But she wasn’t given the opportunity to ask Becky for her basket, least of all leave the catalog for these men to find, because one of their number turned away from his fellows and walked towards her with a purposeful stride.
Unaware she and Becky were still standing in the doorway, blocking the exit, Lisa did not think to move aside. She was staring at the man coming towards her. Not at him precisely because it was impolite to stare a stranger in the face, but at the short skirts of his waistcoat and matching close cuffed frock coat, both in lilac silk embroidered with metallic thread, and sequins on pocket flaps, cuffs, and hem. She had never seen metallic thread embroidery before nor such a soft-hued silk on a man. Faceted crystal gems covered the buckles of his polished black leather shoes, which she was sure had to be diamonds. He was the embodiment of aristocratic anecdote.
And then the resplendently-dressed gentleman was there in front of them, and Lisa had no time and nowhere to move. He lurched at her. Becky squealed with fright, dropped her basket and fled back out into the corridor, leaving Lisa to confront him alone. Instinctively she knew Becky had deserted her, without the need to glance over her shoulder. But she did not want to. The stranger held all her attention.
She had a moment of panic, that perhaps he meant to do her a harm, but that vanished as quickly as the thought had popped into her head. She was not naturally timid, nor did she instantly think the worst of people. Assisting in the dispensary, she had encountered enough curious persons come in off the streets experiencing illness and distress to varying degrees that very little surprised her these days, about the people or what ailed them. And if she had learned anything from Dr. Warner’s patients, it was that illness made no distinction between the poorest souls dressed in rags, and gentlemen such as he, dressed in fine clothes and diamonds. All were deserving of her compassion, and to be treated with dignity.
Nor did she fear him. A cursory diagnosis told her he was incapable of doing harm to anyone other than himself. He was either drunk beyond reason, taken ill, or affected by lunacy. Whatever had caused his present unhappy state he was suffering for it. Torment was writ large across his features, in the contortions in his fingers, and the straining in his neck in its fine white linen stock. He needed medical attention, something to ease his suffering, and, she realized too late, standing as a statue in the doorway was no way to be of help to him.
Yet before she could move, he walked right up to her as if she was not there at all and stepped on her foot.
This was so unexpected that she fell against him, biting her lip to stifle a cry of pain, because any sudden sound might startle him, and cause him to become agitated. Dr. Warner had cautioned his medical students when treating those who were clearly not in possession of their full faculties that any sudden movements or noise could send lunatics into an even greater frenzy.
Then the stranger startled her, grabbing her about the waist. Instantly she pulled out of his hold, and was so shocked to be man-handled that she froze. He responded by sticking his face in hers and barking out an order. She did not understand, his words were slurred and almost unintelligible. And then she had sudden revelation that he was not speaking in English, but in French and it opened wide her eyes. He said he needed to urinate, and at once. That had Lisa tripping over her own petticoats to get out of his way. Yet no sooner had she backed out into the corridor, he staggering after her, than he collapsed at her feet.
WHEN HE HIT the floor with a thud, she stared down at him, stunned. Not only by his fall, but also by the entire incident, which was over in a matter of moments.
It took Becky rushing over and tugging at her arm to break the spell.
“Come on, Miss!” she hissed. “Here’s our chance! I’ll get me basket and we’ll flee—”
Lisa pulled her arm free and dropped to her knees beside the stranger.
“Bring the taper closer. I need to see if he’s injured himself.”
“Don’t touch ’im, Miss! You dunno what ’es got!”
“He’s unwell and needs our help,” Lisa assured her, squinting up into the glow of the candle which was just inches from her face, Becky doing as she was asked and holding the taper over Lisa’s shoulder. “Come a little closer so I can see if he has split his head, or done himself any other injury.”
“By the looks of ’im, ’e ain’t in ’is right mind!”
Becky reluctantly did as she was told, the light from the taper flickering in her trembling hand. Still, it allowed Lisa to better examine the stranger in the soft light.
