“Don’t you think I’ve had enough water in the past few days?” he asked Verity, but she gave him an annoyingly patient look and thrust the cup into his hands.
“Drink,” she said firmly.
Word soon spread amongst the residents of Hanbury that Mr Underwood was taking the waters on his first trip out since his recent serious illness. Before very long there was a crowd of well wishers around him and Verity, exchanging news and listening with horror as Verity detailed Underwood’s sufferings.
Underwood was not particularly happy to have his evacuations described in such graphic details, nor to have his supposed bravery broadcast to one and all. The truth was he had not felt very brave at all and had longed to resign himself to the beckoning peace of the grave, but with Verity, Gil, Francis and Will all around him, refusing to give up on him, he had no choice but to go on with the cure, and he now remembered very little about it, except pain and humiliation.
Along with all this, he had to persuade Toby that his behaviour regarding Thomas Brodie had been justified. The big man had tussled with his conscience long into the night, finally allowed to sit at Underwood’s bedside, now that Brodie was dead and no longer a threat. It was in the early hours, when resistance was at its lowest ebb, that he had admitted his part in the death of the villain. Underwood had been too weary and weak to feel anything other than supreme relief at the demise of the despised brute and it had taken all his forbearance to listen patiently to Toby’s anguished confession and not simply tell him to pull himself together and be jubilant that a thoroughly evil man was dead.
Jeremy James joined them presently and punched Underwood good naturedly on the arm. The old man winced. Every bone, every muscle in his body still ached and he could only wish that the major had a less mannish way of showing his affection.
“They wouldn’t let me come to see you, Underwood, you know,” he complained, once their two wheelchairs were arranged side by side.
“Good,” said Underwood, “Your bombastic good humour was the last thing a dying man needed.”
“Charming,” said Jeremy James, “Well, the story I heard was that you were not dying at all. You had only had a pinch of arsenic-infused snuff. Trust you to make a great drama out of everything. You only do it to keep that lovely wife of yours on her toes. God knows you are too old for her, so you have to keep her interest somehow.”
From this Underwood was given to understand that Major Thornycroft had been frantic with worry about him and was delighted to see him recovered.
“Go and play dice with the Devil,” he responded equably and Jeremy James roared with laughter.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you back to your old self,” said the ex-soldier.
“Thank you, but not quite my old self, I fear. That may take a few weeks, I’m told. Though if I have to drink much more of this blasted spa water, it will aid my recovery prodigiously – and not because of its miraculous healing powers!”
“You need to be well in a sennight. I have a visitor due to arrive then and he’s very eager to meet you and treat you to several very large drinks.”
“I’ll have to disappoint him on that front,” answered Underwood, with no regret whatsoever in his voice, “I’m banned from drinking alcohol for six months at least, in order to repair the damage to my poor abused liver.”
Jeremy James laughed even more heartily, “Heaven knows what state my liver is in, but time enough to rest it when I’m dead,” he said frankly.
Underwood ignored the change of subject, “I assume this visitor is Captain Petch?” he asked. He had already had a letter from that gentleman, assuring him that as soon as he could be spared from the estate he would be paying his respects in person.
“Indeed. I’ve told him to bring Cressy and Miss Fettiplace with him. If I can’t find husbands for those two old maids, my name isn’t Jeremy James Thornycroft.”
Underwood shook his head in mock despair, “You never learn, do you, Thornycroft? Leave the ladies well alone, that is my advice.”
The major was saved from replying by the arrival of Mrs Woodforde and Sabrina. All smiles, the two ladies were greeted warmly by all gathered there. The court case had been abandoned as soon as the news of Thomas Brodie’s death had been made public. His final words to Lydia, heard and confirmed by Toby and Sabrina, were enough to convince Mrs Woodforde that Silas had indeed left his daughter in the care of the last man he had known on earth. And even if he had not and Lydia was an impostor, Mrs Woodforde no longer cared. She had a daughter to comfort her declining years, Brodie was dead and could not steal the Brownhill fortune, and Lydia was so grateful for the whole sorry mess to be over that she had turned overnight into the considerate and pleasant girl that Verity had always known her to be underneath all her defensive aggression.
