Call of the Heart (7 page)

She made a desperate little gesture, then collapsed on the floor at his feet.

Lord Rothwyn stared down at Lalitha’s prostrate body, then crossed the room and pulled at the bell-cord.

As a footman answered the summons he lifted Lalitha in his arms and carried her past the flunkey, across the Hall, and up the stairs.

The footman hurried ahead of them and opened a door at the end of a wide corridor.

Lord Rothwyn carried Lalitha into the bed-room.

It was a large room over-looking the garden at the back of the house. Decorated with lilies, it was obviously the bridal bedchamber.

As he walked towards the bed Lord Rothwyn said:

“Fetch Nurse!”

“Nurse, M’Lord?” the flunkey asked in surprise.

“You heard what I said.”

Lord Rothwyn laid Lalitha down very gently on the pillows, setting her on her side so that her bruised and bleeding back was not against the bed.

He took his arms from her and stood staring at her, his expression still as incredulous as it had been when he had first looked at the terrible weals and scars left by Lady Studley’s cane.

By the light of the candles he could also see that her arms were bruised.

He realised that when he had dragged her up the aisle it must have hurt as well as frightened her.

Lalitha did not move and Lord Rothwyn was also motionless. The door opened and an elderly woman entered.

She had a kind, lined face, grey hair, and was wearing the conventional grey dress and apron of a children’s Nurse.

“You sent for me, M’Lord?”

Lord Rothwyn turned as if in relief.

“Come here, Nattie!”

She crossed the room to his side and, following the direction of his eye, looked down at Lalitha and the terrible marks on her back.

“Master Inigo!” she exclaimed, “who could have done such a thing?”

She looked up at him as she spoke.

“Not me, Nattie,” he replied. “I would not treat a woman or an animal in such a fashion.”

“Who could have been so bestial?” Nurse asked.

“A woman!” Lord Rothwyn said briefly.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“That is what I am asking you,” Lord Rothwyn said.

The Nurse bent forward and pulled apart a little further the sides of Lalitha’s gown.

Bleeding, burningly inflamed, purple and orange tipped, there hardly seemed to be an inch of her back that was not mutilated.

“She has collapsed!” Lord Rothwyn said, as if he felt an explanation was necessary, “but when she is conscious the pain will be intolerable.”

“It will indeed,” the Nurse replied. “We need Bay-oil.”

“I will send at once to the Pharmacy,” Lord Rothwyn said.

He spoke briskly, almost as if he was glad that there was something he could do.

“No Pharmacy is likely to have the oil from a Bay-tree,” Nurse said.

“Then where can we obtain it?”

“From the Herb-Woman.”

“What Herb-Woman?” Lord Rothwyn began, and then exclaimed: “I remember! She lives near Roth. My mother used to speak of her.”

“That’s right,” Nurse agreed.

She looked down at Lalitha again and touched her hand as if to reassure herself that she was still living.

It was a very thin hand and the bones of the wrist stuck out pathetically.

“Who is she, M’Lord?” Nurse asked the question as if it had suddenly occurred to her.

There was a pause before Lord Rothwyn said abruptly:

“My wife!”

“You have married her?” Nurse exclaimed. “But I thought... we were told this evening that... ”

“—I was bringing home a great beauty,” Lord Rothwyn finished with a note of contempt in his voice. “I was, but instead I have brought you, Nattie, someone who needs your care and protection.”

The Nurse bent forward to put her hand on Lalitha’s forehead. “I’ll do my best, M’Lord,” she said quietly, “but we will have to leave her in God’s hands!”

Lalitha stirred and was conscious of feeling happy.

It was something which seemed to come to her from the past and she knew that she had been dreaming of her mother.

It was a dream that had been recurring again and again. Her mother had been there with her, holding her, giving her something to drink.

After she had drunk she had been able to slip back into a land of dreams where she was a child and there was nothing to frighten her.

“Mama!” she murmured.

She opened her eyes and thought that she must still be dreaming. She was in a room which she had never seen before and it was filled with sun-shine.

