Fairchild Regency Romance

by Jaima Fixsen

  Fairchild shook his head. “Going through the fields is faster than the roads.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Laura doesn’t ride,” Jack said.

  “Come along Edwards,” Fairchild said, settling the matter and ignoring Jasper’s troubled glance at his mount’s heaving sides. Jack dismounted and climbed the spokes of the curricle wheel to get a leg up on the new horse. He was scarcely in the saddle when Fairchild unclipped the lead and motioned him to follow. “This way.”

  Next to her, Rushford cursed under his breath. Laura looked up at him.

  “Forgive me,” he said, collecting himself. Already they were back in motion. “We’d best make our way as swiftly as we can.”

  “Haste won’t help if it kills my brother,” Laura said as she watched the riders’ breakneck pace through the tall barley, unable to rinse the sharpness from her voice. Jack was a decent horseman, but racing like this across fields and over fences was ludicrous.

  “Jack will be fine. That horse hasn’t thrown anyone yet.”

  “This could be the day,” she said. It was already a grand one for things going wrong. Her wrist ached from her grip on the rail. “What about your father?” she asked. Jasper hadn’t liked them racing off, she was sure.

  “My father always decides for himself,” Jasper said. “I tried to change his mind.”

  One wheel bounced over a rut in the road, but Jasper didn’t slacken their speed. He was silent and sweat beaded on his lip as they rattled down the road. Laura clung to her seat cursing cathedrals, curricles, this poor road, and her brother’s lack of one, praying no one’s neck ended up broken and that her brother reached his patient in time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Squeaker

  William found Tom in the library, his white knuckles welded around an untouched brandy.

  “You’re wet, Fairchild,” Tom said, looking up.

  “Put my head in the horse trough,” William explained. “Edwards is with Sophy?”

  “Yes. Thank you for fetching him.”

  “Things came on unexpectedly,” William said. Unlucky, but he didn’t say that. He still felt unsteady even after soaking his head. Floundering into an empty chair, he braced his fingers together, trying to still the trembling in his knees.

  A door slammed sending someone scampering down the corridor. Tom spun in his seat and sloshed his brandy, but the runner went past, unchecked. “Merciful God,” he said, kneading his fingers into his forehead. There was a groan—not Tom’s this time—quickly suppressed. Tom started from his chair, flying from the room.

  Seconds later he was back. “Mother says I’m to get drunk if I can’t take it.” He stared at the brandy staining the arm of his chair. “Why didn’t she speak earlier?”

  He meant Sophy, William guessed. “It’s new to her. How would she know? She doesn’t complain.”

  “I know. That night she dragged herself to my doorstep her shoulder was out of joint—” Tom shuddered.

  William nodded. “She used to hide the bruises she got, afraid I’d know she’d been thrown and not let her ride.”

  Tom closed his eyes and let his head fall against the back of his chair. “If your wife hadn’t noticed, who knows when Sophy would have given in and said something.”

  “Georgiana’s hard to deceive.”

  Tom made a motion approximating a smile but without any life in it. “Never seen Sophy take a scolding like that. Meek as a lamb.” He didn’t end it like one, but there was a question in it. William shrugged.

  “Sophy grants Georgiana special privileges I wouldn’t dare. I expect you’ll have a word or two for her yourself, sometime when she’s back on her feet and the babe’s asleep.”

  Tom blinked twice. “No. Heavens, there’ll be better things to say.” For a moment he seemed afraid to speak. “But I tell you one thing—if we’re ever in this mad fix again I’m not letting her send the doctor beyond the grounds, not for any reason!”

  William said nothing. Instinct told him it was better to let Bagshot to try boring a hole in the wall with his eyes. “You won’t drink?” he finally ventured.

  “Sophy doesn’t get that release,” Bagshot spat. He stopped, tilting his head after some sound. “Lord, what are they doing?”

  William shrugged. “You’re confident in Edwards.”

  “With my life.” Tom made a face, slumped into his chair, and covered his face with his hands. “But it’s not mine. It’s Sophy’s.”

