A Stroke of Malice

by Anna Lee Huber

  A spark of anger glinted in her eyes, and I knew, perhaps before she did, what she would choose. For she would never let Stratford control her again.

  When I left the solar, the corridor beyond was empty. Even Rye had departed. Which was perhaps just as well. It was not my place to tell him what Charlotte had revealed. So before he reappeared, making any encounter awkward, I slipped back down the stairs to the floor below and through the entrance to the picture gallery.

  Contrary to the evening before, it was wreathed in shadows. The only source of light glimmered from two candles, one positioned on each of the tables set before the doorways at opposite ends of the long chamber, presumably to allow any guests passing through on their way to their assigned bedchambers to light their own candle to illuminate their way. I considered taking one of the unlit candles lining the nearest commode, but I knew Lady Bearsden’s room was not far.

  My footsteps were dampened by the rug, and as I reached the opposite side, I felt compelled to look behind me. The gallery was still empty. No faces peered back at me but for the faces leering down from the paintings on the wall. Even so, I hesitated to go any further.

  I stood at the entrance to the staterooms, where the Duchess of Bowmont had greeted her guests arriving at the party in their costumes the evening before. The foyer was silent and dark. The moon shining through the windows cast gossamer shafts of light over the imposing staircase, and the freshly polished oak floor of the ballroom beyond. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I found myself searching the corners of the antechamber. For what, I wasn’t certain. It must have been Charlotte’s talk of omens. Or Lord Edward’s silly tale about the maid who haunted the grand staircase, having fallen down them and broken her neck. It had made me susceptible to suggestion.

  Scolding myself for such foolishness, I forced my feet to move forward, ignoring the tingling sensation that had begun at the base of my upswept hair. After all, hearing Lord Edward’s ghoulish story had caused almost the same effect. It was nothing but recollected fright. Nonetheless, I paused to look behind me before taking a firm grip on the smooth mahogany banister and beginning to descend.

  I was about three steps down when the icy chill at the back of my neck was suddenly replaced by a humid gust of air, like someone’s hot breath. But before I could turn my head to see who was there, I felt myself being propelled forward. Rather than a shove, it was as if someone, or something, exerted a steady pressure against my spine, forcing me to move faster and faster down the steps.

  My feet pattered against the worn stone and my heart kicked in my chest as I struggled to maintain my balance. My fingers could not find a grip on the banister, and my slippers were in danger of flying out from beneath me on the slick stone. My center of balance was already compromised by the weight of the child inside me, and I shrieked as I began to tumble forward.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Though later I couldn’t recall the details, somehow, someway, at the last second, my hand finally found purchase on the railing. Gripping it with all my might, I wrenched my shoulder as my body twisted and slammed into the side of the balustrade, bringing me to an abrupt stop.

  Pain exploded in my arm and along the side of my rib cage. My breath sawed in and out of me in sharp gasps. But I hadn’t fallen. I hadn’t fallen.

  “Oh, my dear. Mrs. Gage,” I heard someone below exclaim. “Oh, go to her, go to her now, young man.”

  It wasn’t until the pounding feet reached me, and a footman dressed in the Bowmonts’ green and black livery offered me his arm in support, that I realized I was shaking. His eyes were round in his face, and I could tell what he was thinking. The ghost.

  I lowered my gaze, accepting his assistance to rise to my feet from where I’d sunken down on one of the cold steps. Carefully, he guided me downward, where I could now see Lady Bearsden and the dowager duchess watching me in grave concern.

  “Are you well, my dear?” Lady Bearsden demanded to know as she bustled forward to meet us at the base of the stairs. “I must tell you, coming around that corner and finding you clinging to that banister as if you were about to topple over gave me quite a fright. Did you trip?”

  “I-I . . .” I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry. “I don’t know,” I managed to croak.

