Laura Kinsale (45 page)

The earl looked terrified; he did not even seem able to follow the doctor’s instructions, but stood back from the bed with his hands in rigid fists.

Zenia took a breath, sat down on the bed and began to speak.

His feet were burning. He could not lift them out of the red sand; it swallowed him up to his neck in a blaze of heat.

But he could hear a voice, a constant voice, familiar and beckoning, speaking words he could not understand.

He saw light everywhere, a cold white light. He was so hot that he wanted to rise up into that cold light; he tried to let go, to make himself so light that he would rise, ignoring the insistent voice that called him back. He was too hot; he could not bear it; he could not stay any longer; the red heat tortured him, filling up his head with agony.

But the voice kept talking. He couldn’t understand it; it seemed he had once, but not anymore. He wanted to tell it to stop, to let him sleep, let him drift up into the cold. Sometimes he was vaguely aware that it had gone away, only because it came back again. And strangely, he heard his father talking to him. He heard death in his father’s voice, and gave himself to it, floating easily toward it, cooler and cooler, until finally the voices faded away, along with all he knew.

Sweet and soft, there was a song. There was an angel and a cathedral, and then the cathedral vanished like a waking dream, but the sweet song stayed. His mind sorted among fancies and visions, trying to put the song where it belonged. He saw a bright line and realized it was light; it hurt his eyes but he wanted to see the singer.

He lifted his lashes, blinking against the pain of it. There was a woman, holding his hand between hers, singing down at it as sincerely as if she were in a church and reading from a book of hymns. For a moment he could not remember her name, but he remembered her. He remembered her song.

He tried to ask her if she was an angel, and startled himself with how weak his own voice was. The words emerged in a faint whisper, barely audible even to himself.

But she heard him. Her head lifted. Her hands clutched at his.

He remembered her name. “Little wolf,” he said, stronger, curling his fingers about hers.

And she smiled. It was like dawn breaking, like the light that suddenly struck over a mountain, spreading glory. “You came back,” she said. And just as suddenly as she had smiled, she began to cry.

He closed his eyes. He could feel her wet face pressed on his hand. He would have liked to listen to her sing again, but he couldn’t keep his mind connected with the world long enough to ask. Sleep drew him under, safe and deep while she held him tight, binding him to life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘Ten days, the doctor ordered,” Mrs. Lamb said, “and ten days in bed it will be.”

In truth, Arden was not ready to leave the bed himself. He closed his eyes at this news and sighed, swallowing the tonic with a grimace. He felt weak and sleepy, and long periods of time seemed to pass that he could not remember. He was sitting up now, with pillows propped behind him, but he would have been glad to lie down.

“Zenia was here,” he said.

“That she was,” the nurse said, “and the doctor said she was a rare trooper, too, the good girl.”
 

“Where is she?”

“In Bentinck Street, sir, and asleep if she is wise.”
 

“When will she come back?”

“Now, shame, sir, you will not say she is a prettier nurse than Henrietta Lamb? She has her baby to see to, and I am to nurse you until you are upon your feet again. And a sensible system it is, too, for I’ve yet to see the man who would not make life a misery for the wife who tries to nurse him to recovery.”

“She could bring Beth. They could take the next room.”

“Fie, do you want her to see you still looking like something the cat dragged in? She has a very neat beau in that Mr. Jocelyn, and you, sir, are not fit to be seen by daylight.”

“Mr. Jocelyn?” Arden asked sharply, and began to cough.

Mrs. Lamb cast him a keen look. “He has come by every day, and stayed to dinner often.”

Arden pushed himself up in bed. Mrs. Lamb brought a tray with disgusting-looking mashed matter of various colors on the plates.

“What is this?” he asked hoarsely.

“Minced veal, pease pudding, and pureed turnips.”

“I can’t,” Arden said, moving his head back.

She picked up the tray. “A fine-looking man, that Mr. Jocelyn,” she remarked. “A bachelor; no doubt he enjoys a dinner in company with a lady for a change. He’s gone to Edinburgh, but he will be back after Candlemas.”

Arden cleared his throat, staring glumly at the tray as she paused. “You are a beast, Mrs. Lamb.”

“There, you see how it is. But I’m accustomed to such nasty abuse from my patients, having brought up boys by the score.”

But Arden was not a bad patient, in spite of Mrs. Lamb’s predictions. Though they said he had been near to dying— for the second time in as many years—he had little memory of the past few days. He recalled getting a hellish cold, and vaguely remembered frowning at the sudden rash on his skin, but little more than that beyond strange dreams, and that Zenia had been there with his father. Compared to his nightmarish struggle to live through his wound in the desert, the weeks of agony and deprivation, this easy bed and accommodating service was perfectly delightful.

