Another Country (25 page)

The doctor had shaken his head wearily. “If she
wakes, we can anticipate a full recovery.”

“If?” Henry demanded in a choked whisper. “What do
you mean, if?”

“A sustained, high fever can lead to problems in the
brain,” the doctor explained. “Irreversible damage.” He paused,
regret etched in every weary line in his face. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Moore.”

Sorry, Henry thought now. Everyone was sorry.
Everyone looked on him with wretched expressions of compassion.
Pity. It availed little for Margaret.

He took her limp hand in his, wishing he could
transfer his energy, his sheer will, to her fragile form.

“Margaret... please... please wake up. There’s so
much for us to live for.”

The door clicked open, and Eleanor stood there
uncertainly. Henry smiled in tired greeting.

At least Eleanor did not ask the obvious, if there
had been any change. She simply bustled in and took the tray of
uneaten food left for Henry earlier.

“You do need to keep your strength up, Henry,” she
reminded him gently and he shrugged.

“Do you think... Eleanor, do you honestly think
she’ll recover? Or have her wits been addled by the fever?” Henry
looked at her almost desperately, as if she could actually have an
answer to that question.

“If I know Margaret,” Eleanor said quietly, “I know
she’s not ready to quit living just yet. She had plenty of plans,
and I warrant she still wants to see them put into action.” She
gave a fleeting smile, and Henry returned it.

“That much is true, at any rate.”

Eleanor left quietly, and Henry turned back to his
wife. Her fingers, usually limp in his, seemed to flutter. He
glanced down, hope lurching to life within him.

“Henry?” Margaret’s voice came out
in a scratchy whisper, and Henry had to blink the tears from his
own eyes to see his wife, awake, alert,
alive
.

“Margaret, oh thank Providence. I was afraid...”

“It’ll take...” Margaret paused, struggling for
breath. “It’ll take more than that to...” she closed her eyes
briefly, opened them, and smiled. “To finish me off.”

Henry chuckled, his fingers tracing the dear lines
of her face. Margaret was back, and still so wonderfully
herself.

Later that day, Henry stood in his study, feeling
more cheerful than he had in weeks. Margaret had spoken with both
Eleanor and the doctor, as well as taken a little broth.

“It’ll be awhile yet before she’s up on her feet,”
the doctor warned, although he was smiling, as relieved as any of
them at Margaret’s progress. “She needs to stay in bed and not tire
herself. The last thing anyone wants is a relapse.”

“Rest assured, I will take every precaution,” Henry
said with fervor.

“You know how Margaret is,” Eleanor told Henry after
the doctor had departed. “She’ll think she’s strong enough to wade
right back in, and she’ll be cross with us if we don’t let
her.”

“Perhaps,” Henry admitted ruefully, “but it’s for
her own good.”

Eleanor nodded. “Hardly what Margaret wants to hear.
I’ll go and see if there’s anything she needs.”

Margaret was leaning against her bolster, looking
pale and tired, and yet with a brightness in her eyes as she looked
out the window, at the bare branches of the oak trees.

“The leaves are all gone,” she said as Eleanor
entered. “How long have I been abed?”

“Over a fortnight. We feared for the worst, you
know.” Eleanor smoothed the counterpane and perched on the end of
the bed. “You can’t know how wonderful it is to see you like this,
awake and well.”

“And as weak as a kitten!” Margaret closed her eyes
briefly. “I couldn’t even manage a spoonful of broth to my own
lips.”

“You were very ill.”

“I know.” Margaret glanced at Eleanor again, her
head still resting against the bolster. “I suppose the school has
closed.”

“Actually, it hasn’t.” Eleanor smiled at the look of
surprise on Margaret’s face. “To be fair, it closed for a week, but
then I enlisted the aid of another teacher.”

“Another! But who would be willing to take it
on?”

“Isobel Moore,” Eleanor said quietly, “and she’s
doing quite well.”

“Isobel! I never would’ve thought...”

“She might seem to care only for parties and gowns,
but once she was in the school, it was quite different. She loves
the small children, the way they clamber for a place on her lap.”
The affection, Eleanor had wondered silently, that Ian had not been
able to give her. “And she can be stern when she needs to be.”

“Does she plan to continue?” Margaret’s tone was
both curious and guarded. Eleanor knew how dearly she held the
school to her heart.