  “Well, come over here and sit down, sit down. We’ve sent for Mr. Gage,” she explained while the footman helped me over to a padded bench pushed against the wall. “He should be here any moment.” She gasped. “My goodness, but you’re as pale as a sheet. You really must take more care in your condition.”

  “For goodness’ sake, give the girl some air,” the dowager duchess stepped forward to remonstrate. “I’m sure she knows perfectly well what’s at stake. Reminding her does not help matters.” While not precisely comforting, her stern voice and unflinching gaze did help to steady me. “Robert, fetch Lady Darby a glass of brandy.”

  The footman hurried off to do her bidding, nearly colliding with Gage as he hastened through the doorway. “Kiera! What’s happened? What’s wrong?” he asked as he fell to one knee in front of me. His eyes anxiously surveyed me from head to toe, lingering on the rounded swell of my abdomen.

  “Nearly fell down the stairs, that’s what happened,” Lady Bearsden interjected before I could gather the words to speak. “And gave us a terrible fright.”

  Gage kept my hands gripped in one of his larger ones while he reached up to brush back a tendril of curls that had fallen from the bandeau in my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “Your condition truly has made you clumsy, hasn’t it?” He spoke lightly, but his features were taut with alarm.

  A small smile of chagrin formed on my lips at his reference to my slip on the stairs in our home in London two months prior. Though I had strained my wrist slightly then, it had been nothing like the terror of this incident. “It appears so.”

  I could feel the dowager duchess’s eyes on my face, and lifted my gaze to meet hers, seeing clearly that she knew that I was minimizing the episode. That this had not been a simple matter of clumsiness.

  “Are you injured?” my husband asked, once more studying my appearance for signs of harm.

  “No, but I wrenched my shoulder a lit—” My harsh intake of air as I tried to move it belied those words. Pain shot through my joint, sharp and swift before settling into a dull throb.

  Gage surged to his feet. “Don’t move it, Kiera.”

  I gave a short nod, having no intention of doing so.

  “Is there a trusted surgeon in any of the neighboring villages?” he turned to ask the dowager duchess.

  “I don’t need a surgeon,” I protested, having a natural aversion to allowing any man of that profession to touch me after the three years I spent married to Sir Anthony Darby. Most medical men recognized me by my name immediately, but surgeons and anatomists often displayed a particularly derisive and antagonistic attitude toward me. There were exceptions, of course, but I was not optimistic about the liberalness of a surgeon from the strict Calvinistic small villages of Lowland Scotland. “I’ve merely wrenched it. I-I’m sure it will be better after a good night’s rest.”

  Gage’s eyes softened with understanding, but his jaw was set. “Kiera, it’s your right shoulder.”

  The bands of residual fear still wrapped around my chest tightened to almost a stranglehold as I grasped what he was saying. It was my painting arm.

  My stomach seemed to drop out of me, and my breaths came tight and quick, making my thoughts slightly muzzy. If I couldn’t lift a brush, if I couldn’t paint . . .

  I closed my eyes, refusing to contemplate the possibility. My shoulder was simply wrenched. It would heal.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t protest when Gage conferred with the dowager duchess again, and then sent the waiting footman off to have the surgeon and physician summoned. Nor did I speak when he reached down to grasp my left elbow to help me rise, pulling me close to his side.<
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  The other footman returned then with the glass of brandy, and hovered behind Lady Bearsden, uncertain what to do with it.

  “Oh, give it here,” the dowager duchess huffed as we moved away.

  Gage did not speak as we traveled the corridors of the castle to my bedchamber, though I noticed he avoided the ballroom staircase, instead taking me around the perimeter of the castle to the circular staircase leading from the doom straight up to our rooms. For my part, I could not have spoken, even if I wished to. I was too preoccupied with the effort not to whimper in pain.

