My Saving Grace

by Harmon, Danelle

  The boy stood a distance apart from them, sullenly watching the curricle. Something about his face tugged at Grace’s heartstrings, and she lifted a hand to wave to him.

  He did not wave back. Instead he turned and walked away, heading back toward the house.

  Grace frowned, and the day lost even more of its luster. What was troubling the boy?

  “Pay him no mind,” Captain Ponsonby said, laying a hand over her own. “He’s a surly lad, that one.”

  “He is my little cousin, and he is not surly,” Grace said, feeling another flash of irritation. And it wasn’t just irritation. It was an unhappiness coming from a place she couldn’t quite access, let alone understand.

  What’s the matter with you? You’ve wanted this for a long time, and now it’s happening. Look! You’re riding in an open curricle with the man of your dreams!

  She watched the boy walking away.

  If he’s the man of my dreams, then why do I feel so flat and cold? Why do I feel this odd guilt, and why does being here with him seem so... so wrong?

  Another face, with cool gray eyes and a too-serious mouth, wild black curls and broad shoulders. A friendship she didn’t deserve, had never deserved. A man who had kissed her senseless in a darkened room and fought a duel on her behalf, who had come into her life and so quickly walked out of it without even a proper goodbye. A lump rose in her throat, and tears burned behind her eyes, and she suddenly realized why she felt such guilt at being with Sheldon Ponsonby.

  You’re not supposed to be with Captain Ponsonby.

  Well, of course she was. He was handsome and kind and courteous. He was gentle with the horse, solicitous of her health, her comfort, her feelings. He was actually quite perfect.

  You’re just rattled because of Ned’s strange behavior. You’ve got cold feet because you finally got what you wanted and you didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. What is wrong with you, you ninny? Captain Ponsonby is a heartbeat from offering for you. It’s what Mama had hoped for when she invited him to the wedding. What you had hoped for. Any woman would be proud to be on his arm!

  “Well, if young master Ned is out of sorts, I’m sure he’ll get over it soon enough,” Captain Ponsonby said briskly. He leaned close to Grace, and she felt the brush of his lips against her temple.

  Everything inside of her went cold, and she stiffened.

  “I think I would like to go back now,” she said, making a big pretense of smoothing her skirts. “I find myself ever so thirsty.”

  “A splendid idea,” he said, and laid his palm over her kneecap for the briefest of moments before turning the horse in a wide circle, lowering the whip, and pulling back on the ribbons to ease the animal down to a walk. “I’ll just cool him out as we walk back. Unless you are in a hurry?”

  “The horse’s welfare comes first,” she said with a wan smile, and suddenly realized that Captain Ponsonby had slowed the horse not only for its own welfare, but to prolong the extent of their time together before joining the others.

  Grace pressed her knees together, trying to maintain a narrower profile. She was beginning to feel an inexplicable panic. Especially when he stretched an arm along the back of the seat.

  Soon enough, they were approaching the gathering, the Falconer twins rushing up to touch the horse. Movement caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a servant approaching, bearing a silver tray on which was a letter.

  He made straight for Colin Lord. Their host took the letter, broke the seal and opened it. As Grace waited for Captain Ponsonby to help her down, she saw Colin’s face go white, saw him say something to Sir Graham and pass him the letter, saw the admiral lose his relaxed amiability and put out a hand to touch Colin’s shoulder. Both men had got to their feet, their faces grave.

  “Bad news, by the look of things,” murmured Captain Ponsonby, jumping lightly down from the curricle. “I’m sure it’s concerning the French. It’s always concerning the French.” He reached a hand up to help Grace down. “I hope I’m not getting sent back out on sea patrol. Not when I’ve just discovered the joy of your company, Lady Grace.”

  The admiral was saying something to Lady Falconer, and now heading toward them. Colin Lord was now hurrying in his odd, purposeful limp toward the house. A shadow had definitely come over the afternoon, and Grace felt a sudden tremor of dread.

  She hurried to her uncle.

  “What is it, Uncle Gray?”

  “My flag captain,” he said shortly. “He’s developed blood poisoning from his wound and isn’t expected to survive the week.”

  * * *

  He handed the letter to Grace.

  My dearest Colin,

  I am sending this letter with the utmost urgency. Your brother arrived earlier today and is sick with a fever. He has a terrible wound on his arm and between the two, we fear blood poisoning. We have sent for the doctor, but I didn’t want to waste any time in writing to you as you may wish to come immediately to say goodbye. I fear your brother won’t last the week. If you have a person named Grace with you, please bring her along, as he is out of his head and calling for her. Godspeed.

  Love, Mama

  “Poor chap,” said Captain Ponsonby, as Grace silently read the letter. “I hope they’ve found him a doctor who had the sense to amputate, only way to save a man’s life after something like that.”

  Grace, stricken, couldn’t move. She just stood there, trying to swallow, trying to reclaim the feel of the ground beneath her feet, the sound of her breath through her lungs, which had stopped and now hung, suspended, somewhere in her throat. She pressed the letter to her heart and blinked away the sudden tears.

  “Lady Grace?”

  It was Captain Ponsonby, his perfect brow furrowed, his hand coming out to take her own.

