In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL)

by Maggie Robinson

  Once he followed Louisa downstairs to the lush indoor garden, he recognized exactly why the staff had chosen the urn. The wall adjacent to the house was covered with blue and white tile squares, with occasional touches of green. Birds and flowers and leaves joined together and repeated themselves, their detail quite remarkable. A shallow pool set into the floor shimmered in the sunlight, reflecting the design. Small braziers were lit at regular intervals along the brick floor, and three long tables teeming with plant life ran the length of the building. White iron fretwork decorated the arched windows, and the glass ceiling vaulted heavenward. It was hot enough in the room to strip and plunge into the little pool.

  “Oh! The fountain is turned off,” Louisa said. “It’s very soothing to work in here when it’s running.”

  Charles let out a low whistle and set the heavy urn on a table. “This is amazing. It’s almost like some kind of church.”

  “The Cathedral of the Holy Orchid? That’s what my favorite specimens are. Orchids are notoriously difficult, and I’ve lost more than I care to count. But I think Griffith has done a spectacular job. The conservatory was the only thing I missed about Rosemont while I was away, really.” With a gloved fingertip she touched a pale petal of something Charles couldn’t identify. “I guess I should cut some flowers for the altar. The roses should travel well, and I’ll mix them with greenery and ribbon and some dried grasses.”

  She picked up a pair of secateurs and a basket from a neatly organized shelf and went to a row of potted rosebushes that flanked the south-facing window. Charles watched as she snipped tightly closed rosebuds, laying them carefully onto the wicker, the bright sunlight limning her body. He missed her breeches, but there would be another scandal for her if she entered the church in them.

  “I’ll just wrap up the stems and we’ll be off.”

  The air was humid and thick—too thick—and suddenly Charles felt light-headed. He gripped the edge of a table and gulped for air. Heat invaded his lungs, reminding him of Africa. A palm tree in a corner completed the illusion, its fronds somehow vacillating in the still air. The sight in his good eye blurred, then tiny black spots began to dance a demonic jig. A sharp pain divided his body, doubling him over. Too many sausages. Served him right for being a glutton. But damn, they had tasted good.

  Louisa was across the room at the sink, oblivious to the fact that he was slipping to the floor. Good grief, he was fainting like some gothic heroine. Fainting. He slumped onto the brick, cushioning his head from the blow with an arm. So he had some sense left, but precious little. His stomach twisted and he felt the bile rising. He was going to lose his breakfast, and not a moment too soon if it would alleviate the agony that possessed him. Best to turn himself over so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit—that would be unpleasant, and leave Louisa unprotected. The bricks could be hosed down; there was a drain right there—

  Charles lost the rest of his thought as he rolled under the table and retched onto the floor, spilling the lurid contents of his stomach in a very undignified, un-Maximillian way.

  Chapter

  29

  Louisa was startled by an odd gurgle behind her. She turned, but Charles had disappeared.

  “Max? This is no time to play hide-and-seek.” She turned off the tap, then bundled the roses into a damp towel and gently rolled them into loose brown paper, tying them up with the twine she used to stake her plants. “Are you ready to go?”

  Sunlight streamed in through the roof, dust motes swirling. Charles was not sitting in any of the wicker chairs, nor was he examining the trays on the tables. “Max? Charles?”

  Another wet noise, and then she heard him. “D-down here.”

  “What do you mean? Where are you?”

  “Floor. I’m d-dying.”

  “You are not!” Louisa dropped the parcel and skirted around the first table. Beneath the table in the middle Charles lay near what looked and smelled suspiciously like a puddle of vomit. “Charles! You’re ill!”

  She sank to her knees and was immediately sorry. Louisa had never been good with sickroom evidence or its aroma. She’d had to drench herself in scent so she could sniff her wrists and handkerchief all the way through the Continent to avoid the un-Englishness emanating from foreign bodies, too. Well, technically she was the foreign body, but her nose was very particular. She pinched it just now and thought of summer roses. Thought hard. Lots of roses in riotous color, perfuming the air, lush blossoms that in no way resembled the chunks of undigested sausage she quickly closed her eyes to.

