Helena didn’t see that as a daunting task. She was very close to her father. If she met him at the right time, he would tell her. She nodded to her mother and walked down the passage to her father’s chambers.
“If you meet him sleeping, Helena, please do not wake him up. He needs to sleep,” her mother shouted to her.
Helena heard her footsteps on the wooden floor. Her shoes made small tapping noises on the floor, breaking what would have been a rare serene quiet in the Sinclair mansion. Her father would always know someone was approaching his chambers before the person even got there this way. When she got to his door, she knocked. No one answered, so she turned the doorknob and went in. The first room was just as she remembered. The walls were entirely covered with shelves full of books. Helena wondered how many books her father regularly bought since she always came here to steal his books and they never seemed to reduce in number. She had gotten her reading habits from her father.
The man is a ferocious reader.
The walls were made from the same Lebanese wood that constituted the walls of the corridor. A huge landscape painting hung over the door to his bedroom. She loved the way the river poured into the delta, making bubbles and ripples. The painter brought the picture to life at that point. The painting was enchanting.
Helena looked at his table. It was still beside the window, but there was no book on it, which was strange. Helena had never come into the room without seeing what her father was currently reading on that table.
He isn’t reading anything?
She noticed that the second door was open, the door to the balcony. She went to the door and looked into the balcony; there was no one there. She entered the balcony and walked to the balustrade. Her grandfather had built the house in a way that the Duke’s chambers had a balcony looking over the entire house and over the whole barony.
“Your eyes are more accurate than the best reporter,” her father always said.
He could be found many times looking over his barony from the balcony. The house was built on the tallest hill in the middle of the barony so the view was a fair reflection of it. The wind pushed Helena’s hair back; red strands whipped into her face. Helena pushed the strands behind her ears and turned back to go inside, closing the door behind her. She walked to the door to her father’s bedroom which was also open. She didn’t enter but just leaned inside. Her father was on the bed, sleeping and snoring loudly. He had his blanket over half of his body, but the uncovered upper half was naked. She could see grey strands mingled among the dark bush that gathered on his chest. She saw a cup on the stool beside his bed.
That’s the potion Wallace went to get for him.
She wanted to go in to check but remembered what her mother said. Choosing between satisfying her curiosity and not risking waking him, she decided to allow him to sleep. She shut the door gently. Her hands released the golden doorknob which felt very cold. Her eyes spied the hinges of the door that were made of a particular metal she didn’t know, but they had four silver bolts. Father always said grandfather was dandy. Helena couldn’t confirm that, but she knew the man had spent a lot on building the house to his taste.
A door opened behind her. She turned around to look at her mother. The Baroness walked to the other door and went into the balcony. Helena followed her.
“How is he?” her mother asked immediately she shut the balcony door.
“Asleep,” Helena answered.
“Thank goodness,” her mother said, relief very evident in her reaction.
“What is it?”
“He hasn’t slept in the past four days. His head has been aching seriously, and he was starting to get a fever.”
“I thought you weren’t going to tell me what was wrong with him.”
“I didn’t mean this. You’d have to ask him for that,” the Baroness said.
The Baroness walked to the railings and hung her hands over the balustrade. Her brown hair stood stubbornly against the wind. She had tied it in a ponytail behind. Her hair was incredibly long; the end of the ponytail reached her lower back. Helena fingered her short red hair. Hers had a long way to go before it got to such a length. It fit the Baroness who was big with chubby arms and a wide waist.
“She was as slim as you were when I married her. After twenty-five years and five children, this is my wife,” her father would say.
Helena smiled and shook her head. She already missed her father.
Get well soon Pa, you still need to recommend books for me.
“Why are you smiling?” the Baroness asked.
Helena shook her head. She looked down and saw Lady Lavinia walking out of the front door. Miss Justina was with her, carrying a bag that probably contained her newly purchased dresses. Lady Lavinia walked to a steward and said something to him. Helena looked to her side; her mother was also watching them. The steward went around the back, and after a few minutes, Lady Lavinia’s coach rode out from the back. Miss Justina pushed the door of the coach open and placed the bag inside. Lady Lavinia went around and got into the coach through the other door. Miss Justina stood at the other door for a few more moments.
Lavinia must be telling her something.
The driver of the coach beat the horses with his whip, and they started moving. Miss Justina nodded her head and stood as the coach rode out of the compound. Miss Justina turned around and walked back to the house. Just as she was moving out of view, she looked up to Helena and her mother. She waved, and Helena waved back. Then she went in.
The sun had sunk to the horizon. Night was drawing closer. Helena was about to ask about her sister when another carriage rode into the compound. Before the carriage had properly stopped, the door was flung open, and her sister jumped out in typical character.
