Leslie Lafoy (15 page)

“The problem, Ian, lies in you giving her a choice in the matter. As I told her, kindness isn’t always in a person’s best interest.”

“So I should drag her out?” he asked as they reached the window seat and Fiona gracefully settled herself on the cushion. “And take her where?”

“Well, to start,” she replied, looking up at him, “to a dressmaker’s. If what she’s wearing now is typical of her wardrobe in general, the girl needs new clothes in the worst sort of way.”

“I’ve repeatedly offered and she’s refused. Adamantly.”

“And you let her?”

He raked his fingers through his hair and with an honestly exasperated sigh, explained, “She’s been through hell, Fiona. Orphaned and crippled and tossed into the home of a virtual stranger in a country she’s never seen in her life. All within a span of a scant six months. Only an ogre would add to her misery.”

She reached out and gently took his hand. Looking up at him, her eyes shimmered with a tenderness and compassion that squeezed the air from his lungs. He curled his fingers around hers, finding strength and calm in their touching.

“I know you’ve had only the best of intentions,” she assured him softly, “but in letting her have her way on everything, you’ve inadvertently allowed her to create a life in which the only thing she has to do or think about is wallowing in anger and self-pity. It’s not good for her and she needs to have her very able mind pushed in other directions.”

“That’s what I was thinking to do with getting her the paints, the needlework materials, and the books.” God, did that sound as pathetic to her as it—

“You didn’t push her, Ian. You provided and then let her choose to do nothing with them.”

“So what do you suggest?” he asked, frustrated. “In addition, that is, to hauling her screaming and thrashing to a dressmaker’s shop for clothes she doesn’t want and is going to deliberately ruin.”

His obvious bad attitude didn’t faze her in the least. She smiled up at him, saying, “When Caroline and Drayton rescued me, I didn’t talk. Why, I don’t remember, but I managed to make my desires known in other ways and everyone willingly accommodated me. Until they discovered that I could speak and had simply chosen not to. After that, I wasn’t allowed not to talk. I could point and look pleadingly all I wanted, but they refused to relent until I actually spoke. Even if it meant that I went without dinner a night or two or that Beeps spent the night in another room.”

“They held your cat hostage? The beasts!”

She laughed softly and gave his hand a soft squeeze. “Beeps didn’t suffer and I came into line with what, in hindsight, I can see were entirely reasonable expectations. Charlotte will do the same.”

He leaned his shoulder against the window frame and countered morosely, “She doesn’t have a cat.”

“Which is a good thing because a cat isn’t the right animal for her. They’re entirely too sedentary during the day and too independent all of the time. She needs a dog. A young one who expects to be entertained for hours and hours on end and who thinks the sun rises and sets on her.”

“How would she care for it?” he mused aloud. “It would need to be fed and watered and exercised outside.”

“That’s for her to figure out.”

As though she would even make the effort. “I don’t know, Fiona. Asking one of the staff to take the dog out several times a day would—”

“No, it would be
her
task to take the dog outside and to take care of all of its other needs, too.”

“Asking one of the male staff to carry her up and down the stairs every time the dog needed to go out would…” He shook his head. “No, I can’t ask them to take on another responsibility where Charlotte is concerned. If I did, they’d quit en masse in protest. And I wouldn’t blame them in the least.”

“Well, given what I saw in that room, your staff has the patience of saints and they’ve already served above and beyond reasonable expectations. They truly deserve to be spared from Charlotte’s demands and tantrums.”

“Agreed. How do you propose to accomplish that?”

She didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “You have massive amounts of space in this house, Ian. And, as I recall from our tour earlier, you have a second drawing room on the south side of the main floor.”

“I think,” he said, mentally walking through the lower floor, “that it’s called a sunroom.”

“Appropriately enough,” she allowed brightly. “It’s the most cheerful room you have. I can’t see how Charlotte could possibly maintain her dismal attitude living in it.”

Living? “Are you saying it should be converted into her bedroom?”

“Would you miss it as a public room?”

