chapter 18
Laura arrived home to discover that James’s fever had returned while she was gone. Owen let out a sigh of relief when she entered, and he jumped to his feet. “I wasn’t sure what to do. Sir James has been restless for a while. Well, ever since Mrs. Salstone and her ladyship were here to see him.”
“Did they talk to him? Do anything?” Laura asked as she stripped off her gloves and began to untie her bonnet.
“Um . . . well, Lady de Vere cried.” He looked puzzled. “Is that what you mean?”
“I thought perhaps they might have gotten him to eat or drink something.”
“Oh. No. Mrs. Salstone was upset because the dog growled. You know how Dem is.” Laura thought amusement lurked in his eyes. “Dem let them in, but then he came and stood next to Sir James and they couldn’t get close to the bed. Mrs. Salstone said as how a dog shouldn’t be allowed in a sickroom. But then Lady de Vere told her not to be silly, as Sir James would rather have Dem with him than anyone else.”
Laura could not hold back a little smile. “I suspect that’s true.” She poured water into the basin and added a few drops of lavender.
“But then Mrs. Salstone began to cry, and her ladyship did, too. And Sir James said, ‘Do stop sniveling.’ ” Clearly Owen had a good memory and a delight in storytelling, as well.
“Oh, dear.”
He nodded. “Then Mrs. Salstone cried harder, and the ladies left. That’s when he asked where you were, and then he began tossing and turning and talking like . . .” Owen frowned, looking as troubled as his round freckled face was capable of, and lowered his voice. “Well, you know, like somebody else was here talking back to him.”
“Yes, I know.” Laura wet a cloth and began to wipe James’s face.
“Laura,” James murmured, not opening his eyes.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I’ve been talking to your father.”
Laura’s hand stilled for an instant. “My father?”
“He says so. I think he’s lying.”
“Why is that?”
“His head is wrong.” He gestured vaguely. “It’s a deer.”
“Then, yes, I would say that’s not Papa.”
Her answer seemed to satisfy him, for he fell silent. She coaxed him to drink a little of her headache tincture, followed by some water, and though he shook his head at the milk thistle extract, he swallowed that, as well.
“Knew you’d come back,” he said softly.
“Yes, of course.” She picked up the cool cloth again.
“How else could you torment me?”
“Exactly.” Laura continued to wipe his face, dampening the cloth again and again. After a time, he quieted and fell asleep.
While James slept, she occupied herself with digging through her father’s papers. She had no luck in his journals, but when she thumbed through the doctor’s correspondence, she found a letter from a doctor in Australia thanking Dr. Hinsdale for his recommendations regarding treatment of men who mined cinnabar ore.
Cinnabar, she remembered, was the ore that yielded mercury. The letter was two pages long and the handwriting cramped, but she waded through it, finding a list of foods the Australian thought helped his patients recover.
Laura wasted no time in giving Simpson the new requirements for James’s menu. That was the easy part, of course. The trouble would come in getting James to eat them.
For two days, things went on much the same. James would be feverish, then chilled. His eyes were usually closed, though she wasn’t sure how much he slept. Sometimes he talked in an eerie one-sided conversation. When he was awake, his eyes were often clouded and confused.
Laura watched over him, never leaving James alone unless Owen was there to help him and Demosthenes to guard him. True to her word, Abigail brought her the bottle of milk thistle under the guise of a call. Laura persuaded James to take it by cajoling or annoying him into it, whichever worked. She even managed to convince him to eat some food.
The members of James’s family trailed in to see him at various times. Laura watched them, hoping to pick up some indication that one of them had planned James’s demise. Claude’s face was almost as difficult to read as James’s. Walter seemed the most concerned. But was he afraid James would die or afraid he would live?
Patricia resented Laura’s constant presence in the sickroom, which made Laura wonder why the woman wanted so much to be alone with James. It might only be Patricia’s dislike of Laura, but perhaps it was something far worse. Laura hated the suspicion with which she lived. But none of it was as bad as the constant, draining worry that James had moved beyond the reach of her help, that he would never emerge from this semiconscious state.
