The Portrait of Lady Wycliff

by Cheryl Bolen

  Chapter 15

  The longer Lord Blamey kept her waiting, the more nervous Louisa became. She rehearsed what she was going to say over and over, wishing she possessed Harry's gift for instantaneous fabrication.

  All the while she waited, she forced herself to remember the one time she had seen the lord from Cornwall. That night she had brushed out her hair, gone to bed, and snuffed the candle. Then, with no light to guide her, Louisa had crept from her room and eased her way down the dark hallway, careful to walk as quietly as she could.

  She waited for a long while until Godwin himself opened the front door, which only happened when his mysterious visitor came. Then Louisa crept forward to where the light from below reached the landing where she stood, and she stopped and stood at the end of the wall to which the banister was attached. Like a turtle poking its head from the cover of its shell, she moved around the corner and glanced below.

  The two men had walked toward the library, the lord nearly a head taller than Godwin, who was no more than five feet seven. She had been struck by the other man's almost regal posture and the excellent cut of his clothing. There was something distinguished looking about his appearance. She was not surprised that Godwin had addressed him as my lord.

  She snapped out of her reverie when the door opened, and she turned to see a man who was far younger than Godwin's benefactor.

  Lord Blamey was much the same age as Harry. He sported a thick head of auburn hair and a thick waist he attempted to disguise beneath a striped waistcoat.

  His brow elevated, his hand still on the handle of the door he had not shut, Lord Blamey closed the door and walked forward. "I am Lord Blamey," he declared as she stood up to face him.

  "Forgive me for interrupting you, my lord," she said nervously. "I fear you will think me rather silly when you find out why I am here."

  Lord Blamey gave her another quizzing look, but apparently satisfied from her voice that she was a lady of Quality, asked her to sit down.

  Though she sat, he continued to stand as she began her story.

  "I've been journeying from London in my traveling coach with only my dog, Cuddles, for company." She gave a little laugh. "As you can imagine, one must stop every so often so the little fellow can. . ."

  "Yes, I understand," he said with a chuckle.

  "The naughty fellow ran off into the woods not far from here. My coachman and I have looked everywhere but have been unable to find the little pooch. You can imagine how distraught I am."

  "Yes, quite, but I assure you I have seen no sign of your dog."

  "Allow me to describe him to you," she continued. "He is small." She lowered her hand to less than a foot off the carpeted floor. "He is ginger coloured and answers to the name of Cuddles." She fluttered her lashes. "I would be exceedingly grateful if you and your servants would treat him kindly if you see him." She stood up, "And please send word to the tavern in Bodmin."

  Then she peered at him and came to a sudden stop. "Your butler referred to you as Lord Blamey. I'm thinking I may have once met your predecessor in London. A tall, distinguished looking man?" She was prepared to further describe him, but that wasn't necessary.

  Lord Blamey chuckled. "That is not my father. I'm afraid I am the image of my late father."

  She dropped into a curtsy and walked to the door of the morning room. Just beyond the door stood a well-dressed lady — obviously Lady Blamey — whose eyes raked over Louisa as if she were a lady of the night.

  * * *

  Once back in the carriage, Louisa patted the seat next to her for Harry to share, covered them with the rug, then burst out laughing.

  After she told him her tale, he broke out laughing too. "I can see the poor bloke running about the park shouting, "Here, Cuddles," Harry said between laughs.

  She tried to get serious. "I'm truly sorry, my lord, that we have not found your man."

  He stopped laughing. "Are you sorry only because you are hungry to gain my money?"

  "That's an unkind thing to say. I truly want you to regain your family's possessions."

  "So I can give them to the poor?" he asked.

  "No," she said with a pout. "So that you can speak on behalf of the poor in Parliament."

  She made him feel bloody wretched. He had told her he would take his seat in Parliament once he settled his affairs. It was just another of his blasted lies that the naive Louisa Phillips had seemed to believe. Which made him feel quite low. But then, he was a rather low person.

  "How's the bad arm today?" she asked with concern.

  "Somewhat bad, I would say."

