Rules for a Proper Governess (18 page)

Sinclair helped the doctor pull the covers up over Andrew to his chin. He gave the doctor an absent nod, and the doctor turned to Bertie and drew her aside.

“Who are you, young woman?”

Bertie blinked, for a moment not entirely sure. “I’m Bertie. Miss Frasier. I mean, the governess.”

“Good, then Master Andrew has someone to look after him.” He handed Bertie several packets. “Mix these in water and make him drink it, several times a day. Take the empty packets back to the chemist—he’ll make up more for you. Keep Andrew warm and still, very still. We don’t need the wound to open and him to bleed. And examine the wound for discoloration. There will be bruising, but we don’t want to see streaks of red, especially ones leading toward the heart. That means infection. Can you remember all that?”

“Yes.” Bertie swallowed. “Of course.”

“Good lass. You’re English?”

Bertie spread her hands. “As English as they come.”

The doctor nodded and lowered his head to speak to her. “These Scots have odd notions. Make sure Master Andrew has much rest and no cold air. We don’t want him to take a chill.” He glanced at the bed, where Sinclair was sitting, holding Andrew’s hand. “Get Mr. McBride to take some brandy and lie down. He’s had a shock.”

Bertie managed a nod. “Right you are.”

The doctor smiled and patted her shoulder. “Good girl. If Master Andrew takes worse, you send for me at once.”

He took up his bag and walked out of the room, nodding once to Aoife, who held the door open for him. Macaulay looked after the doctor with some distaste, no doubt having heard him proclaim that “Scots had odd notions.”

Mrs. Hill came bustling in with a decanter in her hand. She fetched a glass from Sinclair’s study and brought it back into the bedroom. “Brandy, sir,” she said to Sinclair. “Best thing for you. And then you go lie down in the spare bedroom. We’ll watch over Master Andrew.”

Sinclair didn’t respond. He kept Andrew’s hand in his, stroking the boy’s fingers.

“Let me,” Bertie said, reaching for the brandy.

Mrs. Hill shook her head. “You need to look after Miss Caitriona. She’s with Peter, but the lad doesn’t know what to do. Go on, now.”

Caitriona. Bertie’s heart gave a guilty thud. In the panic, Bertie hadn’t kept account of where the girl was. She’d assumed Cat had followed them all upstairs, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Right,” Bertie said, and hurried out of the room.

Bertie’s heart was like lead as she took Cat by the hand and walked her from the ground floor, where she’d been sitting with Peter, to the nursery. Cat said nothing, quiet as usual, but her hand was ice cold.

Bertie turned up all the lights in the nursery and stirred the fire high. Fear needed to be treated with light and heat, not darkness. When she finished, she found Cat sitting at the table, doll in her lap, her gaze fixed on the fire.

Cat was strikingly different from Andrew in looks—her hair was dark and glossy, her blue eyes framed with black lashes. She took after her mother, Mrs. Hill had told Bertie, and Mrs. McBride’s photo confirmed, while Andrew was a miniature of Sinclair.

Bertie ought to give Cat tea or something, but she couldn’t find the wherewithal to go back downstairs or even ring for one of the maids. They were upset too. Andrew, for all his tearing ways, was easy to love.

Cat was more of a challenge, the poor lamb. Bertie drew a chair next to Cat’s and put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. Cat didn’t shrug it away, which told Bertie she wanted the comfort.

“Is Andrew going to die?” she asked Bertie in a quiet voice.

Bertie’s first impulse was to lie, to soothe her fears and say,
Of course he isn’t!
But Bertie had lived with ugly truth all her life, and she’d learned to prefer it. Better to face something straight on than to hide and try to pretend it away. Hurt more when you had to stop pretending, in the end.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” she said, stroking Cat’s long braid. “But your dad will take care of him, and the doctor.”

“They took care of Mama too. But she died.” Cat’s voice was faint. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, not much we
can
do is there? Except hope. And pray.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

Bertie started. Personally, she and God had an off-again, on-again relationship, but to hear it put so baldly, from a child, surprised her. But then, Cat had seen her mother taken away from her and her father become an absolute blank, and no one, divine or human, had been able to stop either occurrence.

“Well,
I
believe it,” Bertie said. “I think if one of us does, that should be good enough.”

