Carola Dunn (13 page)

He had no expectation of laws being passed to encourage the replacement of damp, crumbling hovels. The most he hoped for was to cause a few careless landlords to consider where their advantage lay and thus to alleviate the plight of a few unfortunate tenants.

Three of his peers had come up to him afterwards to tell him he had dashed well made them think.

Striding homeward up Dover Street, he had the oddest urge to report his modest success to Miss Findlay. She would appreciate his efforts and applaud his accomplishment, as Daphne would not. But one simply did not seek out a governess for any reason not concerned with her charge.

His encounters with her always turned out much less formal than he intended, which was why he had avoided the schoolroom for the past several days. By now Colin must be feeling neglected. Ashe really ought to go and see him.

He would report on the unsuitability of Voss’s candidate for the post of tutor, and confirm Daphne’s refusal to let Colin go to Ashmead. And, in passing, he might just mention his speech.

As he entered the house, Halsey hurried to meet him. “My lord,” the stout butler said anxiously, taking Ashe’s hat and gloves, “I understand Master Colin is unwell.”

“More so than usual?”

“The nurserymaid--not an unintelligent girl in her way, my lord--says Miss Findlay is quite worried. Her ladyship being out for the day, Miss requested that your lordship be informed as soon as....”

“Thank you, Halsey.” Ashe took the stairs two by two.

He paused on the upper landing. Peter’s mirthful voice came from the night nursery.

“...sat down in her milk-pail and got stuck!”

Matters could not be too serious. Smiling, Ashe opened the door.

Laughter changed to a horrible choking sound. He saw Miss Findlay leap to her feet and bend over Colin, her hands on his shoulders as he sagged forward, fighting for air.

“Sit up!” she said urgently. “You cannot breathe with your lungs compressed like that. Peter, bring a glass of warm barley-water, quickly. Sit up, Colin darling.”

Ashe sprang to the other side of the bed. With his greater strength, he forced Colin to sit upright. The child’s face was livid, bathed in sweat, terrified.

Miss Findlay, her arm lightly about his heaving shoulders, caught one clutching hand. She talked to him softly, steadily, soothingly, only the faintest tremor in her voice betraying her terror to Ashe.

“Hush, love, keep still. Don’t be afraid. You will be better directly. See here, Peter has brought your drink. You know how it relieves your throat. Your uncle will hold it for you while you sip.”

Ashe took the glass from Peter’s trembling hand and presented it to Colin’s blue lips.

“Sip, just a tiny bit, that is right,” Miss Findlay’s murmured reassurance continued. “Come now, you are easier already, I can tell. Another sip. Don’t cry, love, you are a big boy, too big to cry. Sip again. Good! What a brave boy you are. Show your uncle how calm you can be. How proud of you he is!”

“Excessively proud.” Ashe took the girl’s cue, noting that already the livid tinge was fading from Colin’s face as his breath came easier, though he still wheezed dreadfully. “You’re a regular prime ‘un, old fellow. That’s it, another sip and we’ll soon have you all to rights.”

Colin finished the drink, and Ashe looked round for Peter to refill the glass from the pot on the chest-of-drawers. Both the Findlay boys were gone.

“I’ll fill it,” he said. “Shall I lay him down?”

“No, just let me rearrange his pillows. Lying down makes things worse.”

With the child propped upright on the pillows, Ashe crossed to the chest and poured the warm barleywater. As he returned towards the bed, a small, frightened face peeked around the door.

“Is he going to be all right?” Michael asked fearfully.

“Yes, he’s much better already,” Ashe said.

“Lissa, Peter’s crying. He didn’t mean to...we didn’t mean to make Colin ill. We just wanted to cheer him up. We didn’t know a funny story would make him ill.”

“Of course you did not, love.” She sent Ashe a glance of appeal. “I don’t want to leave Colin.”

“I’ll go.”

She trusted him to reassure her brothers, he thought, filled with inexplicable elation. Michael trusted him too, slipping his little hand into Ashe’s as they left the night nursery together.

“Peter doesn’t usually cry,” he said, anxious to defend his brother, “even when he’s whipped. He’s not a milksop.”

“I know.”

“I shan’t cry any more when I’m big like him. Are you going to whip him?”