She gingerly leaned over him and gently brushed back his mop of wavy black hair to see his face, wondering if the fall to the ground had knocked him unconscious. But his eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated, and he seemed to be staring without seeing. He certainly did not react to her touch or the closeness of her, so he did not know she was there. He trembled all over, but unlike Becky who did so from fright, these were not gentle tremors but a series of jerky actions in his limbs and torso, for which he seemed to have no control. The muscles in his neck remained strained, his head pulled to one side. She wished she could unravel his cravat—but where to start on the complicated knot in the soft folds of linen?
He had fallen on his right side, his frock coat bunching up under him, the skirts falling away from his black breeches. He was not at all relaxed, which she’d have expected had he knocked himself out. His left arm remained bent at the elbow and adhered to his chest, and his fingers gnarled and clinging to a couple of the covered buttons of his metallic-threaded waistcoat.
Lisa wondered from these contortions if he were in pain. Yet, he hardly made a sound. She leaned in, beckoning Becky to bring the light closer, to better illuminate his face. His mouth was twisted, pulled to one side like the rest of his body, with the lips slightly parted from which issued forth a low gurgling, but no intelligible words.
She sat back on her haunches, pondering what to do, and was distracted by the voices coming from the drawing room, where the door was still wide. At least the gentlemen were no longer shouting at one another, or disturbing the furniture.
Instinctively, she knew the last thing this gentleman would want was for his friends to see him in such a reduced and vulnerable state. No doubt that was the reason he had tried to leave the room in such a hurry. So she had Becky quietly shut the door, hoping the gentlemen were too caught up in themselves to even notice one of their number was no longer with them.
And as he continued to convulse, Lisa was reminded of young Joe, son of a local laundress, an Irishwoman, and a patient of Dr. Warner. Joe’s mother was convinced her son’s fits were the work of the devil, punishment for bearing a bastard. Dr. Warner told her most stridently not to be so foolish. Joe was not possessed of a demon. He suffered with the falling sickness, many children did, and it was not her fault or his. On one of Joe’s many visits, Lisa had witnessed him have a fit. It had come on suddenly, without warning, his thin little body wracked with violent spasms, contorting his limbs and his face. It had ended just as abruptly, leaving Joe limp and exhausted, as if the life force had been sucked from him. She had never seen an adult have such an attack and had wrongly presumed the falling sickness a childhood ailment. Yet, here was this gentleman, a man who seemed healthy in every other particular, in much the same reduced state as poor Joe. So he was not drunk, or mad, but a fellow sufferer…
Decided, she looked up at Becky, a hand to the stranger’s shoulder, hoping touch might offer reassurance that he was not alone, just as she had done with Joe—though she had no reason to believe, that just like Joe, he was aware of her presence.
“Becky, find the butler. I need a coverlet. Also a basin of warm water and a clean cloth.”
Becky stared down at Lisa as if she were as mad as the gentleman writhing on the floor.
“But—Miss! That’s ’im!” she hissed. “That’s the gent who dun own the book. I’d not ’ave thought it, but takin’ a good look at ’im now, it’s true. I’d know that nose anywhere. So we
can’t stay ’ere’—”
Lisa hid her astonishment, saying calmly, “I will not abandon him. He needs help. And I mean to stay until—”
“Miss, how can you ’elp? Best leave ’im to whatever devil ’as possessed ’is soul. Poor sot. And we don’t want to get caught up in—”
“He’s ill, not mad,” Lisa interrupted stridently. “Now please do as I ask and then you may leave, if that is your wish. I’ll be perfectly all right. Put the catalog on the table on the landing where it will be found. Make haste, Becky. Go!”
No sooner had Becky disappeared down the passageway, to offload the book then find the butler, than the drawing room door was wrenched open. A gentleman with a head of untidy copper curls bounded out of the smoke-filled drawing room, eyes wild and searching. He did not see Lisa just inches from his feet by the wall. His gaze remained over her head, looking down the darkened corridor one way, and then the other. Lisa hoped he wouldn’t notice her, that he would go off down the passageway after Becky, or return to the room. But there was something in his kind face that spoke to her—an inherent goodness—that here was a decent man, and that he was not being inquisitive for its own sake, or to be mischievous, but because he cared about the man lying beside her.
