Elisabeth Fairchild (23 page)

“Why do you not look in on her?”

“In this condition? I think not.” He smiled sardonically, and downed the spirits in a single gulp.

She frowned, back and neck aching, in no mood to put up with his weaknesses. With a sigh, she crossed to the fire, stirred the white hot ashes, and put on more wood. “I thought you wanted to stop drinking.”
“Changed my mind.”
“Can you not change it back again?” She turned at the clink of crystal to find him holding the decanter. “Is not every swallow a choice?”
“To drink, or not to drink? Is that the question?” He laughed, the laugh ending in a cough. With shaking hand allowed the amber liquid to splash into the glass. “I thought you came to discuss my daughter’s health.”
“I do. Your drinking effects it.”
“Did she, too, wake with a headache, a burning thirst, and little desire to go on living?”

She shook her head. “I am in no mood for banter, Val. She recovers. Her fever is gone. No thanks to you.”

“Splendid. I have not killed her after all.” He threw back half the drink with a wince.
“As well you might have, leaving her as you did, last night. Not bothering to come home. Did you simply assume that I would stay and care for her while you went away and got foolish?”
He lifted the glass to her. “Did you not do just that? You become too predictable, my dear. It never crossed my mind that you would not do what was best for the child.” He yawned. “Even if it came to the compromising of your good name in staying here, overnight.” He swallowed more spirits, and said sarcastically, “Ah, but you have already given away your character for her sake, haven’t you? So you’d nothing to lose.”

Head aching, she turned her back on him in disgust, Alexander Shelbourne’s accusation ringing in her ears. Self-sacrifice. Did she give herself away completely?

“I leave  now, Val,” she said flatly, longing for home, for sleep, for a quieting of the pounding in her head. “I entrust Felicity to you.”

As she walked away from him, she heard him laugh, and the clink of the decanter again as he said dryly, “She must be well, if you would leave her to my care, my dear.”

Alexander rode through the rain to Val’s this time, sure he would find Penny there.

Yarrow met him at the door with the news, “I’m sorry, sir. Miss Foster left us about three quarters of an hour ago.”

“So early in the morning?” That struck him odd. “Miss Felicity is not . . .” He left the idea unspoken. He could not bear to think that another child was dead.

“Much better today,” Yarrow said.

Alexander let free the breath he had not even realized pent. “Andas her complaint been identified?”

“I do not think it has, sir. Though I daresay it is not smallpox, as she has no visible eruptions.”
“May I see her?”

“Best not, sir. There is still some fear of contagion.”

“And Val? Will he accept a call?”
“Do you mind waiting here, sir? I shall just go and see if he is at home to visitors.”
Alexander did not enjoy the wait, though he was, for the moment, out of the wet. He would much rather be drenched and on the road after Penny, than kicking his heels in Val’s Great Hall.

He half expected Yarrow to return with a refusal, half hoped as much, but such was not to be the case.

“This way, sir,” the aging butler said, and led the way past the family portraits in the stairwell, and into the drawing room with its blazing fire, and fogged windows.

A click met their entrance, a click that made Alexander’s nerves jump. Too well he knew that sound.

Yarrow did not so much as glance at the blue barreled hunting pistol Val had trained on him as he held wide the door and announced, “Mr. Shelbourne, sir.”

Val made no effort to rise from the chair where he sat,  gun in one hand, glass in the other, saying only, “Open a window, will you, Yarrow? And damp down the fire. It is too bloody warm in here.”

The room felt cool enough to Alexander, but perhaps he was chilled by sight of a pistol in Val’s shaking hands. Certainly Val looked hot, in no condition to be holding a gun, much less aiming it at his butler. Beads of sweat beading his upper lip, he nonchalantly followed Yarrow’s progress, the gun barrel like a pointer.

“Is the gun loaded, Val?” Alexander deliberately kept his tone mild.

“Shall we find out?” Val asked, turning the gun in his hand, pressing the barrel to his own temple.

“Yarrow will have a great bloody mess to clean up if it is.” Alexander yawned.