“You still have a lot of coaching to do,” Helena said.
The Baroness chuckled.
“I am thinking of getting her a tutor who will teach her music, arts, and generally coach her in the mannerisms of a woman of breeding. She still sees herself as a child, Melanie,” her mother said.
“A very playful child,” Helena added.
She turned around and walked to the door.
“I am going to my chamber, Mother,” Helena said.
“I am here with my husband. Do send Melanie to see me.”
Helena nodded and went out the door. She walked gently and noiselessly till she got outside her father’s chambers. She walked down the dark corridor, using her intuition to note where to turn. When she got to her room’s door, she saw a steward lighting the lamps hanging on the corridor walls. She walked into her room and met Miss Justina inside. She had already lit the two lamps in her room. Helena walked to her bed and eased her shoes off her feet. She lay her back down and stared at the dark ceiling.
“Get some warm water into my bathroom, Justina. I want to have a bath and turn in early,” Helena said.
“I’ll do that, ma’am.”
“Then do tell Melanie mother said she wants to see her tonight.”
Miss Justina nodded and walked out of the room. Helena stood up and loosened her dress at the side. She pushed the dress down her body, allowing it to pool at her feet. She removed her legs from the pool and lay back on the bed with just her shift and underwear while her mind wandered back to the handsome doctor.
“I hope to meet him at the Somerset ball. I would love a dance with him,” Helena said aloud.
One eyelid closed, she pushed it back up.
I need to wait for Justina to bring the warm water.
Chapter 3
Dished Up
Dr Frederick unlocked the door to his private chambers which held his bedroom, his laboratory, and his reading room. The house was only two other rooms asides those, the sitting room and playroom, asides the bathroom which was connected to his bedroom. He heard Mister Frank making a ruckus of rearranging the tools back after washing as he normally did. Dr Frederick removed the black jacket he had put on later in the day and placed it on the arm of a ch
air in his reading room. He walked into his bedroom and shed all his clothes, leaving just his inner shorts, and returned to the reading room. He couldn’t see clearly as darkness had set in.
This is not a place where one can walk without proper illumination.
“Frank, you need to light those lanterns,” he shouted.
“I am trying to do that, sir,” Mister Frank, his dresser, answered.
After some time, the door opened, letting in Mister Frank holding a lit torch. He used it to light the lanterns in the room and entered Dr Frederick’s bedroom. Dr Frederick picked up a lit lantern and walked to his reading table where sat three unread journals. One was from a colleague in Scotland, and two were from the Council of English Physicians. He had meant to read them, but he was always busy.
“Someone is always falling sick,” he said.
He opened the first page, and there was a diagram of a woman with a thick mane of hair. This reminded him instantly of Miss Helena Sinclair’s red mass of hair. His insides warmed up as he thought about her. She was strikingly beautiful, a diamond of first water. She was bold and had caught his gaze full on, only dropping her eyes a few times. He had felt like she was seeing him from inside out when their eyes met in the sitting room. Her eyes were so colourless that he thought they were blank, but the intensity with which she held his gaze made him alert to her. Her lips were bloody red. When he had bent to kiss her hand, he had been tempted to lay his lips on those red edges. Dr Frederick was not sure he could attend the balls that were sure to soon start because he had too much research to do, but he would love to frequent the ones she attended. He wanted to see her again.
Her father was suffering from insomnia that looked to be due to a shocking event. The man didn’t tell him much largely because he was too tired to talk. The Baron was already breaking into a fever, so Dr Frederick had been forced to prescribe a very potent draught for him. A steward had followed Mister Frank home to get it while he went to attend to another family.
“Sir, you need to let things be. I don’t know what is disturbing you so much to take away your sleep all of a sudden, but you need to take your mind off it for now. Things will work themselves out,” he had told the Baron.
The Baroness stood at the other side of her husband as he lay down on his bed. Their hands were clasped tightly together. Her face held every worrying crease that Dr Frederick had seen on a human being.
Love is powerful. Nothing feels empathy like love.
Mister Frank had told him Miss Helena was not engaged when he asked about her from him.
“That’s sure to end soon,” Dr Frederick said aloud.
She was of age, and a very beautiful and engaging character. She would probably get married to a young man of very high station.
Dr Frederick turned the journal to the other page and saw a diagram of a dissected heart. He drew the lantern closer and started reading. He read these journals to be up to pace with the most recent information on his research focus: hearts and ailments of the heart. He had only been interested in general practice a few years ago, but the sudden death of his mentor, Dr Terry Agar had him changing his focus. Dr Terry was like a father to him and had one day slumped and died. Dr Frederick would find out much later that his mentor had died of a heart attack. Dr Frederick was gutted.