She could see the carved posts of the bed in which she was lying, a marble mantel-piece of exquisite design, and above it a picture of brilliant colours.

She shut her eyes.

It must all be part of her dream.

Then because she was curious she looked again, only to find that the mantel-piece and the picture were still there.

“If you are awake,” a quiet voice said beside her, “I have something for you to drink.”

Now Lalitha remembered that she had heard that voice before. It had been a part of her dreams. She had obeyed it instinctively.

An arm was slipped gently behind her shoulders and her head was raised a little to drink from a glass that was held to her lips.

Again she recognised something that had been in her dreams—the sweetness of honey in a cool liquid which had quenched her thirst.

“Where . . . am . . . I?” she managed to say weakly as the glass was taken away.

As she spoke she looked up and saw the face of an elderly woman who was smiling at her.

“You are at Roth Park.”

“Where?”

“We brought you here, M’Lady.”

“But . . . why?” Lalitha tried to say, and then she remembered. There had been the drive to the Church-yard, the strange, unaccountable feeling of her first kiss, then the terror of being dragged up the aisle and the words of the marriage-service.

She had been married!

She felt, for a moment, a shaft of fear strike through her

He had been angry, very angry, and she had been afraid.... Then she had written a letter ... a letter to Sophie! ...

Had she sent it? What had happened?

She could remember crying out in sudden terror at something that she had said; something that was wrong; something that she had promised never to reveal.

It was beginning to come back to her, but there were gaps ... gaps that were part of her fear, which was why she knew that she was afraid to remember them.

“I am going to order you some food,” said the quiet voice beside her. “You will feel better when you have eaten.”

Lalitha wanted to protest that she was not hungry.

The drink she had just had was delicious; she could still feel the sweetness of it on her tongue and it had invigorated her so that she was thinking more clearly.

She knew that the elderly woman rang the bell and gave instructions to someone at the door.

Then she came back to the bed-side.

“Are you still wondering how you got here?” the woman asked.

Lalitha looked at her and said:

“Am I. . . not in ... London?”

“No, indeed,” the elderly woman answered. “You are on His Lordship’s Estates in Hertfordshire.”

“His ... Lordship?”

The words made Lalitha quiver.

Now she remembered. It was Lord Rothwyn she had married. The Nobleman whom Sophie had jilted at the last moment.

The dark, angry, overwhelming man who had set a trap for Sophie and who had frightened her into marriage.

“How could he have done such a thing?” she asked herself. “What can Sophie have thought when she realised that she had been tricked?”

The question made her think of Lady Studley and she trembled.

“Does . . . does my Step-mother . . . know where I . . . am?” she asked in a voice that was little above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” the elderly woman answered, “and you need not worry about her or anyone else. His Lordship is looking after you.”

“He-he was ... so angry,” Lalitha said.

“He is not angry now,” she was assured. “He just wishes for Your Ladyship to get well.”

There was something comforting in knowing that he was no longer angry.

Lalitha shut her eyes and fell asleep.

When she opened them again there was food waiting for her.

She was still not hungry but to please the elderly woman she tried to eat a few mouthfuls and succeeded.

Then she slept again, drifting away into a dream-land where her mother was waiting for her and no fear existed.

It was the following morning before she really felt that the clouds had moved away from her head and she could think more clearly.

The room was even more beautiful than it had appeared at first glance.

The white and gold walls, the pink hangings which matched the carpet, the huge, gold-framed mirrors; the pictures and flowers, all were part of an ideal room she had sometimes imagined owning but which never before had she actually seen.

Now she learnt that the elderly woman who attended to her had been Lord Rothwyn’s Nurse.

“A sweet little boy he was, and ‘Nattie’ was one of the first words he ever said. It’s stuck to me ever since!”

She brought Lalitha some breakfast and set it down beside her on the big bed.

Lalitha stared at it, yet for a moment she did not see the fine Worcester china, the gleaming silver, and exquisitely embroidered cloth.