“No. Is he not in the schoolroom?” Ashe asked as Michael turned the other way.

“No, in Lissa’s room.” He pushed open the door. “We slept here last night ‘cause Lissa stayed up with Colin. Peter, Colin’s going to be all right!”

After a swift, curious glance around the small chamber, Ashe turned his attention to the boy curled up on the narrow bed, his fair head buried in his arms. Peter’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ashe wondered what to say. His occasional jaunts with Colin had not taught him how to handle children.

But he had been a child himself. Surely he had once made a similar mistake?

“Peter, Colin is none the worse for his attack, and no one blames you for it.”

“It was my f-fault. I m-made him laugh.”

“You could not have guessed it would make him ill. Your sister didn’t, or she would have stopped you, would she not?”

“Y-es. Is he really all right?” Peter sat up, sniffing and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

Ashe handed him a handkerchief. “He is not well, but no worse, I believe, than before.”

“Truly? Then I shan’t care for any punishment.”

“Punishment?” Good gad, but these children expected the worst at the slightest transgression, intended or not! “Why should I punish you when your aim was to raise his spirits?”

“Only God can see into one’s heart,” Peter explained seriously. “Man judges and chastises actions not intentions.”

“True, no doubt, in many cases, but man is quite capable of taking extenuating circumstances into account.”

“What’s ‘tenuating circumstances?” Michael asked.

“Let me tell you a story. Once there was a little boy, somewhere in age between the two of you. His mother was very pleased and proud when he learnt anything new, his letters, say, or to jump on his pony. So when he shot his first rabbit, he hurried to show her. Now it just happened that she was taking tea with several visiting ladies at the time. He rushed into the drawing room waving a bloody corpse. One lady fainted, two fell into hysterics, one jumped up on a chair as if it were a live mouse, and one ran away.”

Peter snickered. Ashe found it hard not to laugh at the memory, though at the time he had been appalled. He continued, “That’s not the end. The one who ran away bumped into a footman bringing in a jug of hot water. It spilt and badly scalded her foot and his hand.”

“Gosh!” said Michael.

“What do you think was his punishment?” Ashe asked.

Michael shuddered. “I bet his papa beat him till he couldn’t sit down, or even stand up straight, and locked him in his chamber on bread and water for a whole week and made him learn five hundred verses.”

“Lissa wouldn’t,” said Peter. “Lissa would say it was a mistake and you must learn from it, and do something to help the people you upset. Was it you, sir?”

“It was.”

“What did your father do?”

“I was obliged to apologize to everyone, of course. Then I had to hold myself available to run errands for the lady until her foot healed. So she wasn’t angry with me any longer, and I wasn’t angry with her, since her silliness had not earned me a beating. And, believe me, I have never again waved a dead animal around in a lady’s drawing room!”

“What about the footman, sir?” Peter wanted to know.

Ashe thought back. His father had not even mentioned the footman’s injury, he recalled. It was his and Daphne’s governess who pointed out that the man--scarcely more than a boy then--was an innocent victim of his thoughtlessness. Under her prodding, he had himself come up with a way to make amends.

“I helped him with his work until his hand was better. We became good friends, and now Parrish is my butler at Ashmead.”

“Good,” said Michael with satisfaction.

“What can I do for Colin to show I’m sorry, sir?” asked Peter. “I already help Lissa as much as I can so she can look after him better.”

Ashe regarded him reflectively. His blue eyes were red-rimmed from weeping; in rubbing them he had transferred a certain amount of dirt from hands to face; his fair hair was raggedly cut, by his sister no doubt; his wrists protruded from the too-short sleeves of his jacket--damn! Ashe had forgotten to give orders for new clothes for the boys--and there were grass stains on his shirt. He looked a regular ragamuffin, yet Ashe knew him to be responsible beyond his age.

“I must talk to your sister about Colin’s health,” Ashe said, “but I don’t want to do so in his hearing, lest it distress him. Can I trust you to sit quietly with him, reading to him perhaps, while we talk?”

“I’ll read about the Knights of the Round Table. That’s what he likes best.” Peter took a deep breath. “What shall I do if he suddenly gets really bad?”