  “This is all my fault,” Grace whispered, her eyes flooding. “Oh, dear God...”

  “You must not fret,” said the captain. “It will not do your sensibilities any good to—”

  “You don’t understand!”

  He blinked, confused, and in the next minute Grace had found her feet, and was running toward the house, passing Colin Lord and quickly catching up to Ned.

  He turned as she came up behind him, breathing hard. Turned his head and picked up his pace.

  “Ned!”

  “I already know.”

  “Already know what?”

  “That something bad has happened to Captain Lord.”

  “How can you know that?!”

  “I just do. I know lots of things.”

  He continued his march toward the house, trying to put distance between them.

  “Ned, please wait!”

  He whirled then, and his face was red and angry, his mouth mutinous. “You should never have accepted Captain Ponsonby’s suit, Grace! You might as well have just cut Captain Lord’s heart out of his chest and fed it to him. How could you do that to him? Why were you so cruel? And now he’s probably dying, and it’s all your fault!”

  The boy’s eyes blazed, then filled with tears.

  “Oh, Ned...”

  “He was in love with you, and you couldn’t see it because you were so wrapped up in Captain Ponsonby. You broke his heart, you know. Why do you think he left? It was because he couldn’t stay here and see the woman he loved fawning over another man!” The boy wiped angrily at his eye with the back of his knuckle. “I thought better of you, Grace. After all that he did for you!”

  The boy turned and this time, he was no longer walking in the determined strides of the man he was trying so hard to be. He was running, a child once more, and in his wake Grace heard his sobs. He reached the door, tore it open, and fled into the house.

  Grace stood there on the lawn. Colin Lord, the speckled gundog trotting at his heels, caught up to her.

  “I assume you’re going to Hampshire,” she said, falling into step beside him.

  “Immediately.” He turned then, his kind and gentle eyes, so much like Captain Lord’s, filled with pain. “I’m so
rry to leave you all so suddenly, but he’s my brother. The only brother I have.” His gaze turned bleak. “I can only hope that I get there in time to say goodbye.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  He looked at her and nodded. “Good. I’d hoped you would. Let’s pray we’re not too late.”

  35

  He lay in this bed that had been his as a child, his muscles aching, his very bones on fire, his skin slick with sweat and his body shaking with cold beneath three heavy wool blankets. He rolled over, trying to get comfortable. Moved an arm. Moved it again, this time under his pillow in an attempt to support his aching head. Beyond the window, the Hampshire Downs stood like sentinels against the night, and eventually their glow was lost to the gloom and finally, backlit by stars.

  His mother came in, wrung out a cloth in cold water, and tenderly bathed his brow. In the glow of the candle, her profile was serene and still breathtakingly beautiful.

  “Sleep, my sweet little lad,” she said in Irish. “Sleep, and let He who walked on the water itself, come and heal you.”

  But Del couldn’t sleep, and eventually the glass she handed him contained the awful dram she used to bring when they were down sick as children, some wretched and familiar concoction of pure misery she’d learned from her people back in Ireland. There was alcohol in it, and something else. A sleeping potion, it was. Or a fast vessel toward an early grave if it didn’t do the work it was meant to do. It tasted as bitterly foul as it had done when he was a boy but he didn’t have the fight in him to resist it. He sipped it, managed to keep it down, sipped some more, and felt himself drifting off as he struggled to finish the last few swallows.

  His mother took the glass and put it on the table beside the bed, and pulled the blanket up more fully over her son’s broad, strong shoulders as he closed his eyes and finally settled on his side. Somewhere between sleep and the misery that was wakefulness, Del felt her softly stroking his back through the nightshirt, and his fierce, uncontrollable shaking lessened and finally stopped.

  He drifted, his body hot, sweating, and then seized again by chills. The hand on his back, his shoulder. The touch, rhythmic and soothing, brought him comfort, and a peace that lulled him deeper into slumber. Above the ceiling, the several stories of the old house, the roof above, the stars in the heavens wheeled in their prescribed track, and sometime during this long, stately dance across the sky, he finally slept.

  * * *

  Colin Lord, accompanied by Lady Grace Fairchild and her maid Polly, took his own coach south toward Hampshire.

  It was not pulled by the famous Norfolk Thoroughbreds but it made good time nonetheless, and the shadows were long and stretching across the great lawn, the Downs of Hampshire, when they finally arrived at his childhood home.

  Tension now gripped his jaw, withered any predisposition toward idle conversation. He had brought his surgical kit and every medicine he thought might turn things around for his younger brother, though he doubted he could offer anything more than the local doctor would have come up with. But the question remained.

  Did I do this to him?

  He knew as well as anyone that even the slightest flesh wound could go putrid. That a seemingly innocent cut through the skin and muscle could spell the death of a man. He had cleaned the wound, fished out the bits of Del’s sleeve, stitched it up tightly, admonished him to keep it bandaged and clean... what more could he have done?

  His father met them at the door. “Colin,” he said, a bit sheepishly. “Did you not get our second letter?”

  “What second letter? We left Norfolk immediately after receiving the first. Please tell me we’re not too late.”

