“I know,” Gaston said and handed the baby back to her.
“For now you can sleep while the baby does, Mistress,” Hannah said kindly.
We left them to sleep, and I told the Gods I very much wanted the child to wake. Gaston was quiet, and I offered my hand and he took it. I knew there would be no solace I could offer him save laudanum if the child were to die because he gave her too much. That worried me more than the child’s death.
Thankfully, unlike the cobbler we had encountered, the glazier seemed quite entertained by the notion of making something new, and spoke with great interest about the specifications of a tiny glass funnel. We left a deposit for his work, and arranged to come back that afternoon. Then we purchased an armful of netting for our new sleeping arrangement.
At our home, we found Theodore sitting in the atrium speaking with Sarah and the Marquis. Gaston nodded politely and slipped away to the stable.
“Your house is quiet for a time,” I informed Theodore as I followed my matelot. “The babe sleeps. I believe your wife might be sleeping as well.”
He appeared relieved at this.
“Wait,” the Marquis called after me.
I paused and turned to find him hurrying to my side.
“What is the matter?” he asked with genuine concern.
With a sigh I explained briefly our concerns for the child: that she was damaged in some fashion, and perhaps not long for the earthly plane. “Gaston will not take it well if she dies,” I finished.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Is that because he is a physician, or… Well, from my understanding, I do not see where he should feel some kinship with the child.”
I gave a rueful smile. “He wants children… very much. And though this little girl has no relation to either of us, I have decided to claim her so that… we have a child. And, oui, some of it is due to his being a physician as well.”
It looked as if he would say more, but he kept his lips pressed together.
“You think us fools,” I said lightly.
He frowned and smiled sheepishly. “Non, not… I feel you will think I am a selfish old man: a noble in your definition.”
I smiled. “You cannot see why we would do such a thing.”
“Non, I cannot. I had children because a man, a nobleman, needs to have heirs.”
“Honestly,” I said, “I cannot quite grasp his fascination with them, either, but I will do this to please him. He views them with delight, though. I feel he wishes to raise them in a manner he was not raised…” I shrugged. “And somehow make right of that in his heart.”
He seemed struck by that, not as if I had chastised him, but in awestruck contemplation. “That is truly noble,” he said at last. “So does he intend to live with them?” He asked this last as if he could comprehend all else I had said, but not that.
“I think they will be underfoot more than good hounds,” I said with a grin. “I cannot imagine it, either.”
“That method of raising them seems to do well by the peasants,” he said. “They appear to have far less trouble with their children meeting their expectations.”
“Do they?” I asked. “I suppose… Well, I have always felt that is because they have low expectations. Now which of us sounds like a wolf?”
He chuckled.
He looked about, and spying Theodore and Sarah going over a ledger, said, “So you will keep that wife?”
“Oui, it appears so,” I sighed. “Despite the trouble she has caused. It will not be due to fondness or duty.”
“I imagine, though your good man there,” he gestured at Theodore with his cane, “has not divulged any confidence, that there is significant cost associated with your wife’s… escapade.”
“I do not know the full accounting of it, but oui,” I sighed.
He nodded and turned to meet my gaze. “I will pay it.”
“Why?” I gasped. “You need not…” And then I recalled that all the money Gaston and I had in the bottom of the medicine chest came from the man before me.
He made a clucking noise. “Your affairs are inextricably linked with my son’s, are they not?”
“Oui,” I sighed. “We share all things, the good and the bad.”
“Then your debts are my son’s debts.” He gave a little shrug and moue.
“They are, here, amongst the Brethren, but I am truly surprised you would view it so,” I said somberly.
He awarded me a lopsided grin. “As am I, but I find I do, or perhaps should.”
I was unsure as to whether his beneficence truly resulted from his accepting me as his son’s partner, or whether it was his old oozing wound of guilt that he thought to staunch with even more gold, but I was pleased: because even if it was the latter, he was choosing to perceive me as someone inextricably linked to his son.
“Thank you, my Lord,” I said sincerely and bowed. “We have the funds, but… well, your beneficence is appreciated.”
“I know, and you are welcome to it.” He clapped my arm and walked back to the tables.
I found Gaston where I expected, lying in the straw with Bella and her puppies.
He gently wiggled a slumbering loaf as he looked up at my entry. “Perhaps all little ones sleep so soundly.”
I dropped down to join him. “She will be fine.”
He sighed. “How is… Lady Marsdale?” He said her title as if it pained him.
“My damn wife will be fine, too.” I laid a hand on his shoulder so that he turned to regard me curiously. “Your father has said he will pay all the debts associated with the fire.”
“Why?” Gaston asked.
I shrugged. “He says it is because our affairs are linked and thus my debts are yours.”
“Do you feel he is sincere?”
“Oui.” I told him of my thoughts on it possibly still being guilt.
Gaston shrugged. “Gold will not remove my scars or… undo all else he has wrought, but it is appreciated. Now if he would only give us gold when he feels guilt, and do naught else.”