Was it too much to ask of a child? He could send for the nurserymaid. But he’d as soon trust Peter and the lad was eager to make amends. “You will send Michael for us. We shall be right next door, in the schoolroom. We’ll even leave both doors open.”

“I’ll run very fast,” Michael promised.

Ashe recalled Lissa’s insistence on calmness. “And you will do your best to reassure Colin and keep him quiet until we arrive.”

“You’ll come right away?”

“Right away.”

“I’ll tell him not to be frightened because it happened before and he was all right afterwards. But I hope it doesn’t happen.”

“If you haven’t seen him taken so bad before, I don’t expect it will. Come along, then.”

Lissa looked round as Lord Ashe returned with her brothers. Peter was red-eyed, but whatever his lordship had said to him had clearly comforted him.

“Sir, I must speak with you,” she said.

“Two minds with a single thought. In the schoolroom? Peter and Michael will take care of Colin.”

“I know what to do,” Peter assured her. “I’ll read to you, Colin, if you like.”

“Yes,” Colin whispered. “The King...Arthur...book.”

“I’ll fetch it,” Michael volunteered, and trotted off.

Lissa and Lord Ashe followed. Suddenly exhausted, Lissa dropped onto a chair at the table and propped her head up with one hand. If he berated her for not calling in a doctor, she was going to burst into tears.

She struck first. “Colin is never going to be well in London,” she said bluntly. “I am convinced it is the bad city air which makes him ill. His condition has deteriorated shockingly since last we had rain to wash some of the smoke out of the air.”

Moving to the window, Lord Ashe looked out at the sunshine which had once cheered Lissa and now seemed to strike with a pitiless glare. He turned, leaning against the window-sill, silhouetted against the brightness so that she could not see his face.

“You think he would be healthy in the country?”

“I believe he would be better. I cannot guarantee he would be cured, but it breaks my heart to see him suffering, and so frightened, just because his mama wants him here.” Regardless of the risk to her employment, her indignation boiled over. “Lady Orton left London without him. She has not seen him in several days!”

Ashe was taken aback by such vehemence in one usually diffident. If she had constituted herself Colin’s champion after a mere few weeks, no wonder she had taken upon herself the removal of her brothers from their unpleasant situation.

Still, to abstract minors from the care of their lawful guardian, however harsh, was not at all the thing. In fact, it was illegal, and Ashe, in not reporting it, was very likely compounding a felony. Since her disclosure he had been wondering whether he ought to attempt to find out more and do something about it.

Peter doesn’t cry, even when he’s whipped.
Michael’s voice rang in his ears. I shan’t cry any more when I’m big like him. This was the child who had saved a piece of his penny bun for his hungry sister, when he had a “pain in his pudding-house” from hunger. And Peter, who did not mind any punishment as long as Colin had recovered--they were both clearly used to being beaten for every unintended peccadillo.

Good gad, had the brute beaten Lissa?

Ashe decided on the spot that this was the point in a relatively law-abiding life when he and the law parted company. He would ask no questions, make no effort to discover who the Findlays were, where they came from, what their real name might be.

His long silence alarmed Lissa. She recalled that losing her post would devastate her brothers more than herself, and would not help Colin.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, all her diffidence returned. “I did not mean to be impertinent.”

“Impertinent?” Shaking his head, he came to pull out a chair and sit down opposite her. “The truth may sometimes sound impertinent, I daresay, but it is nevertheless the truth. Daphne loves her son, I do believe, but she is no more cut out for diligent mothering than for a country life.”

“Then he will have to stay here?”

“By no means. I am his legal guardian. I have the authority to take whatever steps I consider advisable.”

As he paused in thought, Lissa suppressed a shiver. Mr. Exton had the same authority. His notion of what was advisable in the upbringing of children could scarcely be more different from Lord Ashe’s.

She did not know what his lordship had said to comfort Peter and Michael, but she was passionately grateful.

“Perhaps I have been remiss,” he said now, ruefully, “in giving way to Daphne. Yet until now I have had no more than a suspicion that Colin would go on better at Ashmead, which I put down to my own happy childhood there.”

“Until now? You believe me, then?”

He smiled. “After your scientifical experiment with the milk, Miss Findlay, how can I not?”

“Moving Colin to the country would be another experiment,” Lissa pointed out.