“No. Not at all,” he admitted, stunned—and a bit embarrassed—that he hadn’t thought of ensconcing her there the day she’d arrived.

“And if it were converted for her,” Fiona went on, “she could easily manage to get her chair out of it and all through the rooms on the main floor. Why, she’d even be able to get herself to the dining room table for meals.”

He didn’t want to sound abysmal or defeated, but there were realities that couldn’t be ignored. “Meals which are never to her liking.”

“Then she can go hungry and hope the next one has something she does find to her liking. Eventually, sooner rather than later to my thinking, she’ll become considerably less critical of what’s put before her.”

“All right,” he allowed, trying to envision Charlotte rolling herself through the house
and
eating a meal in a civilized manner. Hope flickered, but he wasn’t prepared to let it become a beacon in the storm of his daily existence. “But how would she manage a dog’s outdoor requirements?”

Fiona closed her eyes and knitted her brows for a second. Ian watched her, wondering if perhaps she might be about to concede that the idea of getting Charlotte a pet had been overly optimistic. Then she opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “If you could have one of your carpenters build a long, gently inclined ramp from the existing door down to the garden path, she could easily enter and leave the house as she wants and without having to impose on others to do it.”

“You’re very good at this,” he observed, smiling, too.

“I have a great deal of experience at caring for injured and crippled animals. People aren’t much different except that, unlike animals, they sometimes lack a natural instinct to adapt to the limitations. And when that’s the situation, they have to be compelled, one way or another, to do it.”

He saw the opportunity in her words and seized them. “Compelling Charlotte doesn’t appear to be a task for which I have a natural instinct.”

Fiona laughed softly, the sound adding to the newfound lightness of his heart. “Is that a roundabout way of asking me to oversee her social rehabilitation?”

“I’d be forever and undyingly grateful.” And since there was no point in trying to appear nonchalant about her acceptance of the challenge, he immediately added, “How soon can we begin?”

“The transformation of her isn’t going to go forward without a hitch or two, Ian,” she countered calmly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“It’s that way with all major tasks.”

“It will also involve some considerable expenses.”

Jesus, when he thought about just the china and silver that had been destroyed in the last three months … “Money should never be one of your concerns. Please spend whatever you deem necessary. Actually, spend frivolously if you want to. I truly don’t care what it costs.”

“There’ll be some changes to your life, as well.”

“Such as?” he asked warily, suddenly remembering how she’d taken him apart by small pieces yesterday morning.

“To my thinking, Charlotte needs to have her mind engaged in something other than her losses and how much she hates being a burden to you.”

“Why would she think that?” he asked, appalled. “I certainly don’t think of her as a burden.”

“No, you consider her a complete mystery and a problem for your staff.”

Fiona, ever calm Fiona. She really was a wonder of patience and understanding. Very clear understanding. “You’re absolutely right concerning my perception,” he allowed. “And we do have to be fair in terms of how the staff sees her. She
does
create all kinds of additional work for them.”

“She’s fourteen, Ian. To her way of thinking at that age, every grumble, every reluctance and sigh of the staff is a message they’re delivering from you.”

“No,” he countered in dumbfounded disbelief. “That’s not at all true.”

“I know it’s not the case, but I’m not fourteen and dependent on your kindness. When was the last time that you sat down to share a meal with her?”

He cleared his throat to disguise a guilty groan.

Fiona arched a brow and smiled knowingly. “You should plan to share at least breakfast and the evening meal with her.”

All right. He could do that. He had to eat somewhere; it might as well be at home. And if Charlotte wasn’t going to be throwing the dishes and the food, he could be pleasant company.… God, he wished he had some solutions of his own on dealing with his ward, but he was well beyond his experience and the only thing to do was to cast himself on Fiona’s wisdom and kindness. “What on earth will we talk about at meals?”

“Her dog,” Fiona replied instantly. “The new draperies and rugs she’s helped to select. The new furniture that she’s helped to pick out and arrange. The dress designs the couturiere has suggested for her.”

“You were serious about the expenses, weren’t you? Not,” he hurried to add, “that I have even the slightest qualm about it.”