James drifted. He knew who he was. He knew that something had happened to him and he hurt. That much was clear. He was less sure where he was. The sky above him was dark green, but that was wrong. Sometimes he burned and sometimes he was cold to the marrow of his bones. People he didn’t want to see came in and peered at him. His mother cried over him. But, no, she cried because Vincent was gone.
Now and then the dog stuck its square head over the top of the bed and stared at him, frowning. Mags. He smiled to see his first dog. Only she was Dem, too, and that couldn’t be right. But he liked having both of them there.
She was there. He knew who she was, though sometimes her name floated away from him. She gave him bitter things to drink, but her hands were soft and cool. She was lovely and the light glowed on her golden hair. Often her hair was in braids wound around her head, and other times it hung down over her shoulders and back like a waterfall. When he was hot, she bathed his face with cool water, and he felt better. When he was freezing, she held him. And that felt the best. He knew she was Graeme’s. But, no, she was his.
That didn’t make any sense at all. It was so difficult to think. He didn’t really want to think, anyway. There was that dark thing, and it was best left alone.
Then all at once, he would wake, and everything was real. The green above his head wasn’t the sky, but a canopy above a bed, and the room . . . the room was Laura’s. She was his wife. It was Dem who watched him. Mags had died years and years ago. The pain in his body separated into all its various points. And someone wanted him dead.
It was better, really, to drift.
Now and then when he drifted, he wasn’t even here. Once he was standing beside his father’s desk, and it didn’t seem odd that he was only a boy. James showed his father numbers on a piece of paper, but the numbers didn’t matter. What mattered was that his father laughed, and his arm curled around James, enclosing him in his warmth and scent for an instant, as he said, “Who would have thought it would be the cuckoo in the nest?”
Another time, James stood in the doorway of that same study, older now and more wary, watching his father, who sat, head in his hands and a half-empty bottle and glass before him on the desk. James had heard the argument earlier in his parents’ bedroom, and he’d trailed downstairs after his father stormed out, with some vague idea of making things right.
He knew deep down he couldn’t fix things between his parents. Nothing could, for Mama was all sunshine and laughter and storms, and Papa was all stone, as his mother said.
He didn’t know what they had fought about other than it had something to do with Captain Randall, whom James disliked because of the way he smiled and jovially patted James on the shoulder, as if he was a friend.
Laurence looked up and saw James, with that wry twist of the mouth James so often saw on him, and said, “Don’t be a fool like me, boy. Don’t let a woman tear you up inside.”
But even being there was better than the other place he went to, where the darkness lurked across the nursery in the room where Mama wept and the doctor came and Nurse shooed James away. And Papa was not like Papa at all, but broken.
James was glad to hear her voice. Sharp and angry, it pulled at him, tugging him away from the darkness. Other voices rose against hers. Laura needed help. He must stop this nonsense and be himself.
James opened his eyes. The room was dim, the only light the lamp on the dresser. Laura stood in the doorway beside Dem, both of them taut as they faced the people in the hall. There the lights were brighter, illuminating his sister and her husband.
“It’s very late,” Laura said. “James is sleeping.”
“What difference does it make?” That was Patricia; he’d heard that whine for nigh on thirty years. “He’s always asleep.”
“Yes. He’s ill.”
“But what’s wrong with him? Nobody knows. Mother says it’s something in his brain, but James never told us anything. Now you’re always here, not letting anybody see him.”
There was a moment of tense silence, then Laura said, “Very well. For just a few minutes.” James closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to talk to his sister, but Laura said sharply, “Just you, Patricia.”
James opened his eyes again, alert. Dem was growling, the hair on his ruff standing up, and Laura had crossed her arms.
“But Archie wants to see him,” Patricia protested. “To say good-bye.” Good-bye? No doubt that would be a conversation Archie would relish.
“Be that as it may, James doesn’t want to see him.”
“How would you know what James wants? He’s my brother.”
“I know him a great deal better than you if you think he wants to see the man he threw out of the house a fortnight ago,” Laura shot back.
“How dare you?” Patricia’s voice rose to a piercing shriek that was all too familiar. “How dare you sweep in here and tell us all what to do? I don’t know how you tricked James into marrying you, but—”
“Tricked James?” Laura gave a humorless chuckle. “Do you honestly think anyone could trick James into anything? I dare to keep you from him because I am his wife. I am the mistress of this household. I will do whatever it takes to make sure James has peace and quiet. If you don’t like it, you are, of course, welcome to leave Grace Hill.”