  William studied his hands. He could tell Bagshot that all would be well, but the words were counterfeit—he couldn’t be certain. Chances were good, but they’d all been alarmed by the suddenness and force of her pains. Worse now by the focused silence blanketing the house. He could make no promise; no command of his would set all aright. But he ought to say something, so he lifted the first likely thing from the jumble in his mind.

  “Once she got sick. Must have been a mere eleven or twelve. She never told the nursemaid. Ended up throwing up on my library carpet. Never felt like such an ogre. I think she’d have rather died than asked to be excused. Meant to get through the interview with me by sheer force of will. Doesn’t like making a fuss. Never has.”

  Bagshot grunted, bitterly conceding the truth. “Doesn’t like to ask, doesn’t want to put anyone out…times like this it’s awful to live with.”

  William huffed. “Sophy’s only asked me for one thing. Except for this I can’t remember her asking for so much as a glove or a stocking,” he said.

  “Well?” Tom asked, prodding him out of silence.

  It was shaming, but it had to be said. William smiled ruefully at his son-in-law, at his lanky legs flung anyhow over the carpet, his coarse, sandy hair wrecked by nervous fingers. “She asked me for you,” he said. This daughter of his, who until now had never dared to ask for love from her family, knew Tom Bagshot had a store of it. It knit his bones together and spilled out his anxious fingertips. Of course she’d wanted him. William swallowed, hoping the motion would quell the ache in his throat. “If you knew how I wish I had let her.”

  It would have been easier after that to let his eyes drift to the window or a distant wall. Tom stared at him hard, dislike chiseled in the set of his jaw. William kept himself still and let the sharp eyes delve him. Finally Tom spoke.

  “I suppose the only true fool is the one who fails to realize his mistake.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Does it help?” he asked. “Putting your head in the horse trough?”

  William pushed back his damp hair. “Clarity? Not especially. This mistake I recognized long ago. But I find the shock of cold water does lessen anxiety. I doused myself twice waiting for the birth of my son Jasper.”

  Tom glanced at the door, his thumb fretting against his second finger. “I don’t want to be out of hearing distance.”

  “Bagshot, you—”

  “Call me Tom,” he interrupted.

  “Tom.” William smiled. “You can easily send for a bucket.”

  *****

  Jasper returned and found the rules were changed. Sophy, Dr. Edwards, and his ferocious attendants, Lady Fairchild and Mrs Bagshot, were now the only ones allowed to make noise in the house. Miss Edwards disappeared without him realizing it and Jasper crept from room to room unable to settle. Finding himself in the dusty chamber which passed as the gunroom, Jasper cleaned the piece he’d given Tom last Christmas. It didn’t look like he’d fired a single shot. He breathed on the window, then unlatched it and wandered into the Egyptian salon to rearrange the newspapers. The servants had disappeared, save for the ones rushing to and fro with hot water and towels. He didn’t dare ask if it generally took this long. After the rush to get Edwards, Jasper had half expected to arrive to the sound of a baby’s cry. Instead the hours ticked by, wasting the night and creeping towards dawn.

  Jasper stopped in the library to share a plate of untouched sandwiches—neither his father or Tom were eating. Tom glared at him every time he swallowed, so Jasper pock
eted a sandwich and returned to his wandering. Once he passed Dr. Edwards in the hall, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, but he fended away Jasper’s questions with upraised hands. One clutched a sinister looking pair of pincers.

  “Don’t say a word,” Dr. Edwards commanded. “Nothing to Tom.”

  Then it wasn’t quiet. Unearthly groans swelled into the corridor. Then he heard Sophy gasping, damning so vehemently the paper must be curling off the walls. Tom, stripped of his coat and chewing through his bottom lip, flew down the hall and hovered in front of the door, reaching for the handle then pulling back like it was a glowing coal.

  “I can’t stand it,” he said and flung open the door. Another curse, not from Sophy this time, cut the air and the door slammed shut.

  Jasper glanced at the library where his father hesitated on the threshold. “Was that Mama?”

  “Wasn’t Edwards.” His father didn’t look good. Wet hair clung to his forehead and stuck up in points from the back of his head. The shoulders of his coat were soaked through and drips of water spotted his dust-stained trousers.