  “Can you get up?”

  “N-not sure. Head. Stomach. Knives.”

  “Oh, you poor man. But I did warn you against all that meat.”

  “No lectures.”

  “Shall I call for some footmen?”

  “Maximillian Norwich would never be caught in this state.”

  “Forget about Maximillian Norwich.” Charles’s face was the color of lamb’s ears, that peculiar gray green that was soothing in a plant but disconcerting on a human. Louisa really did have to move him before she joined him in his disgrace—the contents of his stomach were a vivid olfactory reminder of his gluttony. “If you cannot stand, suppose you move a little ways away from your current position.” She covered her face with a sleeve and desperately inhaled wool and violets.

  He chuckled. “Just like maneuvers. Duck and cover. They won’t get me. They didn’t before, even when I wanted them to.” He made some shooting noises, which alarmed her.

  “Whatever you can manage.”

  Poor Charles crawled away as slow as a centipede. How did people deal with nursing? Of course, she had not blanched at the sight of his wound the other night, or last night when he had Hugh’s blood on him, for that matter. Louisa was not entirely fainthearted, she assured herself, trying hard not to gag. “Keep going if you can.” The next county was preferable.

  She rose from her knees and went back to the sink, wetting a towel and washing her own face with it first. She ripped open the roses and breathed deeply, tucking one into her bodice for emergency relief. He had cleared himself away far enough down the aisle between the tables, then collapsed. She got down on the floor so she could wipe his face and feel his forehead. “No fever.”

  “Small mercy. I do not feel well, Louisa. I think—I think I’ve been poisoned.”

  Louisa almost let Charles’s head fall back to the brick floor. “What? Don’t be ridiculous! Kathleen promised no more tricks.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Kathleen this time. I’ve made no shortage of enemies. There they are, the devils.” He pointed in the general direction of a large Schefflera arboricola.

  “It was just the sausages, Charles. How many did you eat? Six? Seven? Anyone would suffer for that.”

  “Eight, but who is counting? I see two of you. Not clearly, I might add. Your edges are fuzzy. Everything’s moving. Look there—can’t you see that table leg? Won’t stay still. Watch for falling plants. Oh God.” Charles giggled, actually giggled, as if he’d already been hit in the head and lost his wits.

  “This is not funny, Charles.”

  He only laughed louder. “White light—so, so bright. Need some dark spectacles like that Evensong woman. To see you better. You are an angel, Louisa. No wings, though. But by Jove, your tits make up for their lack. Wings are no good in bed. Feathers tickle. Tits—now, they’re a different story. Soft and plump. Like peaches. Want to kiss you, my darling.”

  Louisa reared back from his breath. “Not until you chew a mint leaf.” Perhaps the whole plant. What had come over him? His symptoms were not like any stomach upset she’d ever had. He seemed almost . . . drunk. Silly. Certainly amorous when she least welcomed his attentions.

  “Fuck you into next week. So, so hard.”

  And clearly he didn’t know what he was saying. He’d resolved not to touch her again, and she felt sure he was a man of his word,
no matter how much she didn’t want him to be. “Do you think you can stand up?”

  His eyelid fluttered shut. “Not a chance. Your lap is so comfortable.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m going to put you back on the floor and ring for some help.” She took off her riding jacket and wedged it under his head. Rising a bit unsteadily, she yanked the bellpull near the door and prayed for swift delivery.

  An unfamiliar footman entered, one of Aunt Grace’s new hires. “Yes, Mrs. Norwich?”

  “I have a problem. My husband is not well.” And not in possession of his faculties. “You’ll need to fetch William to help you carry him upstairs. Alert Mrs. Lang to send in some maids to clean the floor, and send Cook upstairs to our suite at her first opportunity.” No one else should eat any of the suspect sausages, else they would find themselves in Charles’s pickle. “I’ll need a pot of strong tea as well. Perhaps some paregoric.”