“Indeed,” Val laughed as he squeezed the trigger, the pin clicking on an empty chamber. “Lucky for Yarrow,” he said with acid humor.

Alexander decided the room was very warm indeed as he allowed himself to breath again.

Yarrow quietly left the room. Val nested the weapon in a velvet-lined case on the table beside him, then stripped away his loosened neck cloth, and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. “Hotter than Hades in here,” he said irritably.

“I’ve come to say farewell, Val,” Alexander said, his eyes still on the pistol case. “I leave tomorrow.”

“In this rain?” Val flung the neck cloth at him, an ineffectual assault. It dropped to the Turkish carpet like a downed dove. “You’ll not go five miles. Can’t fool me, Cupid,” he said. “It’s the girl you came after.” The eyes he turned on Alexander as he rose, were bloodshot, the lids at half mast. “She spent the night here, you know?” He shut the lid on the gun box with a bang.

“Because of the child?” Alexander surmised.

Val laughed and staggered to the open window. “No. Because of me.”

Alexander frowned. “Because you were drinking and she dared not leave the child in your care?”

Val grunted, and pressed his forehead to the fogged pane. “And so, you leave, and leave her to plague me, do you?”

“You prefer to drink yourself to death without anyone’s protest?”

“Exactly,” Val slid down the window frame, carefully to begin with, falling the last littly with a thump, as if he misgauged the distance. He leaned his head over the rain-spattered sill, lifting his face to the wet, head tilted, so that the rain drenched his hair and face.

He raked his hand through unwashed locks, ensuring they were sodden all the way to the nape of his neck.

Inwardly, Alexander longed to yank Val from the floor, to shake some sense into him, to beg him not to squander his life. But he knew Val would not listen. He had never listened in the past.

“Why do you choose to live like this?” he asked sadly.

Val withdrew from the window with a sudden upward stagger, flinging raindrops as he turned, clinging to the draperies for balance. “You really should take Miss Foster with you when you go.” He wiped the wet from an angry face with the back of his sleeve. “The two of you were made one another. You speak from the same mouth.”

“I’ve nowhere to take her, Val.”

Val lurched to the sideboard, grabbed up a decanter and took a sloppy swig. “Oh, do not cry poverty, Cupid--stupid Cupid. I weary of it. Weary of it all. Don’t suppose you’ll stay and drink with me?” He held forth the decanter.

“No, thank you,” Alexander murmured.

“Suspected as much.” He sighed in one instant, bellowing for Yarrow in the next.

The door to the drawing room flew open with a polite, “Yes, sir?”

“Show my guest to the door. He is just leaving.”

Alexander regarded the remains of his friend with regret. “God be with you, Val.”

“And to the devil with you,” Val grunted.

Alexander shook his head sadly. “No, Val. It is you who goes to the devil by way of the bottle. My brave and valiant friend, do not tell me you saved my life only to throw away your own.”

“I begin to think I should have let you die,” Val retorted.

Alexander laughed as he walked out the door, saying, “I would have haunted you, you know. Day and night.”

Val had no answer to that, no ready retort.

As Alexander shrugged on his coat, with the old man’s assistance, he asked, “How long has he been like this?”

“Since she left, sir,” Yarrow said evenly.

Alexander donned his hat. “Who sits with the child?”

“Betsy or Sue, sir. Sensible girls.” Yarrow’s face exhibited calm but for the pinched quality of his lips. “He shows no interest in her when he is in such a state, sir.”

Alexander thrust on his gloves. “And the ammunition for his gun?”

“Locked away, sir. I have the only key.”
“Good man, Yarrow,” he said.
“You are very kind, sir.” Yarrow murmured as he opened the door.

“And more than a little worried,” Alexander said to the sky as the door closed behind him.

“Felicity improves,” Penny said enthusiastically when her father held wide the door, and she ran in out of the rain.

“Bad night?” he asked, worry etched deep in the lines of his face. “I expected you, lass.”