  “Your horse?” Jasper asked.

  “Foundered half a mile from here. Edwards rode on and I ran on foot the rest of the way. I didn’t matter by that point. We’d passed all the gates and hedges.”

  “You took a toss on the last one?” Jasper recognized the signs: stiff limbs, a suppressed wince with every turn of the head.

  His father confessed with a half-smile. “Not so much a toss as a fall. Ajax’s paces were off but he cleared it. Stumbled on the landing. Even then he took the brunt of it. I got clear before he fell. He was a gallant one. A gentleman.”

  “Is he all right?” Jasper asked, thinking he couldn’t have heard his father right. He was too calm to have lost the horse—Jasper had seen him weep over stillborn foals. Ajax was the prize of his stables, the work of his life.

  “Had to shoot him. You’ll please not mention this to your mother.” More footsteps. Lord Fairchild passed a hand over his forehead. He looked white and puddly as a blancmange.

  Jasper wanted to ask if it was usual for physicians to require barbarous claws, but fearing the answer he kept silent. Another gasp struck them like a lash. It was unbearable. Jasper turned to the door, giving up. Three paces down the hall he stopped, arrested by a furious mewling that ratcheted within seconds to a gale-force scream. Alive, thank God.

  Jasper brought his fist to his mouth, exhaling hard. When he was composed enough to look up, his father was huddled against the closed doorway.

  “Sophy?” Jasper asked.

  “Can’t hear anything over the babe,” his father muttered.

  They fretted for some minutes. “Just open the bloody door,” Jasper said and shoved it wide. His eyes fell first on Edwards bent over a basin washing blood from his hands.

  “All’s well,” he said with a haggard smile. Lady Fairchild worked at his shoulder rolling up a mass of soiled linen and moving briskly despite the tired lines in her face. She straightened, driving away renegade wisps of hair with the back of her wrist.

  “A girl,” she mouthed with a smile and shrug.

  The parents were oblivious. Sophy was sweaty and damp, too tired to flutter a finger or breathe a word. Yet when Mrs. Bagshot finished swaddling the little squaller, Sophy’s arms somehow shaped themselves into a cradle. Mrs. Bagshot settled the babe into them as lightly as if she were nothing but a bundle of swansdown. Tom knelt, wet-cheeked, at the bedside and broke off his incoherent stream of love words to look. Jasper stopped breathing. They all did, waiting for Tom to speak.

  He didn’t, just laid his head against Sophy’s arm, quiet and complete, resting there as Edwards and his satellites circled and brought order back to the world. Gently the doctor coaxed them from the room, even Tom and his infant burden. Lady Fairchild stayed behind, obedient to the doctor’s unspoken command. Sophy Bagshot was well and would be well, but he needed quiet and a steady hand to hold the candle so he could sew the little mother back together.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Independence

  After the initial flood of relief ebbed, Laura wondered if it might be best for her to say farewell to the Bagshots and Chippenstone. She wasn’t exactly necessary. Jack was busy tending his two patients and writing up an account of his successful forceps delivery, justifiably proud. Sophy had Tom’s mother and Lady Fairchild who were both eager to tend her. It would be good, Laura thought, to remove herself from Jasper.

  Except he’d done it first. The morning after the birth he disappeared. Just as well, Laura told herself, since Sophy, for absurd and inexplicable reasons, pressed her to stay.

  Laura wrote Mr. Rollins to ask him for the extra two weeks he had offered before. It would take that long, she figured, to pick out the right words to explain to Jack. In the meantime she found ways to make herself useful: fetching books, bringing up trays, opening windows, helping the new mother walk up and down the corridor and, five days later, pace out the terrace. Sophy complained about Jack’s strictures but accepted them all, knowing she’d have the entire house on her head if she dared vary an iota from her doctor’s prescription. The little girl was christened Viola Frances Persephone, but Jasper, who reappeared for the ceremony, made a face at her given name and refused to use it.

  “Ugh! Far too pretentious a handle for a little bug like her. Ollie is better. I’ll call her that.”

  Laura listened with pricked ears, telling herself she was glad when all Sophy’s pleas couldn’t convince him to stay.