“I certainly hope so. The number of children coming
to our door is overwhelming without another teacher. Since the
typhoid epidemic, many more have come, wanting help. A way out,
perhaps.”

“I thought she’d only a head for marriage and
children,” Margaret admitted in a low voice. “She’ll be labeled a
bluestocking after this.”

“I don’t think that matters.” Eleanor glanced out
the window at the bare branches, the slate grey sky. “Sometimes our
hopes and dreams change.”

Margaret nodded, a new bleakness in her eyes.
“Sometimes they have to.”

When Eleanor returned downstairs, Henry was speaking
with one of his clerks in the foyer. “Pardon me, Eleanor, but I
must speak with Aubrey here. A matter of business, most
pressing.”

Eleanor nodded her understanding, but her brow
furrowed as she saw Henry’s strained expression, the worry clouding
his eyes as he ushered his clerk into the study.

What with Margaret being ill, she hadn’t thought a
moment of Henry’s business... or even Rupert’s involvement.

Had something gone wrong?

“You wanted to speak to me of Rupert?” Henry asked
as Aubrey, his office manager, closed the door of the study.

“He’s not come into work for nearly a week, sir. I
did not wish to disturb you, with your wife being so ill, but I’ve
become worried.”

Henry didn’t think Aubrey sounded worried. Smug,
more likely, and relieved to have a rival knocked out of the way.
He couldn’t blame him; it was hard enough to get ahead in this
city.

“Rupert has been doing some business for me,” Henry
said. “A private matter. I expect he is detained in resolving
it.”

Aubrey looked as if he wanted to object--to what,
Henry wasn’t certain. Perhaps the very fact that Rupert had
business he’d not been aware of. Henry felt a twinge of sympathy,
equally mixed with irritation.

“Have you not seen him either, sir?”

Henry paused. It was true, he realized, with a lurch
of mingled guilt and fear. Rupert had not shown his face for
several days, nearly a week, as Aubrey said. It had been the
longest he’d been away since he’d arrived. He’d called here every
day since Margaret’s illness.

“I haven’t,” he admitted uncomfortably. He knew
Rupert was looking into the forgery. Was it possible something had
happened? Something dangerous?

“What do you think has happened, Aubrey?” Henry
asked abruptly.

“I couldn’t say, sir. I went to his rooms, and spoke
to the char woman. She hadn’t seen him in a week, and his rooms
were empty. It looked as if no one had slept there for several
days, at the least.”

Henry felt a fluttering of panic, and forced it
down. “There was no message from him?”

“None at all.” Aubrey paused. “It seems as if he’s
left, whether on his own volition or not...” he broke off
delicately, and Henry frowned.

“I hardly think he’d leave, with his sister so ill!
He’s not that kind of man, Aubrey.”

“No, indeed not.” Aubrey’s impassive face and hard
eyes told Henry clearly that he wished Rupert to be that kind of
man.

Yet Henry knew he wasn’t. So where was he? Henry
knew he had to find out himself. He was shamed that he had not
turned his attention to Rupert and his forgery investigation
earlier.

He turned to Aubrey. “Thank you for bringing it to
my attention, at any rate. I shall look into directly.”

“And if he returns to the office?”

“You may send him to me.”

Henry showed Aubrey out, then stood in the foyer,
his sense of unease deepening with every moment. If he hadn’t been
so consumed with Margaret’s health, he would have noticed Rupert’s
absence days ago.

Crucial days? Henry experienced a stab of fear. He’d
sent Rupert on a mission he knew was dangerous, and hadn’t given it
much of a thought since. What kind of employer did that? What kind
of man?

“Henry, is everything well?” Eleanor stood in the
doorway, her face troubled. “I heard raised voices.”

“A business matter...” Henry glanced at Eleanor,
remembering the affection Margaret was certain existed between her
and his brother-in-law. Perhaps she knew something... “Eleanor,
have you seen Rupert this past week?”

“Rupert?” Eleanor’s eyebrows raised. “No... that is,
I haven’t...” she blushed, and then, as if realizing the
seriousness of the matter, took a step forward. “Why do you ask me?
Haven’t you seen him? He’s been in the office, hasn’t he?”

Henry shook his head grimly. “Actually, he hasn’t.
Aubrey just came and told me.”

“But if he hasn’t been here...”

