely. I enjoy having them with me.”

  It was so much like the young woman not to complain. Over Violet’s shoulder, Millicent’s gaze was drawn to the door as she saw one of her husband’s valets appear, holding a lit taper.

  “What’s wrong, John?”

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lady,” he said. “I know ye left ‘slordship not an hour ago, but he’s awake now and cross as a one-legged rooster, he is. Now, ‘fore we give him anythg, ye said ye wanted to be told, and we’re doin’ as ye said, mum. So I come runnin’.”

  “Thank you.” Millicent immediately rose from the desk. “Why don’t you go on to bed, Violet.”

  The young servant curtsied and moved off. Millicent followed the man toward the stairs. “Where are Mr. Gibbs and Will?”

  “Will went down to the kitchen for some soup, jist in case ‘slordship would allow a wee mouthful, and Mr. Gibbs is up in the room with ‘slordship.”