Euphemia and the Unexpected Enchantment: The Fentons Book 3

by Alicia Cameron

  He had been sitting in the grand blue chair as she left him, and so she found him once more: one hand at his chest, looking deep into the flames of a fire that now burned cheerily in the grate. His breaths rasped and were shallow, but he looked up as she entered, and he stood, his eyes alight, clutching at his chest again. ‘My lady!’ his other enormous arm reached for her, and he collapsed into the chair.

  ‘You are unwell,’ said Miss Fleet, gliding towards him hurriedly. There was a sweat on his brow as she touched it, and she hardly knew she had taken the liberty. She loosened his cravat, then rang a bell, which was almost instantly answered by a hall footman in green livery. It seemed as though the baron could not breathe. She was bent over the giant and his lips were forming something that she had to lower herself to hear.

  ‘Her gown. You look so like in figure, so like…’

  ‘Yes, but it is only her gown, not she. Hush now—’ she turned to the servant, ‘Your master is ill—’ she began.

  ‘Begging your pardon miss, but I’ll just fetch his draught.’

  ‘Yes. Do that first.’

  The giant was saying more. His voice came in hoarse tones, just audible as she was so near. ‘Lady Balfour was so beautiful in that gown, so lovely in everything she did. You move like her.’

  ‘I’m honoured. But I don’t think it does you good to think of it just now. Close your eyes, and breathe deeply.’ His breath had become shallower and laboured, and she looked around the room for some water that she might apply to his brow.

  A neat man hurried in, carrying what Miss Fleet sincerely hoped was His Lordship’s draught. He poured it, hardly looking at her, and forced the milky liquid down his throat.

  ‘Dammit Tinder!’ Miss Fleet was glad to hear that his complaint was nearly at his normal volume.

  ‘Sir! I thought you unconscious!’

  ‘No, merely obeying Miss Fleet’s adjuration to close my eyes. She is afraid I’ll be undone by the sight of her in the blue gown.’ He grinned toward Miss Fleet, who was hovering on the other side. ‘Do tell her that these attacks are unforeseeable,’ he said to Tinder. ‘Though the sight of her is enough to raise the senses.’ He smiled at her then, in a different way, a way that no man had ever — was he flirting with her? It seemed flirting of an advanced kind, for though his face was only now regaining its colour, the lazy smile was one that she had seen on Viscount Durant’s face as he indicated he wished to be alone with Felicity, his viscountess. It had made her blush to see, though naturally she had affected not to notice, and to have business elsewhere in the house. But now the colour washed over her face in the hottest blush she had ever known.

  But this too was addressed to a memory, she reminded herself, not to her.

  ‘You should rest, sir,’ said the small valet in his knee breeches and neat cutaway coat, throwing Miss Fleet a rather jealous glance. ‘Are you well enough to let us take you to your room?’

  ‘No, Tinder. Leave me.’

  ‘Bring some water, some flannel, and a little brandy, if you please,’ ordered Miss Fleet gently.

  He had closed his eyes again, and now looked up at her. ‘If that’s for me, I’ll allow you to tend me only if you will sit in the other chair afterwards.’

  ‘I cannot!’ she protested, ‘I really must go. My coach leaves the inn at noon.’ But the valet pulled on her sleeve.

  ‘It’s best to agree with him and keep him calm, miss, after an attack,’ he whispered. ‘If he gets upset, then it can flare up again.’ Aloud, he said. ‘I will bring back your brandy, my lord. But just a glass to sip, mind.’

  ‘And I interrupted the lady’s refreshments at the inn, bring something, Tinder.’

  ‘I—’ she began.

  ‘Do not say me nay.’ He closed his eyes and smiled again. ‘I said that to my lady once.’

  The brandy and flannel were brought, and Tinder set a footstool for his master, taking off his massive boots with remarkable efficiency. It was apparent that the giant did not favour the skin-tight mode of today’s fashion. Miss Fleet was not used to the sight of male stockinged-feet, and was rather glad when the valet draped the thin quilted cover over him. He cooled his master’s brow, and left the room reluctantly at his master’s gesture.

  ‘You’re sitting in her chair,’ he said, amazedly. ‘You look like you belong there.’