Cat gave her a skeptical look. “When Mama died, a lady from Sunday school told me I should be happy, because it meant Mama had been very good and was let into heaven early. She said the angels hadn’t wanted to wait to reward her.”

“Oh.”
Stupid woman.
What a horrible thing to tell a child! Bertie recalled a story she’d heard at the tender age of six, in which angels watched for children who were exceptionally good, and took years away from their lives so they’d die and go to heaven quicker. Bertie remembered being terrified and trying to be as bad as she could possibly be.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Bertie said, patting Cat’s hand. “That’s nonsense, that is. It isn’t even in the Bible. What I remember of it anyway.” Not that she’d read any of it herself, but some of the stories from the church her mother had taken her to had stuck with her. “That’s ladies who don’t know anything, and thinking they’re comforting you. I wouldn’t take no notice.”

“Andrew isn’t good,” Cat said.

“There you are then.” Bertie grinned at her. “He’ll be fine.”

“But everyone loves him.”

“So do you,” Bertie said.

Cat’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded.

Bertie drew her close, doll and all. “It’s all right, love. You worry about him all you want, and I’ll pray. We’ll help your dad, and we’ll get Andrew better.” Then Bertie would hunt Jeffrey down and make him pay. If Andrew died . . .

“Do you love my papa?” Cat asked.

Bertie jumped, but again, she couldn’t lie. She gathered Cat closer and rested her cheek on the girl’s hair. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I think I do.”

Sinclair held Andrew’s hand far into the night and the wee hours of the morning. When he felt sleep coming upon him, he stretched out beside Andrew, laying his hand on Andrew’s chest. If Andrew so much as twitched, Sinclair would wake.

Sleep came in waves. It would surround Sinclair in blackness for a few minutes, then ease up, then sweep over him again. Through it all Andrew never moved.

When morning light came, so did Andrew’s fever. Sinclair came wide awake, never feeling his restless night. He commanded cool water to be brought and a tonic called Warburg’s tincture. The tincture was meant for malarial diseases, but Sinclair knew by experience it would work to bring down fever. The powders the doctor had handed to Bertie were useless—he knew that too. Good for dyspepsia and not much else.

Andrew, restless, didn’t want to swallow the medicine, but Sinclair got it into him. He bathed Andrew’s face and hands, changing the bedding himself when Andrew soiled it.

All day Sinclair nursed his son, not knowing what time it was or caring. Somewhere during the day, he let Macaulay talk him into donning a shirt and trousers, but Sinclair saw no reason to dress completely. He napped off and on, felt the deepening of whiskers on his face. He knew others came and went, but Sinclair couldn’t pull his concentration from Andrew.

Sinclair always sensed Bertie’s presence though, even when he didn’t turn his head to look at her, even when she said nothing to him. Cool calm stole over the room whenever she was in it, as though she brought peace and reassurance with her.

When the sun went down, Peter restocked the coal fire, and Macaulay brought Sinclair a cup of beef tea and forced him to drink it. Bertie came in as Macaulay departed.

She didn’t speak, only closed the door quietly, made her way to the bedside, and laid the back of her hand against Andrew’s cheek. His fever had come down a little, or so Sinclair thought, but he was still far from well.

“Cat is finally asleep,” Bertie said. “I gave her some tea with sugar and lots of milk—seemed to do the trick. The poor mite is all in.” She touched the bandages on Andrew’s shoulder then looked at Sinclair. “So are you, I’m thinking.”

“I’ll sleep when it’s over,” Sinclair said sharply.

“I can stay with him. I’ll watch him every second, believe me.”

“No.” Sinclair didn’t move from where he sat on the bed. “I don’t want to leave, in case . . .”

“I’d wake you. I promise. The minute there’s any change.”

“No!” The word rang, Sinclair’s voice raspy. He shook his head as Bertie’s eyes widened. “When Maggie . . . Daisy . . . when she was ill, a nurse stayed with her. The nurse promised to wake me, and she didn’t. She thought it would be easier for me. But I didn’t . . . I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

Sinclair’s voice broke and his eyes stung. He dragged in a shuddering breath, dismayed that it shook with sobs.

