Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  “Yes, Ma’am, I must,” Tam apologized, voice steady, though her revelations about Mr. Blackwell sent his mind spinning. “If you would lie down this end of the bed with your head on the pillows where I have them arranged, I will examine you to determine how far along the babe is and when your maid returns with my medicine cabinet I’ll give you something for the pain. The physician—”

  “No. No physician. ’Twas the physician who killed Miriam. If he had listened to your master… If Mr. Blackwell had not sent for a-a sawbones…”

  “He was obliged to; he thought it was the right thing to do. She was so weak… Even Mr. Dobbs had given up hope… You can’t blame him for that. Two days of difficult labor—”

  “But to cut into her the way he did… He hacked into her. He was bloody and brutal…” She lifted her head from the pillows to look over her rounded belly at Tam. “Promise me, Thomas. No physician.”

  “I promise. But I will fetch a physician if your life or the babe’s life is threatened,” Tam stated bluntly. “Not to do so would be a breach of my duty and I will not break the oath I have taken.”

  “He is not to cut into me. Not unless I am truly dead. You must make certain I am dead. Promise me.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I promise.”

  Miranda let her head drop back onto the pillow, satisfied, and stared up at the pleated canopy above her head, trying not to think about Tam between her open legs, though she could not stop the blush to her cheeks. But the next contraction, more powerful than the last, dissolved her modesty and she screamed out and cursed long and loud in French.

  “That’s the way, Ma’am,” Tam encouraged her. “Scream as loud as you please if it helps.”

  Miranda managed a half-hearted giggle between pants.

  “I am sorry, Thomas. Do you speak French?”

  “Well enough to know that what you just said would turn a dowager’s ears puce, if that’s what you’re asking. Lord Halsey is an exceptional linguist and so I’ve managed to pick up a few choice French phrases.”

  “Lord Halsey..?”

  Tam was quick to see this as an invitation to prattle on about his history and how he came to be Alec’s valet, acutely aware how uncomfortable it must be for her with him in such intimate quarters, so he obliged her; anything to take her mind off the indelicacy of their present situation; anything to take his mind off the enormity of the task that was ahead of him.

  When Janie came into the bedchamber it was to find Tam between her mistress’s wide-open legs. But what made her almost lose her grip on his travelling apothecary case was not the shock of the sight that presented itself to her, which was a shock indeed, it was that her mistress and the young apothecary were on such familiar speaking terms, as if it was the most natural thing in the world and they, conversing over a cup of tea and slices of bread and butter.

  When Tam sat back, gently pulled a sheet up over her mistress’s bare legs and went to the basin to scrub his hands, Janie deposited the travelling apothecary case, and followed him.

  “Is everything as it should be, Mr. Fisher?” she whispered.

  “Yes. But she is not far enough along to begin pushing hard. There’s a ways to go yet.”

  Janie nodded, a glance over her shoulder at Miranda who moaned quietly amongst the pillows. She emptied the dirty water into a pail and replenished the porcelain patterned bowl with fresh water to soak a cloth to place on Miranda’s forehead.

  “I’ve had ale and a cold collation brought up for you. It’s in the sittin’ room. I thought you would prefer it there.”

  “Thank you, Miss, that was very thoughtful.”

  “It’s Janie. I thought you should know,” she said, unable to stop her face flaming, “there’s a handsome gentleman sittin’ in the sitting room windowseat. Black curls and looks like one of them statues Mr. Talgarth has in a jotter he showed me once. Do you know him?”

  “A Greek statue?” Tam grinned. “Yes. That would be his lordship. Lord Halsey. I’ll give Mrs. Bourdon something to ease the pain and then I’ll step out and see his lordship for a moment but return directly. Will you be all right left alone with your mistress?”

  “A’course! I’ve had the lookin’ after of her since—”

  “No. No. I meant no offence, Janie. I just thought in the present circumstances—”

  “Make up your potion and then go and eat, Mr. Fisher.”