I chuckled. “Oui. Speaking of that, should we pay a call to the Vines to smooth ruffled feathers, or simply let the matter be marooned and never discussed again?”
He shook his head. “I do not know precisely what my fool father said. Perhaps you should go. I would not have them think poorly of us.”
“I will consider it, then; but I feel no great urge to do so now. If we do anything at all, we should see to cleaning rooms. I would feel guilt over that matter if I saw anyone else working on them, but I have not spied Pete and Striker this morning.”
He nodded, and stood to address the netting. I moved to help him, and we decided how best to tack it to the ceiling so that it fell about our hammock.
Sometime after we finished with that task and returned to the puppies, I was lost somewhere between dozing and mustering the energy to crawl atop my matelot and nuzzle his neck when Agnes appeared in the doorway. Spying us, she swiftly stepped inside and squatted to speak in a whisper.
“I have been in the market with Pete and Striker,” she hissed.
“Well, that explains where they are,” I said in a conversational tone.
She frowned. “I was approached by someone there: someone we all know: Christine. She wishes to speak with you, both of you, but she is afraid you will betray her again and she seeks assurances.”
I sat up. “Betray her? How have we… Oh… She is making another escape?”
Agnes nodded. “She is dressed as a boy again and skulking about the market. She would not tell me her plans; she only said that she wished to seek your advice, but that she was afraid…”
I looked to Gaston, who had also risen to sit and was now quite alert. He nodded.
“Tell her we will not betray her,” I assured Agnes. “We did not mean to last time, but we did not know how much forethought she had given to the matter and we were led to believe she had bolted in blind panic and we feared for her safety. We will not make that mistake twice. If she will meet with us, we will tell
no one. We will not give her up to any who come looking for her, either.”
Agnes nodded. “I will tell her and see what can be arranged. She does not want Striker and Pete to know, of course, and Striker was angry when I said I had to return home… for female reasons – because we were looking at bedding and the like and it bores and confounds him. So I will have to be careful.”
I grinned at the thought of Striker and Pete attempting to buy linens.
“Should we accompany you, then, and meet with her there?” I asked.
“Nay, nay,” she said as she worried her lip with her teeth. “I am afraid she will bolt if she sees you arrive with me. Let me see if I can send her here.”
She slipped away, leaving the yard by the back gate. Gaston and I regarded one another.
“Well, this is an interesting development,” I said. “I suppose I shall not pay the Vines a visit.”
He shook his head with a rueful smirk as he flopped back down next to the puppies. “Why can nothing be simple?”
“We would likely be as bored and confounded by it as Striker is with linens,” I sighed.
I peered out: the sun was quite high. “I suppose I should see to my wife.”
Sarah and Theodore were no longer in the atrium, but the Marquis and Dupree were. They were reading an English copy of Don Quixote; or rather, Dupree was translating it as he went, and the Marquis was leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed, either napping or listening. I could not tell which – though he was not snoring. His eyes did not open at my approach.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Dupree.
“Mister Striker, Mister Wolf and Miss Agnes are at the market,” Dupree said quietly. “Mistress Striker has retired for a nap. Samuel is in the cookhouse, and Henrietta is upstairs collecting the soiled linens. We are apparently awaiting a water wagon to fill the cisterns so that the cleaning might begin.”
“Well, I do not feel so very lazy then,” I said with a smile.
“And…” He frowned. “You should probably know. Your… wife, was calling out earlier, and Henrietta went to see to her.”
I swore and went to the parlor. I found Vivian pacing such as the chains would allow, with her gaze on the floor to keep from tripping, and her arms crossed tightly under her breasts to support them. She started at my entry.
“You have turned my maid against me,” she snapped.
“I hope so, for her sake,” I said and crossed the room. I gently took her chin to turn her face to the light so that I could gauge her eyes. She did not appear inebriated and she jerked away angrily. I could not smell any alcohol upon her breath when she cursed me.
Her sudden movement to escape me caused her to lose her balance and begin to fall, as she could not move her chained ankle fast enough to recover. I caught her and pulled her upright. The whole of it enraged her, and I was soon besieged by a flurry of ineffectual blows that I handily managed to stave off, until she attempted to put her knee in my groin and stomp on my bare feet with her tiny ones. Then I grabbed her wrists and held her from me. She roared with frustration and tears filled her eyes. I released her and she took another swing, this one a good solid jab and not a flailing slap. I threw my arm up to block it, and she flinched from my raised hand though I had harbored no intent to strike her.
“Go on!” she hissed when I let my arm fall. “I have been struck by better men than you!”
I made a guess and took a step back, beyond her reach. “You are saying your father is a better man than I? A man who would sell his daughter to the highest bidder to cover his gambling debts?”
“That is not what I meant!” she snapped. “I did not mean he was… better! I meant he could hit harder than some damn sodomite!”
“Oh,” I said with feigned enlightenment, and then I could not stop the grin from seizing my lips.
“Do not mock me!” she roared as her tears came. “You bastard. What do you want from me?”
