02 - Borrowed Dreams

by May McGoldrick

  “Dr. Dombey? Oh, I know who ye mean. Nay, sir, not when he died, but I visited him the night before. He was good at taking his salts, he was. I had his slave woman make some rice milk for him for supper. O’ course, I was astonished when she put an egg in it. But he was right as rain when I went away, sir. As I recall the next morning was market day. And ‘twas sleeting. Aye, the ground was ankle-deep with muck and mire when I went to the sheep pens. I didn’t get back to Dombey until the old gent had passed on. You see I never like to miss market day, sir, and—”

  “Dr. Dombey owed you money, didn’t he?”

  “Well…” The leech stuck his finger in one ear, took out a ball of wax and examined it absently before flicking it across the room. “He had all kinds of ctors knockin’ on his door, and I wasn’t chargin’ him much. But now that ye mention it—”

  “I was hoping I might make good on his debt, Mr. Boarham. He left some money with his slave to give to you. I have it.”

  “That’s mighty Christian of ye, sir.” The drool practically hung from the man’s lip.

  Hyde leaned forward in his chair. “You are not the first one that she cheated—the slave woman—and that is why, being a good friend of Dombey, I have taken it on myself to set the wrongs to right.” He opened a small wooden casket from the table beside his chair and took a bag of coins from it. “Now, how much did he owe you?”

  Boarham’s hands clutched the edges of his hat, and he held it to his chest. “I…I believe ‘twas two guineas, sir.”

  Hyde drew a handful of coins from the bag and watched his visitor’s eyes light up at the sight of gold. “And I thought he owed you so much more. I have fifty pounds here, Mr. Boarham.”

  “Maybe he owed me more, and I couldn’t remember?” he blurted quickly.

  “Perhaps he did. But I think your memory is very important, Mr. Boarham. Perhaps you might even remember that Dr. Dombey’s death was caused by the greedy slave who is holding on to all his money.”

  “That old slave woman, sir?”

  “The same one, Mr. Boarham.” Hyde started stacking the gold coins next to him.

  “I remember her well, sir.” His gaze locked on the coins. “She looked to be a low down poisoner, sir, if ever I seen one.

  “Did you know she is a witch?”

  The surgeon looked up startled and quickly crossed himself. “Is she, now?”

  “Aye, my good man. And you are going to help me prove it.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “The day is wasting away, man. Where the blazes is she?” Lyon bellowed as Gibbs entered the library with John in tow.

  “Your wife is just finishing her interview with the stonemason. She said she will meet you in the gardens.”

  “When? Next bloody week?” he grumbled in annoyance.

  Lyon’s irritation had begun this morning when he had awakened to find Millicent gone. After that, while his valets were getting him ready for the day, she had poked her head in only fleetingly, mumbling excuses about the tasks she had to see to that morning. And she had not come back to see him even once, not even during breakfast. Now it was eleven o’clock in the morning, and Lyon was at the end of his damned patience.

  “’Tis a wee bit brisk out there, m’lord, though nothing we’ve not seen rounding the Cape of Good Hope on our way to India, I’d say. That aside, Lady Aytoun has insisted that ye should be wearing a hat.”

  Lyon took the hat Gibbs placed on his knee and fired it across the floor. “Tell her if she is so bloody worried, then she can come and see to it herself.”

  The valets lined themselves up on either side of his chair and carefully lifted him. As they tipped him ever so slightly, he blasted them all for their incompetence. With the air of a true martyr, Gibbs retrieved the hat and led the entourage out the door and through the house.

  It was difficult for Lyon to understand, but last night had provided a fulfillment he’d not felt in months. The explosive reaction of his body to her kiss was stunning. And the warmth that had spread through him every time he’d stirred during the night and found Millicent still at his side had been remarkable. In the past, he had always felt the urge to leave a woman’s bed when the evening’s lovemaking was complete, but the feel of this woman against him last night had changed his mind.

  Lyon knew he was starting to depend on Millicent. Perhaps he was just substituting her for the comfort that the opium drops had brought him. But hell, he thought, even if he was, the woman was flesh and bone, and he’d be dashed if it wasn’t more interesting to lose himself in her kisses than to spend his time in a daze.

  Outside, the winter air was indeed bracing, and Lyon took a few breaths, trying to adjust his lungs to the cold. They carried him down toward the old-fashioned formal gardens. Over the wall he could see trellises and arbors arranged amid symmetrically organized squares of herbs and flowers and paths of greensward. Beyond the lower wall of the garden, a landscape of fields and woods and evergreens stretched away from the house. Lyon glanced about him critically. The property needed some work, to be sure. But having glanced quickly at Melbury Hall’s ledgers from recent years, Lyon already knew that renovation and upkeep of pleasure gardens and vistas were the last of Millicent’s priorities.

  He ducked slightly as they conveyed him through the gated and arched entry to the formal garden. Carefully they lowered the chair and positioned him next to a stone bench to the left of the gate. It was a place protected by trellises and stone walls that blocked most of the wind and yet captured the sun. A pair of cardinals flitted from branch to branch of a vine on the wall nearby. The male was more brightly colored than the female, and the birds went after the few bright orange berries still left on the vine.