  Gage allowed me to hobble forward for a few yards before sweeping me up into his arms. It was a testament to the amount of pain I was in that I did not object. Perhaps it was the result of the initial shock from my narrowly avoiding disaster and its dampening effect on one’s nerves releasing its hold on me, but each step seemed to awaken some new ache. My shoulder throbbed in time to the pounding beat of my heart, and each jolt of movement seemed to send sharp spikes of pain into my side where I had slammed it against the balustrade.

  Upon reaching my bedchamber, he set me down, and I turned my back to him, urging him to begin unfastening my gown. However, he only made it through three of the tiny buttons before Bree came bustling through the door, alerted by the footman sending for the surgeon and physician, no doubt.

  “M’lady,” she gasped, her face a mask of apprehension.

  Gage stepped to the side, allowing her to take over. Her fingers deftly flew through the buttons, and then peeled the dress from my frame. I focused on breathing evenly in and out through the pain, and winced only once as I had to move my shoulder to slide the puffed sleeve down my arm. Bree draped the gown over the end of the bed, her gaze on my throbbing shoulder.

  “Do you have something we can fashion a makeshift sling from?” my husband queried, and she turned to move toward the dresser.

  But I halted her with my wheezed request. “My stays. Please.”

  She whirled back, picking at the ties holding my special corset in place. “The top drawer,” Bree directed Gage as he strode toward the piece of furniture. “Grab one o’ the scarves. The cornflower blue one ’tis softest.”

  I nearly collapsed in relief as the stays loosened. My knees actually felt a bit weak. I suppose I wobbled enough to alarm them, for Bree grabbed me about the waist, and Gage hastened over to support me from the front. He clutched my left forearm as Bree pulled the corset from my torso.

  Breathing shallowly, for I discovered if I inhaled too deeply my ribs screamed in protest, I allowed him to help me into bed. Sinking into the pillows, I looked up into his distressed face.

  “Can you roll onto your left side?” he asked.

  I nodded and turned onto my hip so that he could slowly lift my chemise to see my side. Their silence spoke volumes, as did the slight tremor in his hand as he reached out to touch me gingerly.

  When neither of them offered an explanation, I swallowed the stickiness coating my throat and ventured a question. “How bad is it?”

  Gage inhaled a swift breath, as if he’d been holding it. “There’s . . . extensive bruising.”

  I’d assumed as much, so I didn’t reply.

  His hand drifted down toward the swell of my abdomen. “The child. Can you . . . ?” He didn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence.

  “No,” I choked out, refusing to give in to that fear. “But I usually can’t feel the babe move unless I’m lying down or sitting still.”

  “Then perhaps you will shortly.”

  “Yes.”

  Our voices were tense and hollow, both of us holding back an unspeakable dread.

  Lowering my shift, he helped me roll over onto my back, settling me as comfortably as I could manage. Then he began untying my garters and rolling my stockings down my legs, his gaze fastened on the bruise that must already be appearing on my thigh. Once the coverlet was pulled up over my legs, he perched on the edge of the bed and held up the scarf.

  “Do you wish for me to fashion you a sling? Or do you want me to prop your arm up with a pillow?”

  “A pillow will do,” I replied, releasing my left hand’s grip on my right arm, where I was supporting the weight to adjust the bolster.

  Bree swept my gown from the bed and draped it over her arm. “I’ll fetch ye a nice pot o’ tea, m’lady, and see what sort o’ liniment they have for those bruises.”

  Although I never moved my stare from the shadows gathered in the corners of the soft green and gold chain-patterned bed curtains above, I could feel her assessing me. My maid was much like I was during a crisis—driven to do something, unable to sit still. So I didn’t tell her I would rather have a tot of whisky than a pot of tea. Instead, I thanked her quietly.

  She hesitated a moment longer, and then turned to Gage. “Ring if ye need me sooner.”

  The door closed behind her with a click. When still I didn’t speak, he rose from his perch and crossed to the entry to our sitting room. I could hear him moving about, the clink of glass, the quiet tick of the clock on the bedside table. Closing my eyes, I tried to will myself not to feel the raw ache trembling through me, both in my muscles and bones, and my heart.