  “Thomas. Thomas,” Miranda called, thinking Tam about to leave the room when he disappeared from her line of sight. “I have another promise to ask of you…”

  From the end of the bed, where he was rummaging in his apothecary cabinet, Tam looked up and nodded at Janie who was mopping Miranda’s head with a damp cloth, and said, “He’s listen’ to you, Ma’am. He’s makin’ you up a potion to help you with the pain.”

  Miranda squeezed Janie’s hand and smiled at her, thus including her in her request when she said to Tam, “No one is to know the true sex of the child. You must pronounce the baby a girl. It matters not if it is a boy, you must say it is a girl. I beg you. For the sake of the baby. It’s what Mr. Bourdon would wish. Promise me, Thomas. Janie?”

  Tam and Janie exchanged a worried look before both nodded in mute acceptance of a request both privately thought odd in the extreme yet Tam’s further verbal acceptance and Janie’s quick nod satisfied Miranda and she returned to staring at the quilted canopy above, tense with anticipation as to when the next contraction would seize her, praying the baby would come sooner rather than later.

  “Have you been present at a delivery before, Janie?” Tam asked.

  “A’course I have! I was there for two of me Ma’s lyin’-ins.”

  Janie put a tumbler of cordial beside the apothecary case, a look over Tam’s shoulder, intrigued by its contents which were on display with the two little mahogany doors wide on their polished brass hinges. Two drawers were pulled out, both crammed with what she supposed were various medical instruments: candles, a small china dish, a folded brass weights and measure scale, and several small porcelain ointment pots. Tam removed the false back to the case revealing a secret compartment lined with small glass bottles of uniform shape and height, small labels carefully written up and tied with string about the glass stopper of each bottle read Mandrake, Mithridate, Laudanum, and Theriac; but to Janie, who could not read or write, the writing held no meaning. It was at the liquid she stared, some bottles were filled with herbs steeped in liquid, one was of white and blue porcelain, another clear glass; all were marked with a word in big red letters: Poison. She recognized the shape of this word. Aunt Rumble kept a bottle with just such a word on it in the back of the flour cupboard in the pantry.

  When Tam selected a particular bottle and carefully droppered a measured dose into the cordial and swilled the tumbler gently so the medicine would dissolve Janie could not contain her curiosity or her trepidation; medicinals made her uneasy.

  “What are you mixin’ in there, Mr. Fisher?”

  “It’s called mithridate. It will ease her pain.”

  Janie tried to sniff the tumbler. There was a mustardy smell about it. “What’s in mithri—mithri—What’s in it?”

  Tam smiled at her tone; he didn’t blame her for being wary. “Too many ingredients to list. Opium, myrrh, ginger, cinnamon, and such. It’s standard fare for an apothecary to use it to help with pain. So don’t worry yourself it will cause your mistress harm.”

  Janie took the tumbler when held out to her but did not move from the end of the bed. “It won’t make her sick, will it?”

  “No. Just more restful,” he said calmly, securing the poisons by fixing the false wooden partition back into place on the apothecary case. When Janie still did not move he added in a voice he hoped held a note of sternness,

  “If you want to help me help your mistress through this labor, Janie, you must do as I tell you.” And as if on cue, Miranda let out a great cry filled with pain and anguish and it sent Janie scurrying to her aid. “For God knows,” he said to him
self as he closed over the cabinet’s mahogany doors, “I need all the help I can get.”

  Janie was busy scurrying to and fro between bedchamber and kitchen, fulfilling errands for Tam. At one stage two wide-eyed but head down maids followed her carrying a large copper and fresh sheets. She worried about her mistress and the progress of her labor, and yet she was conscious of Lord Halsey watching her from the windowseat. She even dared to steal a long sideways glance at him when he turned to the window at the noisy arrival of a carriage and six as its occupants alighted in the cobblestoned street below. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, with his black wavy hair, olive skin and angular profile. Resplendant in velvet and lace, he was even more handsome than Mr. Talgarth, who left her tongue-tied and giddy when he came calling on her mistress.