“Oh dear! I am sorry, father. Val abandoned us, you see. I fell asleep waiting for him to return. He staggered home at last, three sheets to the wind, I am told, as the sun was rising. I left him this morning, well on the way to being completely soused before tea time. I hated to leave Felicity with him, but I am thoroughly exhausted, having slept in the windowsill. I mean to falto bed for at least an hour before riding into Appleby to ask the apothecary about some little bumps behind Felicity’s ears.”
“Are you not hungry, lass?” he asked. “There’s soup on the hob.”
“More tired than hungry, but a bite of your soup sound like heaven. Come. Tell me how the sheep fare, while I sup.”

“Would you not rather hear what I’ve to say about your marksman, Mr. Shelbourne?”

She made no attempt to disguise her surprise. “Do tell,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You’ve  the worst sense of timing in the world lad.” were the words Mr. Foster met him with when he responded to his knock.

“She’s not here?” Alexander guessed. “Do not tell me she has gone to Wharton, for I have just been there, and would have passed her on the road.”

Mr. Foster snorted. “She’s off to Appleby, now.”
“Is she?” It crossed Alexander’s mind she might have gone to see him, to wish him well before his leaving.

“Gone to the apothecary.” Her father spoiled the daydream. “Something about bumps on Felicity.”
“Bumps? But they told me at Wharton she does well.”
“Aye. Penny concurs. But still she worries. Says Val is in his cups.”
“Nose first,” Alexander agreed. “Any thought on how to stop him?”
“Ah, lad. A body must want to stop, in order to stop.”

Alexander sighed. “If that is true, he is well on his way to killing himself.”

“Sad, that. A slow sort of suicide,” the old man said, expression bleak as he looked out over the fells. “I tried to stop her, you know.”

“Your wife, sir?” Alexander did not pretend to misunderstand.

“Yes,” he nodded, and looking Alexander straight in the eyes, he said, “Penny must be loving you, lad, if she’s after telling you the truth about that.”

And love for you, sir, has kept her locked in lies, Alexander thought as he mounted the gray and splashed back onto the muddy road to Appleby.

Penny left the apothecaries, a packet of fever powder in her pocket, a growing sense of panic in her heart. She had intended to go by the King’s Head before returning to Wharton Manor. Now she did not know if she dared risk taking the time.

And yet, she could not let her Cupid go. Nor Oscar. Not without a word. And so, she turned hurried steps toward the posting house, and asked, standing well back from the desk, that the gentlemen might be called down to speak to her. She was informed by William, the desk clerk, who eyed her distant stance with undisguised curiosity, that one of the gentlemen in question had gone out that morning, and had yet to return. A lad was promptly sent up for the one remaining.

Penny went to the window that looked out onto the street, making a point of standing well away from any of the patrons, or employees of the posting house.

Oscar came down, and before he could get too close, she asked him to stop where he was, explaining, “I have been exposed to contagion. Possibly the German measles. I would not want to chance making you ill as well.”

The desk clerk , who stood at the near end of the desk, pretending not to eavesdrop, stepped back in alarm. Oscar nodded, and motioned her away from the window. “Do you care to step into the serving area?” he asked. “You must be chilled. We could order a pot of tea?”

She shook her head. “I cannot stay. If it is measles, Felicity’s fevers are not yet finished, and she will eventually break out in a rash. Val was well on his way to getting drunk when I left this morning. I dare not leave her care to him. But, I had to come and say good-bye to you--” her voice dropped a little in saying “to Mr. Shelbourne.”

“You have not seen him, then?”

“Where?”

“At Val’s. He set off this morning for Wharton. Hoped to catch you there.”
“Did he?”

“Yes. Cannot think what keeps him. He has been gone for hours.”
“Perhaps he stayed to speak to Val. If so,  he is himself exposed to the measles, and you must inform him as much. You will also inform him that I regret very much not having opportunity to wish him well?” She turned to go.
“Miss Foster.” He stopped her. “You do know it was not Val he went to see,” Oscar plucked nervously at his mustache. “It is you he wants--to speak to.”