When nobody made any objection, Stephen turned his attention to Robbie. “Now, you go with your sisters to market, Robbie, and make sure that they don’t come home without everything on that list. Rufus will be here any minute now.”
He dropped down into a chair before the fire and began to munch the apple he swiped off the table. He would much rather it was ham and eggs, or maybe a slice of bacon or two, but it would have to suffice for now.
CHAPTER TEN
He had just thrown his apple core into the fire beside him when an excited squeal from Maggie broke the silence.
“Rufus is here,” she gasped as she flew into the kitchen and then back out again. “Eloisa, Georgiana, come quickly. Rufus is here. He has brought a grand carriage. It is huge. We can all go to market. Hurry! Come and take a look.”
Prudence smiled at her sister’s enthusiasm and followed everyone outside to watch Rufus pull the carriage to a stop outside the front door.
“I take it that there are some ladies here who would like to do some shopping?” he asked with an air of a put-upon male that was at odds with the smile on his face.
Georgian and Madeline began to dance around in a circle. “Is it for us?”
“Of course it is, my lady,” Rufus replied with a bow. “I like my ladies to travel in style.”
“I would hurry up and finish getting ready because he won’t wait forever. He turns into a pumpkin at midnight.” He shared a grin with Rufus, who was completely unperturbed by the excited squeals of the young ladies.
“I thought that because I had so much to get, the extra space would come in handy.”
“Good idea. Robbie has another list of things to get; meats and the like.” He gave Rufus a pointed look that was met with a nod of approval. “I am sure that the carriage will be full to bursting on the return journey.”
He was about to turn to Prudence to ask if she was going to go, when a loud scream shattered the excitement. Everyone froze at the sound of the loud, rhythmic thumps that could be heard even from outside.
“I’ll go,” Prudence sighed.
“Are you not coming, Prudence?” Eloisa frowned. She had so looked forward to a proper ride in a carriage that she almost groaned with disappointment that she might have to stay and look after mother instead, but it didn’t seem right that Prudence should be the one to remain at home.
“I will look after mother. You go and get what we need.” Prudence sensed Eloisa’s objection before she spoke, and pasted an overly bright smile of reassurance on her face. “It’s fine. I don’t need anything anyway aside from what’s on the lists. Keep an eye on Robbie now, or he will get twice what we need and then some.”
She smiled when Eloisa merely rolled her eyes and smiled prettily at Rufus, who was waiting patiently to hand her into the conveyance.
“Thank you.”
“Pleasure.”
Prudence waved and called a cheery goodbye as the carriage pulled away.
“I will go and see what mother wants.” She hurried inside before he could speak. Strangely, she was not disappointed at all that she wasn’t going to market. Although it would have been nice to ride in a carriage, she was glad to have a few moments to herself to get her thoughts in order.
Her mother’s dark spell was worse than she thought. It had been some time before her mother had been this bad and Prudence knew that there was little anyone could do except remain calm and wait until the spell had passed. Still, it was very distressing to see Agatha, walking around in a small circle while she clutched at her hair.
“They are back again. They are. They are, you know. They are back again.”
“I know they are back again, mother. I am sure that they will go again soon,” Prudence soothed.
“They are back again. You don’t believe me. I know it, see? I know you don’t believe that they are back again but you will see them. You will. I know you will.” The fervency in Agatha’s eyes was lit with something strange and vague. It was as though she knew what was saying, but didn’t know why she was saying it. It made Prudence’s heart weep for the cool and unflappably calm woman their mother had once been.
“Come and sit down before the fire,” she whispered. It was suddenly difficult to speak around the lump in her throat. “You will be warmer over here,” she tried to pick up a shawl off the bed but, in order to do so she had to release Agatha, who immediately returned to the window and began to walk in small circles again.
“They come, they go. They are back. They are. They are,” she mumbled, over and over.
“I know, mother. They will go again soon though.” She was so busy trying to coax a shawl onto her mother’s shoulders that she didn’t see Stephen walk into the room behind her. He stood just inside the door and watched Prudence desperately try to hang on to her patience while she tried to coax her mother to get warm again.
The family resemblance was evident in the shape of the face but, in everything else, the two women were poles apart. He knew that madness didn’t run in the family. Prudence was by far the most collected person he knew. Whatever had turned Agatha’s mind had been something that had occurred in her life, and nothing she had been born with. He sighed and watched, unsure whether to just leave them to it or offer to help.
He was about to turn to leave when a loud screech suddenly broke the silence. His gaze flew back toward the window and he watched in horror as Prudence only just managed to duck the Agatha’s clawed fingers as they grasped at her face. She visibly winced when they caught strands of her hair instead and yanked hard. Prudence immediately placed her hand over her mother’s and tried to free herself, all the while trying to dodge her mother’s desperate hold. It was a desperate dance that she knew she would win for no other reason than she was younger and fitter.