  Under present trying circumstances, and because she knew she would blush rosily if his lordship dared to address her, she decided to get on with her errands as if the nobleman was not in the room. This tactic worked well until his lordship’s valet materialized in the servant doorway. She was looking at her feet and not straight ahead and so collided with Mr. Hadrian Jeffries, upsetting not only the tray he was carrying but creasing the front of his immaculate frockcoat.

  Watching the maid and his valet jostle each other, the girl mumbling profuse apologies while an outraged but contained Jeffries brushed the creases from his frockcoat, provided Alec with some much needed relief from the couple of fraught hours spent sitting still and silent in the windowseat listening to the cries and moans of a woman in the throes of childbirth emanating from the next room. He had hoped the physician would arrive soon. By the reckoning of his gold pocket watch, it was at least two hours, possibly longer, since Ketteridge had sent a message apologizing for being delayed; a small child with burns and an elderly patient who had slipped and broken his femur at the Kings Bath.

  Not many minutes after Ketteridge’s message, a surprising note from Lady Rutherglen, delivered by one of the lodging’s footmen, demanded of Alec that he give her immediate access to the Arch apartment or she would have the local militia storm the rooms. Why she needed access was not stated; that she demanded access Alec found of great interest. His refusal of her demands, coupled with the continued presence of the bearlike footman at the entrance to the apartment, must have sent her ladyship on her way because he heard nothing further about her until Jeffries appeared in the servant doorway.

  Jeffries repositioned a spindle-legged writing desk and matching ladder-back chair closer the windowseat and into the path of the fading afternoon light. He then produced paper, quill and ink, and a pair of Alec’s gold-rimmed eyeglasses, which he arranged with exacting straight-line precision on the small escritoire. He lit a candelabra, set this on the desktop and with a bow to Alec, who watched all this with polite interest but said nothing, he left the sitting room to return not many minutes later with two kitchen boys at his heels, one carrying a tray laden with silver domed dishes and the other with a silver coffee pot and service.

  “Dinner, my lord,” Jeffries intoned, not a facial muscle movement in recognition of the wails and moans of childbirth in the adjoining room.

  Alec was silently impressed and a little unnerved. The fellow could very well have been in a stately dining room such was his haughty demeanor.

  “I took the liberty of bringing you your writing implements, my lord,” Jeffries added needlessly when Alec glanced over at the arrangement of desk and chair. He handed Alec two sealed letters. “So that you can reply to these at your leisure. I thought, perhaps, you might have the time…”

  Ah, so Jeffries had some idea of what was going on in the next room; he wasn’t completely devoid of sentiment!

  Alec recognized the handwriting and seal on one of the letters; it was from his godmother, the Dowager Duchess of Romney-St. Neots. The other was from Lady Rutherglen. His godmother’s letter could wait and he slipped this in a frockcoat pocket and broke the seal on the second and held it out until the script came into focus. Blotches of ink dotted the sentences, as if the note had been written in great haste, or great agitation. Alec was inclined to the latter explanation because of her ladyship’s emotive prose; phrases such as make a mockery of justice, cunning trickery, outrageous abuse of trust leapt out of the page along with the predictable demand that Alec give her access to the apartment, and that he had no right to deny her entry to see the creature for herself.

  An interesting choice of moniker, creature, for a young woman whom his uncle was convinced beyond doubt, and would defend to the hilt, was all sweetness and light, Alec pondered as he ate tidily of the slices of lamb set before him. Lady Rutherglen’s ink dripped from an ill-tempered spleen, but there was an undercurrent of something else… fear? Yes, that was it. She feared the woman in the next room who, at that moment, let out such a wail that Jeffries gave a little jump on the spot.

  Alec wondered if the nervous anticipation he felt at the impending birth was what men about to become fathers experienced when their wives were in labor, and he wondered if he would ever have that opportunity with Selina; if they were ever destined to marry and have a family. He had not thought too deeply about that aspect of their marriage: children. He was so set on getting the woman he loved to the altar and made his wife that all other considerations were secondary. Now, rather curiously, as an unwilling eavesdropper on a woman suffering the pain of labor to deliver up a new little life, he realized that he did want children of his own; very much.