  The footman took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. “Yes, madam.”

  Kathleen could help her undress Charles—if she was innocent of any mischief. Louisa would soon find out.

  The next quarter of an hour was a busy one, with Charles quoting snippets of ribald poetry as the men carried him through the house. He insisted the footmen stop on the landing so he could examine the figured wallpaper, which he claimed was speaking to him.

  Kathleen had been picking up her mistress’s room when they trooped in, and she swore she and Robertson had nothing to do with Charles’s bizarre behavior. She looked as worried as Louisa felt. Between all of them, they removed his riding clothes and put him in a pair of monogrammed silk pajamas. Once he was finally safe in her bed with a basin nearby, Louisa told William to fetch Dr. Fentress, who happened to be paying his daily visit to her aunt.

  “What do you think about my arse now that you’ve seen it, Kathleen?” Charles mumbled.

  “It’s prime, sir, and no mistake,” Kathleen replied, rolling her eyes. “Men. Even when they’re out of their heads they’re a vain lot, aren’t they?” she whispered.

  “What can be wrong with him? He said he thought he was poisoned,” Louisa whispered back.

  “That may be. If he were fevered, that might explain his delusions, but he’s almost cold to the touch. His eyes look funny.”

  “My eye, you mean,” Charles said, sounding cheerful, his hearing still as acute as ever. “But I can’t look as funny as you girls. Did you know you have bugs in your hair? Little pink spiders, I think.”

  Louisa restrained her impulse to run screaming to her mirror. He was seeing things that didn’t exist. Hearing things that made no noise. Saying things he wouldn’t ordinarily say.

  “Wish I could vomit again. Should stick a finger down my throat—”

  “No!” Louisa cried. “Dr. Fentress will be right here. I’ve ordered tea, too.”

  “A girl like you probably thinks a cup of good English tea will cure the clap.”

  “Charles!” My God, he wasn’t diseased, was he? She’d heard of people going mad from syphilis. But surely Mrs. Evensong would have discovered such a thing.

  “Max,” he corrected. “You are forgetting our little play. I am but an actor, hired at your whim.”

  Oh dear. What if he forgot in his present state of confusion? Dr. Fentress would run straight to Aunt Grace.

  “Just try to be quiet, Max. Close your eyes so you don’t see things that trouble you.”

  “Eye, you mean. And you are the only thing that troubles me,” he said, then laughed maniacally. But he did shut his blue eye.

  He looked perfectly innocent. There was a tiny cut on his cheek where he cut himself shaving. Was the blade rusty and he had some form of blood poisoning? One didn’t lose one’s mind from eating too many sausages.

  Dr. Fentress entered without knocking. “William says we have an emergency. But I see the patient is asleep.”

  “Am not,” said Charles, not opening his eye.

  “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Norwich?”

  “Drugged, I should think. Mushrooms.”

  Louisa’s mouth dropped open.

  “Can’t be sure. Sausages may have been tampered with as well. Tasted different. But the hallucinations are consistent with ingesting a certain type of mushroom. Went to visit my grandmother once in the country when I was a boy. Brothers and I picked mushrooms and got sick. Can’t remember much about it except Fred laughed himself hoarse, and Fred is not one to laugh a lot.”

  Heavens. Charles was unexpectedly eloquent about his condition. Dr. Fentress nodded. “I remember a case like that written up in an old issue of the London Medical and Physical Journal. Ask Cook to come up, Louisa.”

  “I already have. What can we do?”

  “Make him flush his system. Kathleen, get someone to run down to the beach and fetch a good quantity of seawater. That should do the trick. And then he must be watched so he doesn’t harm himself or anyone else. The effects should wear off by this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon!”

  Charles grinned up at her. “What’s the matter, wife? Afraid to spend the day in bed with me? I don’t want some damned footman. I want you, pink spiders and all.”