  ‘I most assuredly belong elsewhere: namely on the stage-coach going to Durant.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Your first sign of temper. Mild, but I liked it.’ His voice was going stronger, but he rested back in the chair. A tray arrived, and he watched intermittently as she ate from it delicately. ‘So lovely,’ he said, and fell asleep. Miss Fleet’s cheeks were tinged with colour and she felt inordinately moved that a man should speak so to her — but she knew he was addressing another.

  She sat with him for another hour, listening as his breath slowed and deepened, and felt his head to check that he had no fever. He looked so like a wounded bear and she was free to take stock of him. His hands were bigger than her body from chin to waist. She held one briefly, and her own hand disappeared entirely. The hands were shapely though, perhaps he too could play the harpsichord like his lady? His great barrel chest seemed like the strongest in all the world, and yet his insides were capable of laying him so low.

  She felt pity for him. He had obviously indulged his lady’s taste in many things. The pretty chair she sat in was more suited to her size than any she had ever known. It had a foreshortened seat, so that she could rest back, and lowered legs so that her feet did not dangle in the air. She could imagine the other little lady here, in her fine dresses, sitting opposite her big Bear, discussing their days. He obviously missed her so much that seeing another wear a dress of hers made him ill. When she was satisfied that he was somewhat better, she left the room.

  ‘Could you send Evans to me?’ said Miss Fleet to the butler, as she walked from the hall. He was a slight but tall man, and his eyes met hers with more warmth than his position might usually allow. All the household must be concerned about their master. Miss Fleet smiled at him comfortingly, conveying she hoped that all would be well with Lord Balfour. ‘I’ll be in the other salon. His Lordship is asleep.’ She crossed the hall and entered into the salon of the portrait, elegantly furnished in pale shades of green. She was never going to catch the stagecoach now, she feared, and was doomed to spend another night at the inn. The Durants were not expecting her on a particular day, thankfully, but she felt herself to be in limbo, her simple plan averted.

  She sat for some time, awaiting Evans, her eyes with little to do but take in all the taste and thought of comfort that had gone into the planning of this room. She judged that this part of the house was more modern, in the style of Mr Adam, than the ancient building attached at the side. The barony was medieval, she supposed. But the room had a light modern elegance, with a degree of comfortable touches, some pillows, some footstools and tables placed carefully. Some screens were dotted around, too, to be easily moved to exclude any draughts. A book placed on the little table by the fire suggested that reading was not limited to the library. This house was a home, and not simply a denizen of good taste. She picked up the book idly, and noted that it was in Greek, sadly beyond her education. Only gentlemen learned Greek and Latin, said Papa, and moreover forbade her reading even in English, beyond the bible and religious works. She descried some story in both, and so was ripe for the novel, as soon as she had left home. Her father would have been shocked, and she read each new book with a frisson of guilt and enjoyment.

  Finally, she began to feel that the maid was delaying to some purpose, and she opened the door of the chamber to summon another servant to see what was amiss, when she saw Evans in the hallway with Tinder, who might actually be whispering to her. She cried ‘Evans!’ and the woman arrived with a return to her more closed-off demeanour.

  ‘Please bring me my dress and boots, I need to depart quite soon.’

  ‘The blue muslin dress my master des
ires that you keep, miss. Your own is not quite dry. Nor are the boots.’

  Euphemia Fleet flushed. Surely the boots, at least, would have dried out by the kitchen range.

  ‘The master is calling for you.’

  Chapter 2

  It was to an upper room, close to the one she had already entered, that Miss Fleet was ushered. She was accompanied by Evans and Tinder as she crossed the threshold, so she felt adequately chaperoned, though nervous at entering a gentleman’s bedchamber. His Lordship was propped up on a vast bed, his hair a mane around him as he rested against the pillows. He was dressed in a white night shirt with an open collar, which displayed a sliver of hirsute chest beneath his powerful neck column. Miss Fleet averted her eyes quickly, shaken by the masculine musk of the room and by the physicality of the massive figure on the bed. She stopped so abruptly that Evans had difficulty to avoid falling into her.

  Then Miss Fleet looked at the grey face of the man who held his hand out to her. She moved soundlessly forward, as was her wont, and she touched his hand for a fraction of a second. It had almost been, for a moment, like the hand of her papa on his death bed, seeking solace. His breathing was laboured, but he managed to say, ‘Pray do not be angry with me, dear lady.’