Bertie moved to him with a quiet rustle of fabric. Her arms came around him, and Sinclair found himself cradled against her, her cheek on his hair, her hands warm on his back.

She was so strong, this woman who’d come to him out of nowhere. Sinclair had been standing in the cold, all alone.
When you’re ready for me to move on, I know you’ll tell me,
he’d said in his thoughts to Daisy, and then Bertie had bumped into him.

He hadn’t been able to cease thinking of Bertie since. Only his son struggling to live had pulled him away from her.

“I’m sorry,” Bertie was saying. “I’ll never be able to say, in the whole of my life, how sorry I truly am.”

Sinclair gently parted her arms and wiped his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“This is my fault.” Her blue eyes were sad, full of remorse. “If I’d not followed you, I never would have led Jeffrey here, and Andrew wouldn’t be hurt. But no, I had to find out where you lived, decided to stay here in your house . . .”

“Why did you?”

Bertie stopped in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you come here? You’d given me back the watch, I’d paid you to lead me back to familiar streets. I’d thought our contract at an end.”

A flush stole over her cheeks, one that rivaled the feverish stain on Andrew’s. “I wanted to see you, didn’t I? To make sure you were all right.”

Sinclair let some amusement trickle through his gut-wrenching worry. “Not to look over what pickings you might get from me? You don’t have to pretend.”

Her brows drew down. “You still think I came to steal from you?”

“No. Not anymore.” Sinclair squeezed her hand. “But when you first found out where I lived, you must have thought me a good mark. Not paying much attention to the world, my nose stuck in my papers. Ripe for the plucking.”

Bertie tried to pull from his grasp. “I told you. I wanted to see you again. If you don’t believe that, then you don’t.”

Sinclair lost his smile. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

They watched each other in silence a moment, Sinclair holding her hand as though he couldn’t let go. Her stiff fingers relaxed, and she didn’t try to pull away again.

“Believe me now,” Bertie said. “You need to rest, or you’ll get sick yourself. Cat and Andrew don’t need to lose you too.” She smoothed her free hand along the sheets. “You lie right here beside him, and I’ll sit by the bed and watch him like a hawk. The minute he moves, I’ll wake you. Can’t say fairer than that.”

Sinclair met her gaze, her eyes full of sincerity. Ironic that a backstreet London pickpocket could speak more truth than the men of law he worked with every day.

“Your name should be Verity,” he heard himself say. “Truth.” She was right, he needed sleep.

Bertie wrinkled her nose. “Well, I got
Roberta
hung on me, didn’t I? My mum called me Bertie, so that’s what I like.”

Sinclair let go of her hand. His ached to have to release hers, but she was right—he’d do Andrew no good if he was carted off to a sickbed himself. He lay down, gently, so as not to disturb his son, and Bertie pulled quilts over him.

“I’ll be right here,” she said. “On the other side of the bed, in that chair. Andrew won’t move a hair without me knowing.”

Sinclair felt some relief loosen his limbs. “Thank you, Bertie.”

Bertie leaned down and kissed his cheek, her loose hair brushing his skin. “It’s my pleasure.”

Bertie watched Sinclair sleep. Thin winter sunlight touched his hair, as fair as Andrew’s, and brushed the lines about his eyes.

He was exhausted. Bertie understood the exhaustion, and his terror. Losing someone was never easy, and never grew easier. Losing your child must be hardest of all. Though Andrew wasn’t her son, Bertie knew that if he didn’t live, her grief would cut her deeply and never heal.

Sinclair, a strong man, had already suffered much. Bertie remembered what Macaulay had said about Mrs. McBride’s death—
When she was gone, there wasn’t much left of him.

Bertie vowed, looking down at Sinclair as he reposed on the bed, that she would make sure he didn’t lose any more of himself. No matter what.

Sinclair slept on, the sun rose, and the outside world rumbled around them. Macaulay and Mrs. Hill came in from time to time, both trying to persuade Bertie to relinquish her place, but she refused. She’d promised. Mrs. Hill brought her tea and toast, and Macaulay, blankets, but they seemed to understand. Macaulay tried to keep up his bluff good spirits, assuring everyone that Master Andrew was a tough little lad, but Mrs. Hill’s eyes were red-rimmed, her usual briskness absent.