  “I’ll help you, Miss Louisa, uh, Mrs. Norwich,” Kathleen offered. “William can wait in the hall if we need him.” She hurried out of the room.

  Both Cook and Mrs. Lang entered as the maid left. Cook’s usually rosy face was as white as her apron.

  “Oh, Mrs. Norwich! I can’t believe there’s poison in my kitchen.”

  “We think he ate some bad mushrooms at breakfast. Where did you get them?” the doctor asked.

  “My girls picked them from the woods, where they always do. I’m so, so sorry!”

  “I don’t blame you,” Louisa assured her, though she supposed Cook might be just as treacherous as Kathleen and Robertson. “But if there are any left, throw them away. I wondered about the sausages, too.”

  “The sausages?”

  “Just because Ch-Max ate so many of them. But they’re probably all right.”

  “I should think so. They’re made to my special recipe and I’ve never had one complaint.”

  “Hush, Miriam. No one is casting aspersions on your cooking,” Mrs. Lang said. “Mrs. Norwich, I suppose after this little upset you will want to leave Rosemont and return to France.”

  “Well, not right this minute,” Louisa snapped. Poor Charles was in no condition to travel anywhere.

  “What can we do to help?” Cook asked.

  “I don’t know. What besides seawater should he have?” Louisa turned to Dr. Fentress.

  “Nothing else until he’s emptied his stomach. I doubt he’ll be hungry again for a while, and when he does eat, make it the simplest of nursery food. Just make him as comfortable as you can, and don’t be alarmed if he sees and says odd things. As you know, he’s delusional—he’s invented brothers when you said he was an only child. Like the imaginary playmate you used to have—isn’t that right, my dear? What was his name . . . Melvin? Malvern? My goodness, I believe it was Maxwell! What an odd coincidence that you’ve married a man with almost the very same name! I’ll stay the day to keep an eye on him. Call me from your aunt’s quarters if you need me.”

  Louisa hadn’t thought about her invented friend in a long while, and she hoped Dr. Fentress would not give any more thought to him, either. Damn. Trust him to have paid attention to her when she was a little girl when no one else in the household did. He was a good-hearted man, save for the fact he was under Grace’s thumb. The doctor seemed more than delighted to have an excuse to spend more time at Rosemont today with her aunt.

  Louisa sent everyone away, stationing William in the hallway. Charles did not appear violent, but she might need help to escort him to the bathroom. She placed a hand across his brow, and his eye whipped open.

  “I want you naked, right
next to me where you belong.”

  She’d thought he was sleeping, he’d been so quiet. “Not now, Charles. When you’re better,” Louisa lied. She wouldn’t hold him to things he didn’t mean when he was under the influence of some toadstool.

  “Promise?”

  “You might change your mind. When you’re better.”

  He clasped her hand and held it over his erratic heart. “I’ve been a fool, Lulu. Marry me. Please.”

  It was just the toadstool talking. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. If I live.”

  “Of course you’re going to live. Oh, where is Kathleen?”

  “I don’t want her. I want you. Do you know I’ve never really wanted anyone before? And who should I fall in love with but an heiress who’s miles above me? Come down to earth, Lulu. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy.”

  Louisa’s eyes welled with tears. If only he was in his right mind.

  Chapter

  30

  Kathleen, who had perhaps one head too many, hovered over him. She bore a glass bottle of vile-looking, gray-green liquid.

  “I tried to strain most of the sand out of it.”

  “I’ll pour it into a teacup. Can you sit up, Charles?”

  It would be so much easier to stick his fingers at the back of his throat. Now that he’d figured out what was wrong with him during a brief lucid phase, the sensations he was experiencing weren’t too awful. Yes, it was disconcerting to see the random flashes of color and the wobbling objects, but he felt like he was floating in a warm, calm sea. He really didn’t want to have to drink the sea to bring him back to reality.

  But he wanted to wipe the look of worry off Louisa’s face, so he dutifully swallowed all the saltwater in one gulp and asked for more.