A gasp escaped her when suddenly, out of nowhere, a hand appeared and she was suddenly free. Long arms swept her mother clear off her feet and deposited her on the bed with the stern authority of someone who was not going to be crossed. Agatha seemed to realise his strength outclassed hers and she merely lay perfectly still and silent, and stared up at him meekly.
“You will stay there and you will stop this.” He kept his voice calm and matter-of-fact, but ensured that there was a level of harshness there that broke through the hysteria to reach the mother beneath. “You will not do this to Prudence. Rest for a while.”
He turned to Prudence and saw the tears that shimmered on her lashes. “How long has she been like this?”
Prudence sighed and struggled to keep her voice steady. In a few short minutes, he had managed what would have usually taken her an hour, if not more. It was strange, the way he managed to achieve so much with such little effort, and she had no idea whether to be irked by it, or relieved that he was there to help.
“She has been like this since my father left. When he disappeared, something inside her broke,” she whispered solemnly. “She has grown steadily worse ever since.”
“She needs help,” he hated to say that she needed to be locked away, but he knew Prudence understood when she nodded.
“I know, but we cannot just confine her like that. It is more complicated than you realise.”
“How? How can it be, Prudence?” He pointed one long finger to the ghost of a woman on the bed. “Look at her. She is a danger to herself as well as to you and your sisters. What happens when she deteriorates even more? How much worse does she have to be before you realise, and accept, that she cannot remain here?”
“She is our mother. We cannot just cast her out because she is poorly,” Prudence argued. She hated the weakness in her own voice but couldn’t find any anger to strenuously object to what he said. If she was honest with herself, he only echoed her own thoughts to the letter.
“She is more than poorly, Prudence. She is dangerous.”
“We cannot afford a doctor,” she whispered and felt more alone, humiliated and helpless than ever before. Even if they could afford one, they had to think very carefully about the
repercussions to them all, and the house, if Agatha had to be locked away somewhere for her own safety.
“I know.” It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to pay for her treatment but decided to keep that to one side for now. He had already won one battle today over the food; he didn’t want to offend her by offering to pay for everything. However, he was fairly certain that they both knew the woman on the bed was beyond recovery. He could only hope that Prudence would allow him to help find the best solution for them all when the time came.
In all of his life, he had never come across anyone in Agatha’s condition before and had no idea what to do other than send for a Doctor and see what treatment there was available to her, if there was any.
Now that Agatha had stopped her ranting and subsided into a watchful wariness, he felt the tension in Prudence slowly recede, and was glad that he had intervened. He carefully escorted Prudence to the door only to stop when Agatha began to speak.
“I am sorry, Prudence,” Agatha whispered weakly. She frowned at her daughter as though she couldn’t quite make sense of what had just happened herself.
“It’s alright, mother,” Prudence replied with a sad smile. “It will be alright.”
“I know. I don’t know how yet, but it will. I know it will. You just have to be more observant.”
Prudence frowned and turned slowly to face Agatha. It was one of the most lucid comments she had ever heard from her mother, and its suddenness was more than a little startling.
“What do you mean, more observant?”
“They are here, you know. They are. You just don’t see them.”
Feeling a little deflated, Prudence couldn’t raise the energy to argue and merely nodded quietly before she left the room.
“Is she like that often?”
“She gets a little fed up being confined to her room sometimes, that’s all. Unfortunately, we can’t let her out, especially now that Levant is in the area.”
“I agree. She has to be confined to her room for now. Even if Levant wasn’t around, you are too close to the sea to allow her to wander.” The agility the older woman had revealed when she had lunged at Prudence had been a stark reminder never to let looks deceive him. He was glad that he had been there to prevent Prudence from being seriously harmed.
“I hope that it is just you, and Eloisa, who usually see to her needs?”
“Everyone does do their bit to help with her. Robbie loves to read, and does so whenever mother is having one of her lucid moments, although he isn’t comfortable being in there. Georgiana and Madeline usually take her food up and help her with it. Maggie usually cleans the room, while Eloisa and I do the rest. Between us, we manage.”
Stephen could hear the almost defensive tones in her voice and decided to let the matter drop for now. The woman had just been attacked; it would be foolish to prod her into making decisions that could change all of their lives right now.
“Tell me something?” Stephen sighed when they were at the top of the stairs.
Prudence turned to look at him questioningly.
“How many bedrooms does this house have?”
“Eight, why?” She frowned at the sudden change of subject.
“Are they all furnished?”
Prudence nodded slowly. A look of wariness stole across her face. “Yes, but the spare room hasn’t been used in an age. It certainly hasn’t been aired or anything.”
“Let’s go and take a look, shall we?”
Stephen had no intention of using it for himself. Most of his work was carried out under the cover of darkness when everyone else was tucked up in bed. It was usually the best time to catch most of the criminals he usually hunted, and it served his purposes well to be able to hide in the shadows and protect his identity. However, he knew that reinforcements would arrive soon, and they would need somewhere to sleep, especially given that he had already commandeered the only decent chaise in the house that was sturdy enough to bear his weight.