  “I am here. So where is she?”

  “Here!” Millicent called breathlessly, walking briskly down the path. She was holding his hat in one hand and some newspapers and a blanket tucked under an arm. Lyon stared at the well-worn woolen cloak. Its hood and lace edging framed her flushed face prettily. Wisps of steam escaped her lips.

  “Leave us,” he ordered his valets as soon as she arrived at his side.

  “Thank you. I shall call you when his lordship is ready to come inside.” She smiled at the men, and they bowed and took their leave. She dropped the papers and his hat on the bench and began unfolding the blanket. “We cannot have you catch a chill on your first day out, now, can we?”

  “Don’t you have something warmer to wear?” he asked irritably, watching her tuck the blanket aound his legs. “Your servants dress better than you do.”

  “This cloak is quite sufficient, thank you, and you can put a stop to your peevishness. This is a beautiful day, and I plan for both of us to enjoy it.” Picking up his hat, she placed it on his head and leaned down before him—cocking her head critically from one side to the other—checking the fit. “Your head must be growing, for that hat seems too small. Of course, the long hair and the shaggy growth on your face might have something to do with the fit.”

  “I do not wear the hat over my beard.”

  “If you gave any thought to hiding your brooding disposition, perhaps you would.”

  “And the logistics of that?”

  “Quite simple, really.” She trailed her fingers down one side of his face. “I can attach two long bits of ribbon to the hat to loop about each of your ears.”

  “Very stylish.”

  “Of course, we shall have to be clever about it and make them long enough to cross again over the front, thereby fastening the hat securely over your mouth before the ribbons are tied in a handsome bow above your head.”

  He couldn’t stop a smile from forming on his lips. “So very clever.”

  “I thought so.” She returned his smile. “And thank you, this is far more pleasant.”

  She reached up to settle the hat one more time, but he caught the ribbons at the neck of her cloak and pulled her toward him until their lips brushed, lingering for a moment before pulling apart.

  “I think thi
s is better,” he said in a low voice.

  Lyon was hungry for more. He had been fantasizing about her mouth all too often of late. She kissed with a fervor that was unmatched in any woman he had ever met. Her mouth was an instrument of desire, and she gave and took with more passion than most were able to summon even in the very act of lovemaking. But he sensed Millicent’s hesitancy this morning as she drew back and sat down on the bench, just out of his reach.

  “Why did you leave me in the middle of the night?”

  “The dawn was already upon us when I left.” A deep blush was coloring her cheeks. “And with your valets sure to come in to check on you, I just didn’t know how appropriate—”

  “We are husband and wife, Millicent. Though I do not recall the ceremony all that clearly, I have seen the documents.” He hoped to see her smile a little, but her face retained its seriousness. “Therefore, not that I give a damn what my servants think, I do not believe they would think it odd finding you in my bed. Certainly it would be no stranger than finding you asleep in a chair, as they have seen you often enough this past month.”

  She was avoiding looking up at him. Something else was bothering her.

  “Unless you find lying next to a cripple so demeaning that—”

  “On the contrary…I find sharing your bed to be quite pleasing.”

  Her wordsuttered shyly in the air between them, like butterflies testing their wings for the first time. Lyon was willing to wager she had never in her life spoken of such things openly.

  “Then why did you slip away like some thief in the night?”

  “I am not accustomed to it,” she continued, blushing fiercely. “How am I to know what is appropriate behavior? I thought I was expected to leave at some point during the night.”

  “Is that how things were between your husband and you? You made love, and then each of you retired to your respective bedrooms?”

  “Made love?” The color washed out of her face. “I don’t care to talk of my first marriage.”

  Turning slightly to hide her face from him, Millicent spread the newspaper on her lap and turned her attention fully to it. “What can I read to you this morning, m’lord? News of the colonies or the continent?”

  “Whatever suits you.” That was a lie. He wanted to hear about her life. He wanted to know that she had been as eager this morning to see him as he was to see her.

  As he listened to her clear voice, he realized what he would like to know was the story of the woman herself. Nothing would interest him more than to hear the reasons for her insistence on keeping the doors of her personal past so tightly shut. But Lyon knew he desired the same privacy regarding his own past life. There were limits as to just how far he would push her for answers.

  They were two strange birds, he thought. Both of them were still drawn to the same brightly colored berry that they had each found so bitter in the past. And yet they were unable to pass it by completely.

  “I do not wish to hear any news of the outside world,” he barked, cutting her off when a news article she read referred to the regiment of his youngest brother, David. How many times during his months of being confined to a chair or a bed had he thought of him? Lyon supposed David thought him guilty of pushing Emma over the cliffs. He would naturally think the worst. Lyon had ruined David’s dreams by marrying Emma. But it was another thing entirely to murder her.

  Lyon pushed the disturbing thoughts away and tried to focus on the moment. He softened his tone. “Put that aside, if you will. Tell me instead about your interview with the stonemason. Or tell me about the village, or the mess that deuced Gibbs is creating while he decides if he can lower himself to take on the position of bloody steward.”