  Her face turned solemn. "When I said my prayers last night, I asked the Lord to spare your arm."

  Bloody hell! Like a bloody Methodist or a Quaker, she was praying for him. Not bloody likely he had any points left with his Creator. Not after all he had done. Nevertheless, he was touched over her concern.

  "I thought intellectuals were not believers."

  "Then I must be a very poor intellectual, indeed," Louisa said quietly. "You will find I'm not nearly as pious as Hannah More has become."

  "Which, I would think, is a good thing."

  She laughed at this. "It would not surprise me that you, though you're not an intellectual, have little faith in an almighty power."

  He felt uncomfortable. "You already know more about me than I ever wanted a woman to know."

  A satisfied smile turned up the corners of her lips. "Then we are in the same boat, my lord, for you know far more about me than I would like for any man to know."

  Now he smiled.

  "Which brings up the matter of my alter ego. . .You have admitted you read — and admired — Mr. Philip Lewis when you thought he was a man. I expect now your opinion will change completely."

  He thought for a moment, remembering the essays he'd read in the Edinburgh Review. "Actually, I think not. Sound opinions that are fully supported with examples and logic are most difficult to refute."

  "I am glad to learn that, my lord."

  "Stop addressing me as my lord, Louisa."

  "I will think on it," she said.

  Lopping from side to side by the fierce winds, the carriage churned forward toward the south coast. The barren land gave way to more interesting — though still sparsely inhabited — terrain. The closer they came to the coast, the more the landscape became dotted with cottages and people and plump trees. The more, too, the sun shone, and warmth replaced the cold.

  Harry pulled out the basket Mrs. Winston had packed for them. He gave Louisa a hard-cooked egg and a thick slice of bread that had been baked that morning. There was good country cheese and a large apple for each of them.

  They ate their fill, then followed it with a jug of water fresh from the Winstons' well.

  Harry sincerely hoped Louisa did not notice how difficult it was for him to move his arm. The last thing he needed was a bloody bluestocking pitying him.

  He could tell the swelling was becoming worse in his left arm, while the right one was far better today. At least, since he was right handed, he was glad that if he had to lose an arm, it be the left.

  Such reasoning did little to cheer him. If he lost his left arm, he doubted he would be effective at sword fighting. And it would be quite difficult to hold the reins and whip the horse all at the same time. Then there was the matter of placing his arms around a desirable woman. He glanced at Louisa, who was becoming more desirable with each passing day. Excruciatingly so at night when he would lie beside her, tortured with longing to take her in his arms and make her forget that a ruffian like Godwin Phillips had ever made love to her.

  The thought of her making love to Godwin Phillips stung painfully.

  He slid a glance in her direction. Her head had dropped, and her lashes swept low. A full stomach and the lulling movement of the carriage must be working together to make her sleep.

  And he was the freezing one who'd gone without sleep the night before!

  If only he could sleep. That would give h
im some relief from the blasted pain in his arm.

  As wide awake as if he'd drunk a pot of strong tea, Harry watched as the coach rolled into Polperro, a quaint fishing village. The coachman went into the local inn to procure their rooms. Harry's eyelids began to grow heavy.

  * * *

  After the second of Jeremy Bentham's speeches, Edward was seeing Miss Sinclair home when she startled him by asking him if he carried a weapon.

  "I have no need, ma'am. We are in Mayfair."

  "Is that supposed to assure me that there are no cutthroats in Mayfair?"

  He thought for a moment. "You will be quite safe here, Miss Sinclair."

  "I don't feel quite safe. Just this morning I read in the Gazette that a woman's throat was slashed in Whitechapel."

  He laughed. "If I were to go to Whitechapel — which I'm not likely to do — I would carry a weapon. The borough is notorious for crimes of every sort. I hear there are prostitutes on every corner, selling themselves for a penny."

  Miss Sinclair's mouth opened to a perfect oval, and crimson crept into her cheeks.

  "I beg your pardon, I should not have spoken so in front of a lady."