He followed Prudence to the room opposite hers. As soon as she opened the door, he knew that she had told him the truth. The room hadn’t been used in some considerable time and held an air of dank mustiness about it that made him shiver. Still, the fireplace was still there, and the furniture, even if it was all more than a little dusty.
“Well, it is fit for purpose. All we have to do is a little bit of cleaning,” he sighed and placed his hands on his hips as he started to mentally catalogue what they would need to do.
“A little bit of cleaning?” Prudence echoed dubiously as she eyed the thick layer of heavily dusted cobwebs that hung in all four corners of the room.
“Scared?” Stephen grinned, relieved to see the small trace of a smile on her face.
Prudence rolled her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen only to return minutes later with a bucket of water, and enough cleaning materials to make the entire house sparkle. She handed him a broom and pointed to the cobwebs.
“Off you go,” she ordered cheekily and stood back to watch. Once he had started to bring the worst of the webs down from the ceilings, she set to work with the scrubbing brush.
Over an hour later the stood by the door and looked back at the highly polished room that had been scrubbed, brushed, polished and mopped to within an inch of its life. A brisk sea wind blew through the room and was efficiently drying the sodden woodwork.
“Once the curtains have been freshly laundered and clean sheets put on the bed, the room would befit a prince,” Stephen declared proudly and chuckled at the state she was in. He had been too busy evicting spiders and dragging furniture around to pay too much attention but, now that the work was done and he was able to take a good look at her, he couldn’t help but feel a wave of tenderness sweep through him.
Large clumps of her hair had fallen out of the bun at her nape and fell in abandoned ringlets around her dusty face. There was a large smear of dark soot along one porcelain cheek, and a smudge of dust on her nose that when combined with the wet patches on her skirts and the cobwebs on her elbow, made her look like a bedraggled pixie.
Awareness began to heighten the tension between them as they stood side by side in the doorway. Stephen calculated that Rufus would have reached town by about now and would only just be ready to start to shop with the ladies. Even if they hurriedly purchased everything they needed within the next hour, it would at least be three hours before they returned to Cragdale. He stood for a moment and silently contemplated the best course of action to take.
If he was a gentleman, he would brush the dust off her cheek, kiss her on the nose and lead her downstairs for a companionable cup of tea. However, this was Prudence; the woman who had haunted his dreams since the first moment he had set eyes on her in her own garden. It had only been a week ago, but it felt to him as though he had known her for a lifetime. Her likes, and dislikes, feelings and thoughts mattered to him. He felt as though he knew her so well already and was certain, deep down, once his work with the Star Elite was finished and Levant was behind bars, or dead, he was going to stay with Prudence and her siblings and make Cragdale his home.
There was a lot about the windswept house sitting high above the small village of Marchwell that had captured his imagination and made him want to stay, not including the wonderful family who lived there, and the deliciously tempting woman before him.
“Do you mind if we use it?”
Prudence’s heart leapt into her throat and she glanced at the room beside them blankly for a moment. “It needs to be decorated first. The curtains need to be laundered for a start.”
“I was talking about when it was done. Do you mind if we use it?”
She felt her cheeks blush but nodded anyway. “Of course, you and your colleagues are welcome to it for as long as you need it,” she replied somewhat awkwardly. “I will take those curtains with me.”
He propped a shoulder against the door frame and watched as she drew a chair toward the window, climbed onto it and stood on tip-toe to reach the top of t
he curtain. He studied the window that was so close to her and shook his head. Did the woman not see danger?
“If you fall, you will go straight out of that open window. Let me do it.”
“I am fine,” Prudence grunted, and stretched to try to reach the end of the pole. She yelped when a pair of strong hands grabbed her waist and she was hauled bodily off the chair and dropped unceremoniously on her feet. She spun around and opened her mouth to tell him off only to find herself hauled into his arms.
His mouth captured any protest she intended to make and encased the room in silence for several long moments while he plundered her senses. He had no idea what was driving him to be so forthright with her so suddenly. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her, but she brought about such deep and tender feelings in him, so easily, and without even being aware of it, that he just had to make her realise, and understand, just how much of a profound effect she had on him, both physically and emotionally.
He wouldn’t ordinarily call himself an emotional man, but the feelings this woman created within him shook him to his core. Although he would never shy away from it, he desperately needed to know if she felt the same for him. Did they have a future together? Was she attracted to him in the same way?
When he had kissed her before, she had responded with a passionate enthusiasm that had encouraged him, but was it out of curiosity, or need for him in particular? He had already decided that he wanted to remain at Cragdale once his job was done, but would she let him? Would she want him to stick around and be a permanent part of her life? Would she want to share her life, and the responsibility of the family with him? To him, living at Cragdale with the Freestone family would not be a responsibility, it would be an honour. He just needed to get Prudence to start to about the future: a future that had him as a permanent, long-term fixture.
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