  He wished Tam would emerge from the bedchamber if only to satisfy himself the boy was indeed bearing up under the demands of being responsible for the lives of a mother and her unborn. Too much responsibility for one so young, in Alec’s opinion, regardless of the experience Tam had gathered as an apothecary’s apprentice. He was still that, an apprentice, and yet to attain the dizzying heights of being admitted to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries. Whatever his uncle’s staunch belief in the boy’s ability to handle himself in dangerous and emotionally draining affairs, particularly deadly affairs which childbirth most definitely was, Alec had no wish to see Tam’s career over before it had started should the birth not produce a happy outcome.

  “Sir? My lord?”

  It was Tam. He closed over the bedchamber door but did not shut it, and wiped his flushed face and then his hands with a damp towel which he then tossed aside. He was disheveled, red damp curls stuck to his scalp, crumpled white shirt pushed up over his elbows and wet with perspiration. He licked his dry lips and sighed, looking about the room, as if for something in particular. His eyes widened at the tray on the sideboard holding a jug and tankard, and it was Alec, up off the sofa, and not Jeffries, who stepped forward and poured him out an ale and handed it to him. But before either could speak, the valet said, in answer to Alec’s earlier comment,

  “If you have finished, my lord, shall I clear away the dinner things? And I do assure your lordship that I prefer to remain should you need my assistance in the event anything untoward occurs. I am of more use to your lordship here than elsewhere.”

  The stress on the word untoward did not go unnoticed by Alec or Tam but as Tam was the only one facing the valet he was the one to see Jeffries’ eyebrows raise and his mouth pull down to add further emphasis to the insinuation Tam was not wholly competent in the situation he now found himself in. But Tam was too tired and too involved in the event unfolding in the next room to be bothered with a petty squabble with, when all was said and done, a footman elevated temporarily above his station. Still, he could not let Jeffries get away with such boldness so he threw Hadrian mightier-than-though Jeffries a look of complete disdain, a look Alec caught and also chose to ignore, saying over his shoulder to Jeffries,

  “Be good enough to clear away my plate, pour me out a coffee and take yourself off for half an hour or so while I speak with Mr. Fisher in private. Kick your heels with Mr. Halsey. I would like to know how he is faring and if he has anything to report from the other side of that door. Now, Tam,” he sa
id, taking from Jeffries a coffee cup on its saucer, “Mrs. Bourdon’s maid has left you a cold collation. I assume that’s who she is, though she seemed to go out of her way to avoid looking at me; as if I had two heads and would frighten her. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Tam shook his head. “No, sir. That is, I am all right. There is nothing anyone can do. Nature will take its course and so we wait. By my reckoning it won’t be long now.”

  Alec noted with concern the tiredness in the boy’s eyes and the grim line to his mouth.

  “I am sorry the physician hasn’t come sooner to relieve you.”

  “As to that, sir, I—”

  He stopped abruptly, realizing Jeffries was still in the room, so drank down his ale, suddenly very thirsty indeed, an eye on his replacement who, in his opinion, lingered far too long over stacking the remnants of his master’s dinner onto a tray, before fussing unnecessarily with the coffee pot on its little stand, picking it up and setting it down as if it was necessary to do so to see if the candle in the warmer remained alight.

  As Jeffries finally closed over the door, Tam lifted the domed silver cover off the plate, a glance at Alec who waved at him to eat, and peered at the arrangement of slices of cold roast beef, carrots and potato, a fist of bread and the wedge of cheese and his empty stomach growled in response yet, inexplicably, he did not feel the need to eat. Still, he knew he had to fortify himself for a labor that could go on all night. He forked a slice of roast beef.

  “Mrs. Bourdon will not have a physician, sir. She made me promise. But I made her agree that if things got bad, if complications arose, if her life or the babe’s were in any danger, then I would fetch a physician in to help her. I can’t break my promise.”