Well done, Laura. James smiled to himself.
“This is all damned havey-cavey, if you ask me.” That was Archie, in a tone that made James want to growl like Dem.
Laura, however, remained cool as ice. “No doubt you are more familiar with havey-cavey doings than I, Mr. Salstone. But whatever you think, you are not seeing James. I will not have you bothering him.”
“Now, see here,” Archie began. Beside Laura, Dem’s growl deepened, and he bared his teeth. Salstone stopped abruptly.
James rolled up on his elbow and shoved aside the covers. He swung out of bed, reaching one hand to the bedpost and hoping he didn’t crumple ignominiously to the floor. Then another voice joined the others in the corridor.
“Salstone.” It was Claude. James relaxed. Whatever else Claude was—murderer came to mind—he disliked Archie Salstone as much as James did. “Don’t be an ass, Archie. You’ve had too much port this evening.”
Now Salstone stepped away, out of James’s sight. He heard Claude saying cheerfully as they moved away, “I’d stay clear of that dog if I were you. I saw the leg of someone Dem went after. Not a pretty sight.”
Laura turned to Patricia. The color in Laura’s cheeks was high, but her voice remained calm. “Would you like to see James?”
Patricia let out a short wordless noise of frustration and stalked away. Laura and Dem stood in the doorway for a moment, still alert.
“How fierce you are,” James said. “I scarcely need Dem.”
“James!” Laura swung back around, her face alight. She rushed over to where he stood by the bed, reaching out to slip her arm around his waist. It felt familiar and right, and he curled his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in a little tighter. He let his head droop toward hers, breathing in the scent of lavender. His head still pounded and his very bones ached, but nothing hurt as much with her slender body fitted against his side. He was glad, though, that the bed was not far.
Dem butted his nose against James’s leg and James reached down to ruffle his ears.
“What are you doing up?” Laura scolded in a way that somehow pleased him, another one of the many peculiarities he felt. “You should be in bed.”
“I heard Archie and Patricia.”
“Them,” she scoffed as she steered him toward the bed. “You needn’t have gotten up. I can handle those two.”
“I saw.” He sat down and leaned back against the headboard. He felt as if he’d run a race. “I thought I might have to stop you from laying them low.”
She rolled her eyes and sat down on the bed beside him. “How do you feel?”
“Not dead.”
“Well, that’s to the good.” Her smile was bright enough to make him almost believe he felt better. “You sound . . . you sound here again.”
Laura took his hand, as she had many times before since he’d been sick. But it was different somehow; he no longer felt only the unspoken comfort. He was conscious of her touch now, just as he was aware of how near she sat, how at ease with him she was.
“I think . . . perhaps I am myself again,” James agreed cautiously. “I feel like the devil, but I don’t feel as if I’m trying to hold back the tide.” He paused. “Are you sure? That it’s mercury poisoning?”
“Yes.” She stood up and went into the dressing room, returning a moment later with a battered journal. “My father treated men who had mercury poisoning. These are his notes.” She began to read from the book, listing symptom after symptom so familiar they made his stomach churn. “You see?”
“What happened to those men?”
She looked him square in the eye. “They lived, James.”
“All of them?”
Laura let out a soft noise of frustration. “That is so like you. No, not every single one, but more of them lived than died. You have a better chance than any of them.”
Hope shimmered in his chest, but he dared not grasp it. “What were they like? Did they continue like this?” He circled his hand, indicating himself and the bed.
“No.” She set the book aside and sat down on the bed again, leaning earnestly toward him. “They recovered. The symptoms disappeared. You’re going to be yourself again.”
“Christ,” he muttered, not sure whether he was cursing or praying, and tilted his head back against the headboard, closing his eyes.
He was going to live. It had been so long. He had been so sure. Resigned. He hardly knew how to feel, how to act, what to say. If he wasn’t careful, he thought he might start to shake until he fell to pieces.
Laura moved forward, sliding her arms around him, laying her head against his. James went still for an instant, then wrapped his arms around her almost convulsively, squeezing her to him, and buried his face in her hair.