I considered the question sincerely and wiped the smile from my face. “I want to see you sober. I want to converse with the little girl hiding in there behind all that rum and ire.”
“Why! Why?” she screamed. “You will not like her! No one ever liked her! She was useless! She will always be useless! A fat cow who cannot even deliver a boy! A fat whore with a deformed and sickly baby! I know what happens to women who cannot birth boys. My father beat my mother for me and all four of my sisters. I was responsible for her bad hip! Not one boy! She finally fell down the stairs and broke her neck!”
She stood panting and then the realization of what she had said came and her hand flew to her mouth to stop the words that had already fled. She regarded me with horror. “Do not pity me!” she hissed. But the rage was departing her and she sank to the floor in a cloud of gown.
“I do not. I do not!” I said loudly enough to draw her gaze back to mine as I squatted in front of her. “I feel sympathy for you, aye, but not pity. When you are drunk you are worthy of pity, you are quite pathetic, but now and… I think the girl under all that rum is not a person to be pitied.”
“You do not know anything,” she growled.
“I think I do: I know what it is to be beaten,” I said softly. “And I swear to you on all I hold holy that you shall never be beaten by me. Nor will Jamaica. Gaston and I suffered enough in our childhood; we would be evil or ignorant men indeed to inflict what we faced upon another. We will not allow it.”
I could see her searching my face and eyes for any sign of deception: I did not flinch.
“Well, you have not struck me yet,” she said at last and fidgeted with her gown.
“Aye, and you have given me what many would consider good cause,” I said lightly.
She actually smirked, but then the tears came anew. I felt I should comfort her, but thought I dare not touch her.
“What can I do for you?” I asked gently.
“I am somewhat hungry and thirsty,” she said and pawed her tears away. “Henrietta brought me nothing because… I was angry with her for not…”
“Bringing you something to drink,” I offered.
She snorted. “Aye.”
“I will see what Sam has,” I said and went to the door.
“Might I have some chocolate?”
“As much as you want,” I told her, and went to find some.
Gaston was leaning in the stable doorway as I crossed the atrium. He came to join me as I went to the cookhouse and asked Sam for chocolate. There was none hot, but Sam assured me he could make some quickly.
I pulled Gaston back to the stable doorway and quickly told him all she had said.
He sighed when I finished. “I so want to hate her.”
I chuckled. “I know, but as we suspected, she is as scarred as we. That should not prevent you from hating her, though.”
“It does if it gives reason to her actions,” he said.
“Why is it that neither of us turned to drink?” I asked. “I drink… to excess more times than I wish to remember – more times than I can remember – but… it is different. I have seen others like her: people who drink to drown their sorrows: people who drink so that they do not feel. There are times when I feel the need to do so, but not every day. Even when I am lost to melancholy I do not drink in that manner.”
He frowned in contemplation. “I do not know.”
A soot-covered Henrietta approached with an armful of blackened linen.
“I have seen your mistress,” I said. “I am taking her some chocolate.”
She nodded grimly. “I am sorry that I went in, my Lord. But she was yowlin’ such that I thought people on the street would hear her.”
“I understand,” I said. “Do not fret; you did well.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
The chocolate was done at the same time the water wagon arrived. Gaston went to help with that matter and I hurried to take mug and pot to Vivian.
“How is Jamaica?” she asked as I set the things in her reach. She was still sitting on
the floor.
I hovered, torn between going to help with the water and answering her. I decided they could do well enough without me and sat. “She is… as miserable as you from the lack of rum, it seems, and she can do nothing but cry. And as she is so small and weak, there are concerns… She did not wish to sleep. So Gaston gave her some medicine to calm her.”
She seemed pleased to hear this, and then she snorted. “Can he not give the same to me?”
“Non, he cannot. It is laudanum: it can cause a greater craving than spirits. We are only giving it to the baby because she will not live if she does not eat and sleep. You are strong.”
“She is truly that close to death?” she asked.
I nodded.
She started crying again.
“She is being well cared for,” I said. “And… you can help with that as soon as you are … well.”
“I made her ill,” she sobbed. “She is better off without me.”
I cast about for some kind thing to say and settled on, “The rum made her ill. The rum has made you… not yourself.”
She snorted at that, but her words were soft. “I do not know who I am without it, or wine, or…” She sighed.
I thought it quite possible she had been drinking since she left the nursery. “How old were you when you were last sober?”
She smiled grimly. “Eleven.”
“And how old are you now?”
“Sixteen.”
I had been a boy fleeing his father’s house and Gaston had been exiled here at her age.
“Five years,” I remarked gently, “well, it is no wonder you do not know who you are without it. Let us find out.”
She shook her head. “The last five years have been better than the first ten.”
I shrugged. “You might be surprised at who you become in the next ten. I would have been at your age. And nay, I am not mocking you.”
She was studying me, but her eyes were narrowed and her brow furrowed with thought that I felt had little to do with me. “I have never imagined I will live that long,” she said at last.
“To the ancient and decrepit age of twenty-six?” I teased.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-seven,” I said with amusement.
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