  “You are not.” The old admiral looked uncomfortable. Embarrassed. “Um, uh... thank you for coming. Do wish you’d gotten the second letter, though.”

  Colin searched his father’s face, looking for news he wasn’t prepared to hear. His relationship with the old admiral was... formal, for lack of any other word he could summon, and he knew there were still hard feelings and wounded pride following his court-martial out of the Royal Navy several years before. An eldest son in a proud tradition of naval officers didn’t leave the Navy, willingly or otherwise, and he certainly didn’t go on to become what most people considered to be little more than a farrier.

  His occupation, he well knew, was in his father’s eyes beneath him.

  “How is he?”

  “Asleep.”

  “And?”

  “Colin!” There was his mother, rushing to meet him. For a moment, Colin froze, prepared for the worst. But her face did not look ravaged or tear-stained, which told him she was either in denial of Del’s condition, or his brother still clung to life. What was going on here? Why were his parents behaving so strangely?

  “Oh, my son, how I’ve missed ye! And ye’ve brought friends? Don’t be rude now, let’s have introductions!”

  Colin hastily made them, and saw his parents exchange a private, knowing look that confused him all the more. But explanations would have to come later. He was desperate to see his brother. They all went into the house, Colin’s leg bothering him after the many hours spent in the coach.

  The day had been warm, the heat still lingering in the foyer, the sun lighting it up in an orange glow as it began to sink over the downs. A footman took his hat and coat. Colin did not recognize the young man. Another thing that had changed since he’d last been to his childhood home. The housekeeper took Polly off into the kitchen for refreshment.

  “He’s upstairs,” said his mother. “The doctor has already come and gone for the day, but I hold with yer professional opinion far more than I do his.”

  “Mother, I am a veterinarian, not a physician.”

  “And ye brought yer case of instruments, so don’t tell me ye didn’t have hopes of tryin’ yer own cure. Go on upstairs with ye. Lady Grace and I will take tea in the parlor while ye’re having a look at him.”

  There was nothing intimidating about the Irishwoman but Grace, following her, could feel the unasked question weighing heavily in the air. And it was as they entered a room papered in gold and set with pretty damask chairs and a maid brought in a tray of tea, that Mrs. Lord asked it.

  “So, Lady Grace, what’s yer relationship t’ my son?”

  Grace flushed. She didn’t even know where to start.

  But she tried. She began with Captain Ponsonby and her foolish attempts to impress him, and how Captain Lord had saved her from drowning, and how he’d gallantly agreed to help her learn how to sail in order to catch Ponsonby’s eye. She told the Irishwoman of the friendship she and Delmore Lord had cultivated and how he had cared for her when she’d been seasick, and how he’d fought a duel over her honor. And while she did not mention the kiss, she told her how much he had come to mean to her, and of her guilt that he was upstairs dying because of her.

  And it was there, with that one awful word, that Grace’s composure began to crumble and the paralyzing grief she’d harbored since reading that awful letter finally gave way to the tears she was trying valiantly to contain. She bit down hard on her lip, hoping this kindly woman would not see the water flooding into her eyes.

  “I do wish we hadn’t been quite so hasty with that first letter. Would’ve saved ye a long trip and a bucket o’ tears as well,” Captain Lord’s mother mused. She leaned forward to pour the tea and slid a cup to Grace, smiling a bit apologetically. She had eyes of a color somewhere between violet and purple, and the kind of manner that made a person feel understood instead of judged. “But what’s done is done. Ye’re here now, aren’t ye?”

  Grace nodded, unable to speak.

  “And were you and my son successful at nettin’ this Captain Ponsonby?”

  “Yes,” Grace whispered. She looked down. “Yes, we were.”

  Silence. Grace put her hands together and pressed them between her knees. She stared at her kneecaps beneath her gown, blinking. As she did, her vision finally blurred and her sinuses burned and she saw a tea
rdrop fall upon the soft muslin.

  Another.

  There was a slight clink as Mrs. Lord put her cup down in its saucer. She said nothing for a long moment, giving Grace time to regain her composure.

  “And now that ye have him, ye’re not sure ye want him,” she said gently.

  Grace burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

  A moment later, she felt the warmth of the other woman’s arm around her shoulders, her motherly concern. “There now, dearie,” she said, her kind empathy so different from Grace’s own mother’s detached indifference, “’twill be all right. I’ve been around long enough that I know very well why ye came, and why ye’re cryin’.” She pressed a handkerchief into Grace’s hand. “When Colin comes down, why don’t ye go up and sit with Delmore for a while. He would like that, I’m sure.”

  “But he’s so upstanding and proper, I can’t imagine he’d approve of that.”

  “I can assure ye, love, he won’t even know.”

  The implication was there. That Captain Lord was so sick, that he was past recognition of the rules of propriety, past knowing or caring whether Grace was there or not, and the reality of that fact hit Grace all over again.

  She burst into fresh sobs, and buried her face in the handkerchief.

  “Hush, child. Everything’s going t’ be fine.”

  Grace pressed the handkerchief to her eyeballs, weeping.

  “I’m so sorry,” she managed, between sobs. “You must think terribly of me... I’m just so... so confused.”