  She glanced worriedly from his face to the paper and back to his face again. Annoyed, Lyon wondered if she had guessed the connection. She folded the newspaper and put it with the others beside her on the bench.

  “Very well.” She thought a moment. “I received another letter from your mother, the dowager, with the packet of newspapers this morning. She is considering my invitation of coming to Melbury Hall for a visit.”

  “Since when have you been corresponding with that crafty old woman? And why would you do such a mean-spirited thing as to invite her here?”

  “Twice a week from the first week of our marriage, and because I love tormenting you. Are these answers satisfactory?”

  Lyon snorted.

  “Very well, then we are ready to move on.” Millicent clasped her hands in her lap. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what you have found in those ledger books regarding the Melbury Hall farms. Then I can interrupt you and tear you to pieces for no reason.”

  The ridiculousness of her challenge was comical, and her words caught him off guard.

  Lyon Pennington had always been serious to the point of surliness from the day he was born. He had maintained the reputation throughout his school years, during his years of service in India, and later among his peers. And then, after marrying Emma, he had added the fine quality of being vile-tempered on top of it. As a result, most people avoided confrontation with him at any cost. And those who didn’t soon felt—quite painfully—the error of their ways. Indeed, from early on in his marriage, his enemies’ only means of attacking him had been by way of rumor and innuendo. There were some who had gone to great lengths to connect scandal with his name.

  “Are you ready for the inquisition, m’lord?”

  “I will tell you what I perceived, and then you may do your worst, Madame Torquemada.”

  Lyon looked at Millicent’s straight back and couldn’t help but smile. She had courage and spirit, and he wondered how his mother and the family lawyer could possibly have possessed such foresight.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ohenewaa’s examination of Lyon had not been limited to the time she spent with him after his arm had been burned. The next day, Millicent learned that the old woman had spoken with Gibbs extensively about his master. And when she was finished with him, she had tracked down John and Will and the other servants who had helped with the earl’s care after his accident.

  Finding Ohenewaa in the kitchen—in a quiet corner that had become one of her usual haunts—Millicent sat down beside her. She wanted to know what the old woman had learned and what she still needed to know.

  The couple of hours she and Lyon had spent outside this morning had done a world of good for him. His coloring had improved; his appetite had grown. Of course, his temperament could still be as foul as ever, but she now found it flecked with silvery touches of humor. After they had come in—while Millicent had been busy working with Mrs. Page—Ohenewaa and Lyon had spent some time together. And now, with him lost in the books again in the library—this time with Gibbs—Millicent was impatient to learn what she could of his condition.

  “The only information I lack comes from not having seen the surgeon set the bones.” Ohenewaa paused thoughtfully. “You know that any English doctor would either laugh at you or commit you to Bedlam for putting your husband’s care into an old slave’s hands.”

  “That matters very little to me.” Millicent smiled gently. “Will you share with me what you have discovered thus far?”

  Ohenewaa nodded. “Aye. And you should know that whatever I tell you your husband already knows. I even asked him if I might relay it all to you.”

  “Was his response, ‘Do as you bloody please’?”

  “Not quite so polite as that, but he said something similar.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  Ohenewaa’s eyes opened more than usual, and one gray eyebrow arched expressively. “Despite his bad temperament, he does not suffer from madness.”

  “I never thought so.”

  “I believe he suffers from what old Dombey would have called partial palsy.”

  This confirmed what Gibbs had said of the first surgeon’s opinion. Millicent kept her silence, though, waiting for Ohenewaa to offer more.

  “The earl had a great inju
ry inflicted upon his head when he fell from those cliffs last summer. I have talked to those in his service. At the time the greatest worries were the breaks in his legs and arms. No one wanted to amputate his limbs. While they worked on him, his lordship spent two full days lying unconscious. Of course, that was good, too, for it saved him much pain.”

  Pain of all types, Millicent thought. She already knew that these same cliffs, on the same day, had claimed the life of his wife. And how ruthless the gossips were to proclaim that Lyon had been the cause of that fall, when he had nearly died himself.

  “His manservant tells me that once your husband regained consciousness, it took another fortnight before he was able to control his muscles or feel anything from his shoulders down. He even had difficulty breathing. His condition remained so severe that the family considered what arrangements needed to be made for a funeral.”

  His brothers were content to bury him rather than nurture him to health, Millicent thought cynically. When his siblings would do nothing, the dowager had taken responsibility for him, in spite of her own infirmity and advanced age.

  “But the feeling and movement gradually began to return. A month after the accident, the earl could sit up. In another month, when the splints were off both arms, he had gained the full use of his left hand and arm. But then another fall—this time from a chair—and he broke the right arm again. I am told the splints from this second break were not removed until a few days before your marriage.”

  Millicent rose to her feet and walked to the window. From here she could see just the corner of the garden where she and Lyon had spent the morning. She had heard him laugh once this morning. The vibrant sound of it, like music, continued to play in her mind. No matter where she would go and what else might be on her mind, Lyon was now a part of her daily existence.

  “You are saying they were gradual improvements for the first couple of months, but nothing after that?” She turned around to face Ohenewaa.