  “I’ll pop in to see you and Ollie in a day or two,” he said.

  “Viola,” Sophy corrected.

  “Ollie. Don’t mind her. She’ll catch on,” Jasper said, bending to kiss the baby’s soft head.

  He was right. Even Sophy gave up on Viola after three more days, cooing the nickname as she kissed each walnut fist and gazed at stubby eyelashes. Ollie, indifferent to names of any sort, forgot the ugly trauma of her birth and waxed fat and happy.

  It was a sort of dream, this life of turning pillows and melting over tiny fingers plump as pudding. Laura brewed possets, laughed with Sophy as they bathed Ollie, and watched mother and child sleep tucked away in the confines of Sophy’s chamber, now a land of milk and honey. Jasper, whom she’d unconsciously begun to think of again as Mr. Rushford, stayed away.

  “He really isn’t interested in babies,” Sophy sighed. “Maybe when Ollie is ready to learn to ride.”

  “He’ll be back,” Tom said without looking up from his letter. “He took his portmanteau but left his trunks.”

  Laura picked up Sophy’s cup and refilled it with tea.

  “Jack’s gone to the village?” Sophy asked.

  Laura shook her head. “Bury St Edmonds again.” To meet with the solicitor about the house.

  “I hope you make a great many changes,” Sophy said. “The longer the workmen have it, the longer I can make you stay.”

  Laura knew Sophy truly liked having her about, but she wasn’t needed. She’d done some good—she’d taken it upon herself to chasten the elder Mrs. Bagshot’s maid, because Tom’s mother really shouldn’t suffer under such tight lacing and was far too good-hearted to complain. But that was attended to, Sophy was walking, Ollie feeding and sleeping. Lady Fairchild came by almost every day.

  It was time to go back to her own life before London felt even farther away. There’d been a pleasing flurry of speculation when she’d first disappeared, but if she didn’t return soon she’d be forgotten. She had to tell Jack.

  Laura spent the afternoon predicting his objections and planning out her speeches—in vain. Rushford returned that evening and it proved impossible to avoid him and corner Jack. Her brother, ignorant of her own desire to steer clear of Rushford, was determined to prevent a tête-à-tête between them and unwittingly spoiled every opportunity for conversation. Laura slept poorly and rose early, planning to catch Jack alone. Instead, she was first to the breakfast table—with an unexpected letter waiting beside h
er plate.

  It wasn’t from Mr. Rollins. The single word, Saltash, franked the top corner. Laura’s name and direction were in the same repressive handwriting, too blunt to belong to a secretary. She broke the seal, no longer hungry.

  Miss Edwards,

  You’ve ignored me this last year, persisting in your unseemly profession despite my pronounced opposition. I’m not sure what you meant by that ridiculous masquerade with your brother, but my informants tell me he plans to settle in Suffolk. If establishing him was indeed your ambition, and not making a vulgar spectacle, at last you have succeeded.

  I can see no reason for you to flout my commands and return to the stage. Believe me, rumors of incest won’t help your career or his. My daughter, Eugenie, will be presented this forthcoming Season and I expect both you and your brother to keep out of London. If you are not sufficiently wise to take my advice I warn you that continued opposition will bring unpleasant consequences. I have friends in Suffolk and no qualms about making it as uncomfortable for you as you have made London for me.

  Saltash

  Laura refolded the letter and laid it beside her plate. With trembling calm she sipped her tea and consumed every dusty morsel of toast, then escaped to the garden, keeping a sedate pace until she was clear of the house. At last she broke into a run, her feet slapping on the gravel. Unused to running, her breath soon whistled in uneven gasps and a cramp clutched at her side. Spit congealed in her throat and choked her. She spat in the gravel and wiped the hair from her forehead. Bolting for the woods, she veered from the path, following the stream that fed Bagshot’s square moat into the wilder places where trees grew in tangled confusion and mushrooms and tufts of grass broke through the mat of dead leaves.

  She’d fretted all through her first season acting, wondering what he’d do once he finally attended a play and saw her. He came once that spring, but the bolt from above never came. He hadn’t recognized her.