  ‘Hush now, my lord. I am not angry. I have only missed my coach, but I shall return to the inn presently, if your groom will drive me, and you may rest easy.’ She looked at his great dark eyes shyly, but compassionately. She was a little concerned about his colour. She found herself moving a wisp of wiry hair from his eyes, in a gesture that looked like a caress. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, her voice a squeak once more, and pulled her arms to her body.

  ‘It is not for that I apologise,’ the giant was saying. She looked at Tinder, who met her eye from the other side of the bed, where he had tried to apply a compress to Lord Balfour’s head and had been shrugged off. Tinder’s eyes held a grave warning. ‘It is that I had your valise sent over here from the inn.’ He saw her shock and repossessed himself of her hand. ‘I am a selfish beast, my lady said many a time. But your presence calms me, Miss Fleet. And the sawbones tell me that I need—’ he paused to take several painful breaths, ‘to be calm when my attacks occur. Will you not stay?’

  ‘Your Lordship—’ began Miss Fleet.

  ‘Miss,’ said Tinder, in a voice of warning, ‘Evans has had a truckle bed made up in your room. She will stay with you this night. And my lord has asked me to advise Lord Durant that you make a visit here.’

  ‘Are you — very angry?’ he asked, his eyes looking so like a lost puppy’s that Miss Fleet was moved. She suspected that she was being manipulated in some way, but she was not sufficiently habituated to being considered at all, to avoid being flattered by His Lordship’s concern for her feelings.

  ‘I am not. But I think you would be better served to rest sir, and let me return to the inn. It may be that seeing another in the garments of the late Lady Balfour has brought on the attack…’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and trapped the hand she sought to remove with his giant paw. ‘But I am calmer now. Your voice calms me. If Evans sets a chair for you, will you not sit and talk to me?’

  Evans did so, and Miss Fleet, being given back her hand, acquiesced and sat. It was late afternoon now, and the sun was setting, so Tinder had lit a candle and placed it on his master’s nightstand, between Miss Fleet and him. The servants moved to chairs set against the walls in opposite dark corners, Tinder to continue to attend his master and Evans stayed too, as a chaperone of sorts, she supposed. Miss Fleet could almost feel that she and His Lordship were all alone in the candle’s glow. ‘But what on earth can I say?’ she mused aloud.

  ‘It does not matter. Tell me about your life, Miss Fleet. Who are your family?’

  ‘Of close family, I have only a sister and her husband left in all the world, I’m afraid. She married when Papa was still alive, and moved from the rectory to London to marry a lawyer, Mr Fishbourne, whose clients, I believe, are mainly wool-traders. They have a very modest home, and after Papa died, I went to live with them, but it did not suit. I took up rather too much space you see, and—’

  His Lordship’s cry of ‘You?’ gave way to a laugh and then a cough, and Miss Fleet found herself patting his hand in comfort as she had her father’s in his last days. She smiled at his joke though, and said, ‘Well I am small, but they still had to devote their only spare chamber to me and when his mother came to visit, it was indeed awkward.

  ‘Did your father leave you unprovided for?’

  ‘Well, he had very little, you see, and of course my cousin in India inherited.’

  ‘I do not understand. Was it entailed property?’

  ‘Not at all. But gentlemen must inherit, is it not so? My papa advised me, on his last days, that I must stay with my sister, or seek employment as a governess.’

  Something had made the gentleman’s breath shorten once more, and Tinder darted forward, but he gestured him away. ‘And — then?’ he managed with difficulty.

  ‘This is all very dull sir. I was seeking a post as a governess, when my brother-in-law remembered that Papa had mentioned that a second cousin of ours had married a Lord Ellingham, and he wrote to Lady Ellingham about my —’ Miss Fleet looked into her lap and began pleating the folds of blue satin, ‘— straightened circumstances, and she was happy I stay with her, so all was well,’ she added brightly.

  ‘In a post of companion?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t employed as such, but I suppose I performed the duties. I ever tried to be grateful to Lady Ellingham for the roof and the nourishment that she provided me.’ Her voice had become small again and there was a short silence.

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  His voice lowered. ‘Was it very dreadful?’

  The kindness in his voice almost overwhelmed her and she said, ‘She was a little eccentric, of course. But the happiest thing occurred. Last year, another relative of Lady Ellingham’s came to stay for a few weeks, and she taught me to laugh a little.’