“Sir, your friend is down here with me,” she said quietly.
The gentleman jumped in the air, spun about and almost tripped over his feet. This provided Lisa with a moment’s levity, and then he was on his knees, leaning over his friend, who continued to writhe and twist and make unintelligible mutterings in the muted light of the candle.
“Harry? Harry? It’s Jack. Jack is here,” he said gently. “You’re safe. There’s no one else. Just us and—” He glanced at Lisa and then thought better of mentioning her presence. “I’ll just go fetch the lads …”
Yet he continued to kneel over his friend, stricken with such a mixture of distressing emotions that Lisa was compelled to offer him reassurance, even though she was unsure if this would help or hinder him in his distress.
They spoke in hushed tones.
“Sir, I’ve sent for a coverlet. He needs to be kept warm, and I thought it would also help—to keep him from prying eyes.” When Jack nodded distractedly, she added, “Do you know how long his seizures last?”
Jack shook his head. “No…” He looked at Lisa then, a frown between his brows. “You are not alarmed by his convulsions?”
“Pardon, sir, but why would I be alarmed by another’s suffering—?”
“I didn’t mean—I hope you were not offended by my remark. It’s just that most persons go out of their way to avoid those that are-are—suffering.”
“You do not. Nor do I. But I confess to being less worried, seeing that you are not at all panicked by your friend’s condition. So I can presume this is not an irregular occurrence—that he suffers from such seizures often?”
“From time to time. Not often, but enough…” Jack answered evasively before confessing with a sheepish smile, “Truth is, I knew he still had attacks but I’d no notion they were still severe. I’ve not seen him this way since—since we were boys…”
“He’s had the falling sickness since a child?”
“Yes, from birth.” Jack looked at Lisa wonderingly. “You know the name of his condition? Yes, it is indeed the falling sickness.”
“This is not the first attack I have witnessed.”
“It isn’t? Is one of your Corinthians a sufferer?”
Lisa frowned. “Corinthians?”
“Customer. Patron. Regular. It’s all the same thing.”
Lisa blinked at him. “It is?”
Jack baulked, realizing she had no idea what he was talking about. He swallowed hard and took a good look at her. No cosmetics. Natural hair. Clear skin. A high cut décolletage with a modesty fichu for good measure. Clear, confident diction. Not a hint of the coquette about her. Definitely not a prostitute. And young. If he were to hazard a further guess, not a servant either. Then who was she?
“You’re not from Harris’s List, are you?” he blurted out.
“Harris’s List? I’ve no idea what that is, so that should answer your question. But I can assure you that at Warner’s Dispensary where I assist, I am not panicked at all by the ill or the injured and their suffering. Nor do I have a disgust of their ailments or of-of—their bodily fluids. I would be of no use to Dr. Warner or his patients if I did. Sir, I tell you this so your mind will be at ease in leaving your friend in the care of a female stranger—me—while you fetch the-the—lads?”
“The lads! Yes! Thank you! I must get them. That much I can do for Harry.” He scrambled to his feet and closed the drawing room door then came back and looked down at Lisa. “If any gentleman should come out of that room and find you here—”
“I shall shepherd them back inside with some excuse I will do my best to invent while you are gone.”
Jack sighed his relief. “Thank you, Miss-Miss—”
“Lisa. My name is Lisa,” she said firmly, not wanting to give out her surname because she should not be at Lord Westby’s townhouse in the first instance, and secondly she did not want her name or Becky’s attached to the missing catalog, should inquiries be made at a later date. She smiled up at him, wanting to ask his name. Instead she said, “The lads, sir…?”
JACK FOLLOWED the same route Becky had taken, and passed a footman coming up the stairs with a coverlet, and behind him, a rosy-cheeked girl carrying a porcelain basin. He did not stop, and when he returned with two burly men, Henri-Antoine was tucked up under the coverlet. His head was propped up off the floor and resting on Lisa’s thigh, and she was gently wiping his face with a damp cloth, her rosy-cheeked friend beside her, basin at the ready.