“We could have avoided it if only I had been more observant.”
He dedicated the rest of his practice to research on the heart and its ailments although he still did house calls for the families that were good clients. Now he spent most of his time in his laboratory, dissecting hearts of other animals and watching the effect of different chemicals on it. His hypodermal syringe and scalpel were his most useful tools. He remembered when he first started his research, how he was always confused on the next step to take. Now he was focused on extracting bodily produced compounds like hormones and enzymes, so he could observe their direct effect on the heart.
His laboratory was the only room that no one else was allowed to enter; no visitor that is. Mister Frank was allowed to enter and observe, but he couldn’t touch. Dr Frederick could not risk getting any of his potions, specimens, or tools contaminated. That could lead to false results, and he had been researching for too many years to allow one result lead him astray. His eyes drooped. Forcing each tired eyelid to stay up was a conscious chore. Dr Frederick laughed aloud after a few minutes of reading the same paragraph over and over again without assimilating.
The same thing used to happen in medical school. He would be too tired to read, but reading was a necessity. Dr Frederick closed the journal he was reading.
I am no more in medical school.
He had noticed long ago that forcing a tired body to do things led to making simple mistakes one would never make if fully alert. He could afford that while in school, but he couldn’t afford it in his research. He picked up the lantern and walked into his bedroom. There was a bucket of cold water waiting for him in his bathroom, and he needed the cold bath. He undressed and went into the bathroom.
After the cold bath, Dr Frederick went to bed. As he lay down with tired eyes closed, he could still see Miss Helena. Her white skin matched the benign nature of her eyes, conflicting strongly with the pink of her piercing nose and red puckered lips. She stirred an excitement in him. For the first time in a long while, Dr Frederick had felt like taking hold of a woman and kissing her till he lost his breath. He wanted to feel the soft press of her voluptuous body on his hard body. The gentle impact of her bust would make his heart triple its pace. Dr Frederick turned over in bed.
A woman can trouble one’s heart as much as physical exercise. Imagine what a beautiful woman could do to mine.
*******
Helena stood up clumsily from her bed. Everything still felt groggy even though the brightness of her room told her it was long past dawn.
I must have slept while waiting for Justina to come with the warm water.
She put her feet into a pair of slippers and walked to her window. The sun was still rising. Its rays were cool to feel, invigorating instead of beating. She walked to her mirror and noted her eyes were still puffy. Her red hair was a mass of jumbled wires, no direction and unruly. She picked up the brush from the table and brushed her hair backwards. Helena remembered her sister and father. She quickly dropped the brush and walked out of her room.
“Good morning, Miss Helena,” a passing steward greeted her.
“Good morning,” she replied.
She walked to her sister’s door, pausing for a second before knocking. She didn’t hear a reply, but she let herself in anyway.
There’s nothing Jackie would intend to hide from me.
Her sister was standing beside her bed, still in her sleeping robe and facing the door. She looked like she hadn’t been up long.
“Good morning, how are you this morning?” Helena asked.
Miss Jacqueline sat down on the bed.
“I feel much better. The potion works, even as bitter as it tastes. I still feel sleepy, but I expect that to wear off,” Miss Jacqueline replied.
Helena strode to the table beside her sister’s bed and picked up the bottle. The level of the liquid had been further reduced.
“You drank more of this after I left?” Helena asked.
“I noticed it calmed me down and reduced the pain, so I took a bit more. That is probably why I am feeling so sleepy,” Miss Jacqueline replied.
”Has mother been here this morning?”
“No, but she’ll be here any minute,” came the reply.
“I’ll be back,” Helena said before she left her sister’s room.
She walked straight to her father’s chambers and opened the door. The waiting room was just as empty as it had been the day before. She approached the door of her father’s bedroom and was just about to knock when she heard voices from inside. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was her mother and father speaking. Helena knocked.
“Who is there?”
; Helena didn’t answer; instead she pushed open the door and went in. Her father was sitting on his bed, wearing only breeches. His eyes didn’t appear tired. In fact, he looked well rested. Her mother was wearing only a sleeping robe. Her slippers lay beside the bed.
She slept here.
“Good morning, Pa, Mother,” Helena greeted.
“Good morning, Helena. Your mother tells me you were here yesterday evening. But I was fast asleep,” the Duke said.
His red hair was brown in the morning light. It was from him she got her hair although his was wiry and sparse now. She felt that occurred as he aged. Helena looked closely at his face. There were permanent frown marks on his cheeks, the creases never left.
Seduced by an Irresistible Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 3