He felt no real pain, except his throat was raw, but his body and brain seemed sunk in lassitude. He did not even mind his father’s daily presence; the earl came and sat reading and writing for hours at a time, but he said little and left the inquiries and beleaguering to Mrs. Lamb, who had an instinct for knowing to precision just how far she could go. Arden talked to his father now and then, on such innocuous topics as the weather and likely reward of partridge shooting in January, but the earl seemed strangely subdued, almost shy.

The doctor came and went, and pronounced Arden fit to sit in a chair, and then to walk about the parlor. He began to feel himself again, not so sleepy or inclined to want to lie down, not so nauseated by the sight of food. It was, in its way, almost a pleasant interlude. He waited patiently for his body to restore itself; waiting in a new and tranquil patience that he had never felt before, based on the certainty that Zenia loved him.

He was taunted daily with the threat of Mr. Jocelyn, but he did not take it seriously. His father, he knew, was sending daily reports to her of his progress, and if Arden rather wished that he could see her, he found that he was vain enough to hear the truth in Mrs. Lamb’s description of him as something disgraceful to behold. With the shedding of the measle eruptions had come a general patchy peel of his desert-tanned skin, and he was not inclined to be seen looking like some sort of molting rooster. He thought of writing Zenia himself, to tell her what he felt, how he had woken to see her there singing—but he started it twenty times and every attempt seemed to falter into a stiff and hollow “thank you,” that conveyed worse than nothing of what he meant.

So he waited. Once he asked his father if she had mentioned anything about the future, but the earl shook his head. “No. When I first went to her—before I discovered you ill—she said that she could not give an answer yet. But she’s mentioned nothing since. I’ve only called twice, though, and then only for a moment. She seems to be doing well, and Miss Elizabeth is quite recovered.”

Arden frowned. “You never said anything about that damned plan to send her abroad, did you?”

“Nothing at all. Nothing, I assure you. In fact, Mr. King says he has all but lost the draft proposal he drew up about that—some new clerk came in after Christmas and seems to have mislaid it permanently. I told him not to bother drafting another.”

“Good,” Arden said. “You can tell him to tear it up if he finds it.”

Zenia had decided that perhaps Mrs. Lamb was correct, and on such a quiet, clear day, Elizabeth would enjoy a visit to the park. It was still January, and quite cold, but Zenia’s convictions about insulating her daughter from any possible ailment had received a severe blow. She had discussed children’s health at length with Mrs. Lamb and the doctor, and was now deep in a number of recommended books of advice on the subject. Some of them were not quite convincing—but she found that she could agree with the idea that as long as violent changes in temperature were avoided when the child was broken out in a perspiration, exposure to fresh, dry, cold air was more beneficial than otherwise. Besides, the atmosphere of London had been ugly and damp for weeks, and this first radiant blue Sunday seemed impossible to ignore.

Certainly no one else was ignoring it. Zenia said nothing when Mrs. Lamb insisted that Hyde Park would surely be too crowded to be attempted, and Regent’s Park was a far better choice. Ever since her return the week before from nursing Lord Winter through his recovery, Mrs. Lamb had been subjecting Zenia to the most blatant matchmaking efforts. While she was not entirely deaf to them—not deaf at all—she could not forget the sheaf of papers from Mr. King’s office. According to Mrs. Lamb, he was on pins to see her, but that, Zenia did not doubt, was mere hyperbole. If he wished to see her so badly, he could have called. He had been declared recovered and free to go about for a week. Every knock upon the door had sent Zenia hurrying to brush her hair or pull off her apron, but he had not come.

However, Mrs. Lamb’s shameless gaiety about this Sunday outing seemed highly suspicious. So suspicious, in fact, that Zenia decided to wear the azure-colored dress, the blue wool that Lady Belmaine could not approve for a dinner gown, but had reluctantly admitted might make up into a walking dress. It had a tight, short-waisted spencer jacket with military trim of black braiding, and with her black cape and muff, and a black bonnet with a wide blue ribbon added to tie beneath her chin, she thought it was rather lively. Leaning close to the mirror, she wondered if it really did bring out the dark blue in her eyes, or if that was only her imagination. But there was no time to ponder that, as Mrs. Lamb came hurrying in with Elizabeth, announcing that the hackney was at the door to carry ma’am to church.

It had been arranged that Mrs. Lamb and Elizabeth would meet Zenia after the church service, since St. Marylebone was just outside the park. They were waiting, Elizabeth so shrouded in warm clothes that only her face and her feet showed, her bright eyes staring about her in fascination.