“The tremors have stopped and he’s sleeping,” Lisa advised Jack in a low voice when he knelt the other side of her. She glanced up at the two men who were as wide as they were tall—she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn their previous employment had been lifting felled trees onto drays. “He uttered a few words that were not in English. Is your friend a Frenchman?”
“Did you have any trouble?” he asked, avoiding the question, a jerk in direction of the drawing room door.
Lisa shook her head, but she wasn’t watching him. Her gaze had returned to her patient. “He became agitated when the seizures eased, and then stopped, which is when he spoke in French,” she explained diffidently. “But he settled again and seemed to fall almost immediately into a deep sleep when I reassured him all was well and-and—” She paused, throat suddenly dry, and confessed, “—took to lightly stroking his hair, in the same way I did for Joe—the boy at the dispensary who has the falling sickness. He calms considerably if his hair is stroked.”
“Ah. Does he? That’s good to know, but what I meant was, did my friends in the drawing room bother you at all?”
“Oh! Oh! No. No, they have remained in the room.” She suppressed a smile. “But that was because half-a-dozen most interesting and joyous females joined your friends not long after you went to fetch the lads. One of their number confided they were invited to help celebrate a gentleman’s last weeks of freedom before his marriage—”
“Anyone would think I was being locked up!” Jack interrupted with an embarrassed huff, suddenly hot in the face. “And it wasn’t my idea to invite them!”
Lisa made no comment, adding when Jack continued to look self-conscious, “They were in such high spirits they barely noticed me. And they certainly did not notice your friend because he was already under the coverlet.”
Jack let out a sigh, gaze on the drawing room door. The crescendo of female laughter and chatter was audible, so, too, Seb and Bully’s drunken bravado. No doubt those two were in seventh heaven to have eight high-class prostitutes all to themselves. He ignored what was going on in there for the time being, and leaned over to take another look at Henri-Antoine. He was sleeping peacefully, face turned away, head resting comfortably on the girl’s petticoats, as if she were his own feather pillow.<
br />
Jack remembered that after an attack Henri-Antoine was left exhausted and dazed, and depending on its severity could sleep for upwards of four hours. When he woke he would be sluggish, irritable, and uncommunicative, sometimes for days. Nothing new in the latter, he thought with a wry smile. But the smile died thinking that what his best friend would hate more than anything else would be to wake to an unnecessary audience. He certainly would not appreciate having strangers attending on him, or knowing that he suffered from the falling sickness, even if the female washing his face and stroking his hair was out of the common way. So with that in mind, he said to Lisa, a glance at Becky,
“The lads can look after him now, Miss. That’s what they’re trained to do. They’ll take him away from here, make him comfortable, and watch over him until he is more himself. You and your friend may go about your business. Thank you for coming to his assistance. He would be most grateful, and tell you so himself were he able.”
Lisa smiled and nodded. She was not sure she believed him about his friend being grateful. He was just being polite. That his friend had minders who took care of him in such situations would suggest they were employed to prevent strangers interfering or bearing witness to an attack. She could not fault him for that, and he was fortunate indeed to have such a caring friend, and the means by which to make his situation as comfortable and as bearable as possible.
There was nothing left for her to say or do, so she carefully extracted herself from being his pillow, Jack quick to come to her assistance. She discarded the cloth she’d been using to sponge his face, dropping it into the basin, and got to her feet. Becky stood, too. And as Lisa shook the creases from her petticoats she could not resist a last look at her patient in the muted candlelight. He no longer had any muscle tightness. Gone was the strain to his neck, the clamp to the jaw, and the pull to his mouth. The handsome features with the strong nose were now in repose, the square chin nestling softly in the folds of a fine linen cravat she had dared to unknot and loosen. And the shock of black hair she had gently brushed back out of his eyes and stroked while offering him reassurance, now fell unrestrained to his shoulders. She could see that he also possessed high cheekbones, but it was at his mouth her gaze lingered longest. The lips were beautifully molded… Becky was right. It was a perfectly kissable mouth, and he was an inordinately beautiful man.
Satyr’s Son: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Family Saga Book 5) Page 5