  ‘What about your situation was amusing?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, Felicity found so much amusing.’ Her eyes began to look a little timidly mischievous, and the dark eyes from the bed held hers. ‘Do you know, Lady Ellingham wore the same bonnet that she’d had bought for her on her honeymoon, for forty years?’

  ‘I’ve heard of her, of course. Quite mad, they say! And you spent ten years there?’ There were breaths between each sentence, and he seemed a little angry.

  She said, reassuringly, ‘But I saw my sister once a week for an hour and I was also permitted to attend the circulation library. I had every new novel, I assure you. It was my sheer delight, for Lady Ellingham meant to read them but didn’t, so I was quite free to read once she was abed, or out for the evening.’

  He seemed to detect her real enthusiasm, and he asked her, ‘Tell me the story of the last novel you read, for it is such a while since I read one. I am tired now, so you may be for me like my old nurse as a child, who when I was ill, would tell me stories at night until I went to sleep.’

  ‘You may not share my taste sir. I shall not tell you the last, but my favourite tale. It is about a young man named Florian and his love for Ellena. But a wicked priest wishes to part them …’ It was an hour later when the first scene of the story reached its blood-curdling climax, and Miss Fleet heard the soft snoring of sleep, with a calmer breath, and she got up as silently as she had entered, and moved from the room.

  Evans showed her to a room much further along the corridor, thankfully not Lady Balfour’s chamber, and helped her undress. Miss Fleet, living in the viscount’s house for the last weeks, was now accustomed to this attention, and let her. ‘I have to tell you, miss, that when I attempted to remove the stain from the bodice of your gown it became bleached. I am most sorry.’

  She was brushing Miss Fleet’s hair before the dressing mirror and Miss Fleet met her eyes kindly. ‘There is no need to worry, Evans.
Lay it out for tomorrow. I shall put my cloak over it as I travel on tomorrow’s stage.’ It occurred to her that Evans, too, had heard the tale of her position in life: hardly higher than a servant’s. There should have been a diminution of respect in her bearing, but incredibly, it seemed to have increased. ‘Is there an earlier one on the morrow?’

  ‘I do not — think so, miss,’ said Evans, averting her eyes, ‘But I imagined that you would wish to see how His Lordship fares in the morning before you go leaving in the afternoon, so I have cut out the bleached part of the bodice and I am going to insert some nice fabric I have to replace it. It won’t be quite ready first thing, miss,’ she hesitated. ‘Unless you were wishful I stay up this night?’

  ‘Of course not, Evans. You are quite correct that I will wish to stay in the morning, though I do think His Lordship’s breathing was better, do not you?’

  ‘Yes miss,’ agreed Evans, and went to pull back the bed clothes.

  Miss Fleet sighed when she thought she might even now be going to sleep at Durant Court, but she did know that the Bear’s intentions had been good, and that she was glad somehow to be of use to him.

  Early as Miss Fleet arose, Evans rose earlier, and delivered some hot chocolate in a tiny cup with roses on it, to her in bed.

  ‘I know you wish to say “careful” to me Evans,’ Miss Fleet said, in her quiet way, ‘but I assure you that if Lord Balfour’s voice does not scare me to death, I shall not spill it.’

  Evans gave her twisted grin. ‘No guarantee of that in this house, miss,’ she said wryly.

  Miss Fleet got up and washed, and saw that the maid had laid another dress out for her to wear. She looked at it admiringly, but dubiously. Would yet another inhabited dress be any good for His Lordship’s condition? It was evident that these artefacts had a profound effect on him. But Evans was now calmly sewing a new bodice onto Miss Fleet’s grey poplin, and the blue dress was nowhere to be seen. It did not seem worth complaining of, so she put on the new gown. It was a more practical morning dress, Miss Fleet considered, with long gauze sleeves and gauze above the low bodice, made up to the throat. But the simple white muslin, sprigged with yellow primroses, seemed much too young for her. As Evans buttoned it at the back, Euphemia Fleet observed herself. Evans had done something with her hair. She had let a lock or two escape, and had seemed to twirl it idly about her fingers, even as she told Miss Fleet about the breakfast awaiting her, and the weather today. The hair now made little ringlets at each side of her face. It had seemed that Evans had formed the same simple coil as she usually achieved herself, but it was more expertly done and gave her a crown of hair that gave her another, welcome, inch in height. It was lovely, but Miss Fleet resolutely put her cap on top.