Instead she saw the food she had eaten having cooked it herself on the dirty, unscrubbed kitchen-table at the house on Hill Street.

What would her Step-mother be thinking of her now that she was not there?

What explanations had been given when she had not returned?

What would they say to her when she saw them again? Because she was frightened by such questions she forced them to the back of her mind and tried to listen to what Nattie was saying to her.

“You’ve got to fatten yourself up, M’Lady! Already you have put on a little weight!”

Lalitha stared at her, her eyes wide.

“How could I . . . have . . .” she began, and then asked in a tense voice: “How long have I . . . been here?”

“Nearly three weeks.”

Lalitha started in such amazement that the china on the tray rattled.

“It cannot be true! Three weeks! But why? How can it have ... happened?”

“You have been ill,” Nattie replied. “It’s what the Physician described as ‘exhaustion of the brain,’ but we didn’t pay much attention to him, although His Lordship insisted on consulting him.”

She paused, and as if she realised that Lalitha was waiting for her to explain she went on:

“It’s the Herb-Woman who has been treating you, M’Lady. You won’t recognise your back when you see it in the mirror.”

“The Herb-Woman?” Lalitha repeated, thinking to herself that she must be stupid as she still could not understand what had happened.

“Famous she is in these parts,” Nattie went on, “and people come down from London for her to cure their complaints with her herbs. She won’t allow anyone to use Doctors’ medicines. A lot of rubbish, she calls them!”

“Is it herbs that you have been giving me to drink?” Lalitha asked. “Even though I was unconscious I somehow knew they were delicious!”

“Herbs and fruits from her garden,” Nattie said, “and honey from her bees. She would not use anyone else’s. Says they have special healing powers.”

Lalitha was silent for a moment and then she said: “You say I am ... fatter?”

“A little,” Nattie answered, “and it’s an improvement.”

She went to the dressing-table and picked up a small mirror with a gold frame surmounted by dancing angels.

She carried it across the room and held it in front of Lalitha so that she could see herself.

It was a very different reflection from the one she had last seen in her bed-room on Hill Street.

At that time the skin of her face had seemed taut over the prominent bones. Her eyes, red and inflamed, had been half closed, and her hair had fallen in lank strands to her shoulders. Now her eyes seemed almost to fill her small face, and although the line of her chin was sharp, her skin was translucently clear and had a faint flush of colour.

Her hair seemed fuller and more buoyant with a slight wave. It was parted in the centre and fell on each side of her face.

“I look... different!” she said at last.

“You will look very different before I’ve finished with you!” Nattie promised. “But you will have to do as I say!”

Lalitha smiled.

She knew that half-bullying, half-affectionate note which every Nurse used to her charges.

It was just the way her own Nurse had spoken to her and it, hid a tenderness which she had never received from anyone else.

She knew it was love, in some ways like the love she had received from her mother, and in another way different, because Nurse would never ‘stand any nonsense.’

“I will do what... you tell me,” she said. “I want to get... well.”

Even as she spoke she wondered if that was really true.

If she were well, would there not be problems to face? And one problem was greater than all the others.

She did not even have to express it to herself; she just knew that the thought of him, large, frightening, and angry, was there, however much she might try to escape from it.

Nattie brought her a fresh night-gown, an elegant creation of soft lawn trimmed with lace, and brushed her hair.

Before she did so she rubbed into it a lotion which she said the Herb-Woman had given her.

“What is it?” Lalitha asked.

“Cinquefoil, or as we used to call it as children, ‘Fivefingered grass,’ ” Nattie replied. “It is the herb of Jupiter.”

“Does it really make the hair grow?” Lalitha enquired.

“Your hair has grown quite considerably since you have been ill,” Nattie replied. “But then it always does when a body is unconscious.”

“I never knew that!” Lalitha exclaimed.

“It’s true!”

“How could I have been unconscious for so long?”

“You could have awakened after a time, but you would only have been confused and unhappy, so we kept Your Ladyship asleep.”

“With herbs, of course!” Lalitha said with a smile.