Sabrina and Toby were slowly repairing their relationship. The young ex-slave was still finding it difficult to understand that she was really free and that no one could force her to do their bidding ever again. The fact that she and Lydia were bound together by the secret of Brodie’s death meant that their attitude towards each other had also undergone a strange alteration. Lydia suddenly seemed to accept Sabrina as her sister and not her servant. They had begun to go about together, and Lydia had insisted on bestowing some of her vast inheritance on the younger girl. Suddenly Sabrina was not just a free slave, but a woman of independent means. She teased Toby that she was far too good to marry him now and the hurt look on his face had made her fly into his arms, crying an apology for her thoughtlessness.
Gil had promised that he would perform the wedding ceremony just as soon as Underwood was fit enough to play his part as best man.
Verity looked happily about her at her friends and family, truly content that the nightmare of losing Underwood was finally over.
Her husband was now enduring good natured teasing from the Wablers, his brother stood a little way off, looking into his wife’s eyes and smiling at something she had said to him, while Cara’s face softened as she looked back at him. Poor Gil looked as though he had aged in the past few weeks, his greying temples giving him a dashing look, but were a testament to his worry over his beloved Chuffy. The General and Mrs Milner, Underwood’s mother and step-father, were talking to Mrs Woodforde and Jeremy James was trying to avoid having to talk to a superior officer, having not quite shaken off the idea that he was still in the army. Only Will Jebson was missing. He had to return to West Wimpleford to take care of his shop, but he had promised that he would visit again as soon as he could.
For a brief moment Verity found herself alone with Underwood and she smiled at him, “How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Never better, my love. As you know, I generally abhor a crowd about me, but I must own, after all that we have been through, this is rather pleasant.”
“I was just thinking the very same thing. Thank goodness you pulled through, Cadmus, I dread to think that this might very well have been your funeral.” Tears gathered in her eyes, and he leaned over and took her hand in his, kissing it briefly.
“Banish it from you mind, Verity, I beg of you. It was a close run thing, I admit, but it is over now. Let us look forward to the future and not back, fretting about what might have been.”
She nodded and wiped her eyes, “You are quite right, of course. All is ended happily and we can settle down with no more adventures for the foreseeable future.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course. All the loose ends are neatened, are they not? The Greenhowe diamonds are found, Rutherford Petch is back from his foreign prison, and Lydia would seem to be a Woodforde after all.”
“There is one mystery that remains,” said Underwood thoughtfully.
“What is that?” she asked in surprise, not aware of anything that she might have missed out in her summary of the events of the past few weeks.
“I still don’t know the identity of the ‘widow’,” mused Underwood, quite forgetting, in that moment, th
at he had not told Verity of his other brush with death and how he had been saved by the quick actions of a mysterious woman dressed in weeds.
Verity cocked an eyebrow at him, “Underwood,” she said warningly, “Which widow is this?”
“Oh,” said Underwood vaguely, “Just a widow that I met on the stagecoach. No one you need fret about, my dear.”
Verity was aware, though her husband professed not to give her assertion any credence, that Underwood had a certain, indefinable, attraction for other women. Ellen Herbert had once said that a glance from him ‘melted one’s bones’, Cara had conducted an outrageous flirtation with him, before she realized he was married and she had met Gil. Even Lady Hartley-Wells had a soft spot for him, which she would have died before admitting.
From the thoughtful look in Underwood’s eye, Verity had the distinct feeling that she probably had a very great deal to fret about – and mostly it was due to an unknown ‘widow’.
But that was all part of being married to C H Underwood, wasn’t it?
*
THE END
Copyright Suzanne Downes 2015.
Yield Not To Misfortune (The Underwood Mysteries Book 5) Page 26