  How many times during the years of my marriage to Sir Anthony and the year and a half that followed had I lain in bed, broken in body or spirit, sometimes both? How many times had I prayed for the strength to endure? And though this time things were different, I still found myself back in the same humble position. A constant of the human condition.

  I focused on my breath, on the beat of my heart, searching for the single truth that had always seen me through. I am loved. I am precious. I am cared for. They were the words our mother had said to us every night, had promised would see us through any struggle—no matter how wide, no matter how deep. The world could be a mean and terrible place, but so long as I clung to that truth, nothing could break me.

  Lifting my left hand to rest it over the precious life inside me, I prayed as hard as I could. I couldn’t form the words. Nothing beyond a beseeching please. But I knew God understood.

  So turned inward were my thoughts that I didn’t realize Gage was standing over me until he spoke.

  “I thought you might like some whisky. For the pain.”

  He held out a cut tumbler filled with two fingers of the amber liquid. Though I’d silently wished for just such a thing only a few minutes before, I shook my head against the pillow.

  “Are you sure?” he asked in concern.

  “I-I’m fairly certain the physician is going to offer me laudanum, and I know from experience that does not mix well with whisky.”

  His hand lowered to his side. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I smiled tightly.

  He stared down at the glass before taking a drink himself and then setting it on the table by the bed. The strong muscles of his throat worked above his loosened cravat. I was tempted to remove the neck cloth from him completely, but the urge passed as my shoulder throbbed simply from the thought of lifting it.

  Scraping a hand over the bristles beginning to show along the edge of his jaw, he perched on the mattress next to me. “So what happened?”

  I inhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know. Not exactly.” I’d known this question was coming, and yet I still wasn’t certain how to answer it.

  “Did you slip?”

  “No.”

  “Trip?”

  “No, Gage, please. Give me a moment.”

  He obeyed, though I could sense in the taut set of his shoulders he was impatient to understand.

  I licked my dry lips. “I-I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but . . . it was like someone was pushing me from behind.”

  Gage sat taller, his brow lowering thunderously. “Someone pushed you?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know,” I replied in confusion. I lifted my left hand to
my head. “I didn’t see anyone there, but I swear I felt someone’s hand on my spine. Except they didn’t just give one swift shove. It was as if they were propelling me forward, faster and faster. I kept trying to slow myself, to stop, but I couldn’t. It was all I could do to keep my feet underneath me.”

  “Surely you’re not trying to tell me it was a ghost?” he asked dubiously.

  “No, but . . . what happened to me, Sebastian?” I demanded in agitation. “I-I took careful hold of the banister. I moved slowly. I didn’t slip or trip. So what happened?!”

  He took hold of my left hand, clasping it firmly between his own. “A push needn’t be a shove to topple you. Even a small amount of pressure exerted in just the right place can propel a person forward at a rate they’re not prepared for. Then the body has to struggle to adjust and regain control, something that in your state would be even more difficult.” His thumbs rubbed soothing circles over my skin. “It’s like a sled being tipped over the side of a hill, gaining speed and momentum as it travels.” He tilted his head. “Not an inapt comparison, given how slick the stone on those stairs has worn down to.”

  I stared at our joined hands, contemplating this new information.

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No.”

  But even I could hear the uncertainty that hovered at the end of my answer.

  Gage dipped his head toward me. “You don’t sound sure.”

  “Well, I didn’t see anyone, but it was rather dark, and I got a strange feeling once or twice. Like perhaps someone was watching me.”

  “Or following you?”

  “Maybe.” I frowned. There had been that shadow that had flitted at the corner of my eye in the doorway to the solar. Maybe it hadn’t been Rye. Maybe it had been someone else. Someone with less noble intentions. “But it would have been difficult for them to trail me across the expanse of that picture gallery without my seeing them.”