  As they drew near Grosvenor Square, he glanced at her and spoke again, "I thought perhaps tonight you would do me the goodness to accompany me to Vauxhall Gardens. With your. . .er, cook to chaperon, of course." Demmed if he'd ever heard of young lady being chaperoned by her blasted cook! Edward would be only too happy to have his cousin return. It was most embarrassing traveling about London – and to a neighborhood he would not normally visit – with Harry's gig rattling behind him with the plump cook, who must be sixty years old, demmed near spilling out of the seat. Most embarrassing indeed.

  The young lady's face turned white, and she grew stiff as a poker. "Miss Grimm said Vauxhall was no place for gently bred ladies."

  He turned the corner that would take them to Grosvenor Square. "I take that for an insult, Miss Sinclair. Was just there last month with my sisters, and if they ain't well bred, I'll eat your bonnet."

  "I mean no offense, sir. I am only repeating what was told to me by Miss Grimm, whom, as I have told you, had been with Sir Arthur's daughters the year before she came to me." Miss Sinclair said that as if he was supposed to know who the demmed Sir Arthur was.

  If ever he met Miss Grimm, Edward would take great pleasure in throttling her.

  When he pulled up in front of Harry's old house, Edward leaped from the vehicle and assisted Miss Sinclair in alighting from it.

  Though he was not nearly so tall as his cousin, Edward towered over Ellie Sinclair. The top of her head barely reached the center of his chest. She looked up at him, her blue eyes shimmering, and he was deuced glad he had spent the afternoon with her. Her blush had completely disappeared, leaving her skin the colour of fresh snow. She was dainty and fair and had such a helpless quality about her that he would have been here with her even if Harry had not instructed him to do so.

  "I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you have taken me to see Mr. Bentham. I don't know what I would have done if it weren't for you," she said.

  He inclined his head. "It was my pleasure."

  "Wasn't Mr. Bentham enlightening?"

  He hadn't understood a word the man said. Bloody intellectual. "Oh, most enlightening."

  "Poor Louisa, I know she must be sorry, indeed, to miss Mr. Bentham."

  "Quite unfortunate," he agreed as the chubby cook swept past them.

  * * *

  Louisa woke from her nap when the carriage stopped. She was disoriented at first. She had been dreaming that she was in a warm bed at home in Kerseymeade, her mother bending over her lovingly.

  When she awoke she realized she was in Lord Wycliff's coach. Then she realized Lord Wycliff's head was in her lap. Which seemed terribly out of character for him. She peered down at him. He seemed to be sleeping like the dead.

  Unconscious of her own movement, Louisa gently swept her hand across his brow.

  He was burning with fever.

  Chapter 16

  Had Harry been cold instead of hot, she would have taken him for dead. For his body, blazing with heat, had gone completely limp. She looked down into his face. Rivulets of perspiration streaked it. Her breath grew short and she seemed paralyzed with fear. His arm! The infection had spread to the rest of his body. He was going to die!

  She couldn't have said for how long she sat there in a frightened stupor. No, God! she kept saying until she finally realized her utter helplessness was doing him no good. Running her hand across his forehead once again, she called his name.

  He did not respond.

  She raised her voice and called him again. "Harry! Harry! Wake up!"

  When he did not respond the second time, she poked her head from the window and yelled to the coachman. Not that he could restore Lord Wycliff to good health. With her pulse racing, she sat there waiting, stroking Harry's heated face.

  Finally the coachman opened the carriage door. His eyes darted first to his lifeless master, then up into Louisa's frightened gaze.

  "Lord Wycliff's terribly ill."

  The coachman's dark eyes passed sympathetically over the lifeless form of his employer. Louisa realized the servant must have been as frightened as she.

  "It's a good thing we've reached the inn." He flung the door open wider, then bent forward to help Harry out. But it was too much of a job for one man. Harry was too large.

  "I'll help," Louisa said calmly, knowing that she must remain level headed for the sake of Lord Wycliff.