“She has to have some reason to come out of her room, Ian. Some reason to look forward to a new day and what it might have in store for her. When all you have to do in a day is stare out a window at a garden you can’t get to with asking someone to be kind to you, what reason do you have to be cheerful and pleasant?”

“You are absolutely, utterly amazing.”

Her cheeks flushed a soft pinky rose and her eyes sparkled. “And you might also,” she said, “if you have a spare moment or two, offer to show her the garden and ask for her ideas.”

“I could do that. Perhaps the three of us could do it together.”

She nodded slightly and released his hand. “And if you happen to have any other interests, I’m sure she’d be willing to at least listen politely. I suspect that she was raised gently and to practice good manners. It would do her good to exercise them every now and again.”

“My only other interests,” he admitted, thinking it best not to let Fiona’s hopes get too high, “are in medicine and in the building of the hospital. Hardly the sorts of things that a female—of any age—would find even remotely interesting.”

She tipped her head to the side. “You’re building a hospital?”

“Assuming that Mr. O’Connor, my manager for the project, is able to resolve the current permit problem with the Office of the Mayor of London, the actual hammer-and-saw work should begin tomorrow.”

“Please tell me more,” she asked prettily, sitting up straighter, her eyes bright. “What kind of hospital? Where?”

Well, someone had clearly taught Lady Fiona Turnbridge the finer points of showing polite interest. Charlotte could learn so much from her. “The building itself is one of the properties my father passed down to me,” he explained. “It’s the one where the man with the gangrenous leg was lying on the walkway.”

“Yes, you told me about him.”

“His name was Patrick O’Sullivan. I’m naming the hospital after him. The doors will be open to anyone who needs medical care regardless of who they are and their ability to pay.”

“There will never be a moment when someone isn’t there in desperate need. You’ll be worked to death, Ian.”

How very kind of her to consider his welfare. “I won’t be alone in the venture,” he assured her. “I’ve arranged with my fellow physicians for donations of time, materials and supplies. I’ve also worked out an agreement with the university so that medical students can gain practical experience under the guidance of those of us who volunteer there.”

“I’d like to volunteer, too, Ian. I know a little—”

“I think, my dear Fiona,” he interrupted kindly, “that you’re going to have your hands full with Charlotte for the next eon or two. But I appreciate your enthusiastic support of the effort. You’d be amazed at how many people have told me that providing the poor with a free hospital is contrary to the way of Nature.”

Sadness and disappointment clouded her eyes. Looking away, she shook her head and quietly observed, “People who have never wanted for anything can seldom imagine what it’s like to be desperate and alone, of how curative it is just to know that someone cares.”

“Beautiful, compassionate, determined
and
wise beyond your years.”

Her smile seemed oddly, inexplicably strained, and he was wondering if her family ever gave her compliments, when she rose to her feet and turned to face him. “We don’t have to wait overly long to begin with Charlotte,” she said out of the blue. “If your staff could be imposed upon just a bit more on her behalf, we could have her and her belongings taken down to the sun room this afternoon.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,” he allowed, still puzzling over her sudden change in manner. “Especially if there’s even the slightest hope of less imposition as a result.”

Smoothing her skirts, her gaze fixed on the door down the hall, she declared, “Then it’s decided. If you’d be so kind as to go collect some strong arms and backs, I’ll see to preparing Charlotte herself for the move.”

“Gladly.”

As she started away, a sense of unease bloomed in his chest. Something had gone wrong between them; what, he couldn’t say, but he sensed a distance between them that hadn’t been there at the start of their conversation. He didn’t like it. Not at all.

“Thank you, Fiona,” he called after her, hoping to somehow magically mend the rift. “From the bottom of my heart, forever and always, thank you.”

“I’m not doing this for you,” she said without looking back. “I’m doing it for Charlotte.”

Ian was still searching for what had caused the change in her manner when she opened the door of his ward’s bedroom and disappeared inside. Raking his fingers through his hair, he muttered, “Women,” and then headed down the hall to do what he’d been asked.