Henry hunched his shoulders. “He was on a bit of
business for me, a sort of investigation.”

“An investigation? What do you mean? He’s a
clerk!”

Henry was reluctant to tell Eleanor the details, yet
his own guilt forced it out of him. “There was a forgery, money
passed to me that was false. I asked Rupert to find the
source.”

“Find the source!” Eleanor repeated incredulously.
“But counterfeiters are considered to be some of the most dangerous
criminals. The papers are full of the stories... horrible
ones.”

“Rupert felt capable of the task, I assure you,”
Henry said. “I wouldn’t have asked him otherwise.”

“Of course he did! He thinks he can do anything!”
Eleanor shook her head in despair.

“He’s not a child, Eleanor...”

“But he’s missing, isn’t he? He’s in danger.”
Eleanor gazed at him bleakly. “It’s not like Rupert to disappear,
not with Margaret so poorly. I myself wondered why he had not
come...” She twisted her hands in her apron, her face now shadowed
with anxiety and even fear.

“We shall have to look for him! What if he’s been
waylaid? Or ill himself? I could go to the hospital...”

“Eleanor, I won’t have you troubling yourself over
this,” Henry broke in. “I told you, it’s dangerous, and the typhoid
is still rampant in parts of the city.”

“Which part?” Eleanor’s eyes flashed. “Because I
assure you there’s no part of this city I haven’t been or wouldn’t
go to see Rupert safe!”

Henry looked at her in surprise. “You care for him,
then?”

“Very much,” Eleanor whispered. “And I never got the
chance to tell him.”

Henry’s heart lurched as regret and guilt swamped
him once more. “We’ll find him, Eleanor. I’ll hire a private
investigator. We can look in the hospitals and charity houses.”

“I’ll go.”

“It’s not fitting...”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Henry!” Eleanor lifted
her chin. “I’ve been working in an immigrant school, after all. I
shall take Ian.”

“Wait, at least, to see what the investigator might
discover!” Henry pleaded. “I won’t have you tramping the streets to
no purpose. There is more danger than you think.”

“Apparently so.” Eleanor’s eyes sparkled with tears,
and Henry did not blame her for her waspish tone. It was his fault
Rupert had gone missing, his error of omission. Perhaps others
could help more than he could. “We’ll find him,” he said again, but
to convince himself or Eleanor he wasn’t certain.

Eleanor glanced at him, her eyes now hard and bright
with determination. “Yes. We will.”

Maggie laid her hand against her mother’s bump, her
face filled with delight when she felt a foot kick hard against her
palm.

“I felt it! She’s a wee, strong thing, isn’t
she?”

Harriet, one hand on her back, chuckled. “It might
be a boy, Maggie.”

“No, it can’t be,” her daughter replied with
conviction. “We need another girl.”

Harriet nodded. “I see.” Maggie and George had been
scrapping and fighting like wolf cubs lately, cooped indoors as
they were. She had heard Maggie expressing her dislike of her
brother and boys in general more than once.

It had been a difficult few weeks, as the cold
weather closed in, the days grew dark and the ground hard with
frost.

With news of the bairn, Betty had cheered, and in
the last few weeks had roused herself to help with simple chores
and dandle Anna on her knee.

Harriet was grateful for the help, but her heart was
ever more glad to see the bloom in Betty’s cheeks, the brightness
in her eyes. She’d feared the older woman would fade away to
nothing after Sandy died.

Now, Harriet thought, feeling the child within her
kick again, there was hope for the future. She thought of her own
silent, secret hopes... ones she hoped to voice this evening, when
the children were abed.

“Mama, you think it’s a girl, don’t you?”

Harriet smiled down at her daughter. “I’ll be happy
with a healthy bairn, Maggie, boy or girl.”

“We’ll know in the spring,” Maggie said
philosophically, and Harriet nodded.

“Yes. In the spring.”

That evening, with a pile of mending in her lap,
Harriet broached the subject she’d long been waiting for.

“We’re well enough here for the winter, aren’t we?”
she remarked, nodding in satisfaction at the blazing fire, the
twisted ropes of dried onions and peppers that hung from the
rafters. There was a salted ham in the loft, and plenty of venison
in the smokehouse.

“We’ll do all right,” Allan agreed, but his eyes
twinkled as if he could guess her thoughts.