  She extricated herself from him, and Harry's upper torso fell back into the soft leather seat, his legs sprawled in front of him. Then she stooped over him wedged her left arm between his side and his arm and heaved upward. She succeeded in bringing him to a sitting position while John gripped him from under his other arm. Together they hoisted Harry from the carriage, and with one of them on either side of him, walked toward the inn.

  "My master's sick and has urgent need of a room," the coachman informed the innkeeper.

  The swarthy innkeeper glanced behind them where the door was still open, affording a view of Harry's impressive carriage. "Come, put him in my only ground-floor bedchamber. There's a fire in there."

  When they were settled in the room, the innkeeper took over for Louisa and helped the coachman lift Harry onto the bed as soon as Louisa had pulled the covers back. Then he turned to her. "I'll send for the doctor."

  Moving swiftly to Harry's side, she thanked him. She stood solemnly over Harry, wiping his brow. Though he was perspiring, he began to tremble as does one with chills. She pulled the blanket up to his chin and smoothed his brow once more.

  John stood at the other side of the bed. "I don't understand it. He was right as rain this morning."

  She looked up at him, her eyes hooded with shame. "It's all my fault. He took an injury rescuing me the day I fell, and I fear the infection in his arm has spread to his whole body." Her voice broke on the last few words.

  John folded his mouth into a grim line. "I'll stay here with you, ma'am, in case the master needs anything."

  She wished he weren't so nice to her. She deserved his wrath for her foolishness that had caused Harry to . . . she couldn't even think that her carelessness would lead to his death.

  Yet as she stood there beside his bed, stroking his brow and trying to force water between his parched lips, she knew he was terribly sick. He had been one of the bravest, most vibrant men — no, amend that to the bravest, most vibrant man she had ever known — and because of her he was reduced to a shivering, helpless mass.

  Impatient and frozen with fear, Louisa thought it was hours before the doctor arrived when in reality it had been less than one. The stooped old man wearing spectacles and sporting longish gray hair strode into the room, the innkeeper on his heels. "Well, what do we have here?" he asked.

  Her words choked, Louisa said, "A very sick man."

  "I don't understand it none," the coachman added, "h
e was fit as a fiddle this morn."

  The doctor gently pushed John aside. "Let me take a look."

  Louisa stood at the other side of the bed. "You might wish to examine the wound on his left arm. I believe it has become infected."

  "Let's get this shirt off," the doctor said, leaning down and carefully lifting the shirt away from Harry's fevered body. He then proceeded to unwrap the bandages on his arms. When he saw the yellow liquid oozing from Harry's left arm, he winced. "Nasty it is, I'll say. However did he come to bruise himself so badly?" He looked up at Louisa.

  "He fell down a cliffside."

  "And lived?" the doctor joked. "Think I'll bathe the wound in a decoction of winter cresses and rebandage it. See if that will help stop the infection at the source." He turned now to John. "Fetch me a bowl of hot water, will you?"

  By the time the doctor had removed his own coat and rolled up his sleeves, John was back.

  Louisa stood helplessly watching the doctor clean Harry's wound.

  When he finished he looked up at Louisa. "Now I'll bleed your husband."

  Ignoring that he had addressed her as Harry's wife, Louisa stiffened and regained her sternest voice. "I will not allow you to bleed my husband."

  "You don't want him to get well?" the doctor asked.

  "Of course I do, but after reading the works of Dr. Heidbreder in Germany, I have decided that bleeding not only does no good, but it can also be harmful."

  "Heidbreder, Schneidebreder. Never heard of the quack. I've been bleeding patients since I was a lad of twenty."

  Anger flashed in her eyes. "And I'll wager you've lost many of those patients."

  "I cannot keep to the earth what God desires in heaven," he defended.

  Now she glared at the man. "I do not wish my husband to be in heaven, doctor." Her voice was harsh. She made eye contact with John. "Pay the doctor, John, for his services."

  John removed a pouch from his pocket, and gave the doctor a half crown. He waited until the doctor had packed his bag, donned his coat, and left before he spoke to Louisa. "Are you sure the doctor should not bleed Lord Wycliff?"