Carla Kelly (22 page)

In the surgery, Dr. Cook worked silently and swiftly, his face set, his eyes rock-hard. Libby addressed several questions to him, but he seemed not to hear her as he worked, pressing against the wound until the bleeding stopped and then cleaning it carefully. With a shudder, Joseph fainted when the doctor began to sew the underlying muscle of the wound together.

Anthony sighed with relief. “It’s easier this way,” he muttered, working faster to take advantage of Joseph’s respite.

While he worked, Libby sat huddled small in the armchair in front of the desk. She went to the window once. The squire sat where they had left him.

When Anthony finished, he dropped the needle in the porcelain basin and sat down in the stool beside the examining table, his head between his knees. Libby came closer and touched his hair, suddenly fearful. He looked up, and the pain in his eyes made her step back as though he burned. He held out his hand to her, but it was flecked with blood and she came no closer.

“He should heal well. It was a clean wound.” He shook his head. “When I think how close . . .” His voice trailed off. He washed his hands and stood by the window, drying them. “How long will he sit there, do you think?” he murmured, more to himself than to Libby.

“Till he rots, I hope,” Libby said suddenly, and then put her hand to her mouth, surprised at her own vehemence.

To her further amazement, the doctor reached out and gave her tumbled hair a sharp yank. “Enough of that,” he ordered, and then bent and kissed her cheek swiftly. “I’m sorry, but really, Libby, there has to be more here than we are aware of. I wonder . . .”

Libby dabbed at her eyes. Her scalp ached, but she was alert now and not sunk in the bitterness that had enveloped her since she had knelt in the bloodstained grass. She reached out tentatively and put her hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “Perhaps you had better go to him.”

“Perhaps I had better,” he agreed. He turned to her suddenly. “Elizabeth, I am so ashamed.”

She was silent for a long while, and they just stared at each other. Libby spoke first. “Come, Anthony, help me get Joseph back into the gig. I am taking him home.”

He took issue with that at once, but she would not hear of anything else. Joseph was fully conscious by now. He looked about him, his eyes heavy with pain, but nodded when Libby asked him if he wanted to go home.

“I’ll be over in the morning to check on him,” the doctor said, handing her a black bottle. “Two drops only of this for the pain, and no more than three times a day.”

She pocketed the bottle. “I am coming back as soon as he is in bed,” she said. “I have to know what is going on. I want to know why your father holds so much hatred for my brother.” She paused, searching for the right words. “It is as though he had a grudge against Joseph, but he never knew us before last year.”

“Do not come back tonight, Libby,” Anthony said finally, after he had helped her lift Joseph into the gig and tied her uncle’s hunter on behind it. “I’ll be after my gig in the morning. I think this evening will be a matter between my father and me.”

She did not argue, but took the reins from the doctor; steadying her brother, she turned toward home.

Candlow and the footman, full of questions, helped Joseph from the gig and carried him to his room. When Joseph was comfortable and his eyes closing in sleep, Libby took Candlow and the footman aside and told them all that had happened. She spoke calmly, dispassionately, and when she finished, she shook her head against their questions and went to her room.

Aunt Crabtree sat there. Without a word, Libby went to her side and knelt beside her on the floor, telling her the whole story.

“My dear, this is grim, indeed,” Aunt Crabtree said.

Libby nodded, amazed at the calmness of her aunt.

“I wish you had confided in me sooner,” was all Aunt Crabtree said. She rested her hand on Libby’s head and Libby closed her eyes in gratitude.

Aunt spoke finally, clearing her throat in that precise way of hers that for once did not irritate her niece. “Should I write to my brother, or your mother?”

Libby shook her head. “I will do it in the morning. Mama should know, of course. Perhaps I will send Joseph to her in Brighton. I have not proved much help to my brother this summer.”

“Should you go, too, my dear?”

“No,” Libby said emphatically. “I think that Dr. Cook needs me here.”

Aunt Crabtree was silent. In another moment, she kissed Libby and told her to go to bed.

She fell asleep at once, even though the sky was still light with midsummer.

Joseph was much better in the morning, sitting up in bed, eating the gruel that Candlow brought him. He spit out a tooth on the spoon, and his cheek was still swollen, but he could speak.

“Dr. Cook said that I would have a great scar, one of the marvelous, romantical kinds,” he said as Libby tugged out a pillow from behind his head and he lay down to rest. “Won’t Mother be amazed?”

“Amazed is not the word I would use, Joseph,” Libby said. “We’ll be fortunate indeed if she does not chain both of us to the front steps on a short leash.”

She finished her early-morning duties, picked up her long-neglected mending, and sat down to wait for Dr. Cook.

He did not come. After staring in exasperation at the clock, she went to the mantelpiece and gave the timepiece a therapeutic shake. After another hour of pacing back and forth and spending much time at the window, staring hard at the road, she rang for Candlow.

“Would you please ask Tunley to hitch up Dr. Cook’s gig? I think I had better return it. He appears to have been detained.”

The noonday sun was warm on her back as she drove slowly down the road. “How unlike you to forget an appointment, Dr. Cook,” she said.

She rang the bell several times before Mrs. Weller, her eyes red with weeping, answered it. She opened the door only a crack at first, then flung it wide when she saw who stood before her. Mrs. Weller pulled Libby inside and began to sob in good earnest. Libby clutched her hands.

“Oh, Miss Ames, I am glad you are here.”

“Is something wrong with Anthony?” she asked, her voice faraway in her ears.

Mrs. Weller nodded. “Something is wrong with everyone in this house, miss.”

Libby listened no more. She ran down the hall to Anthony’s surgery and threw open the door.

He sat in his chair, his stockinged feet on the desk, his eyes wide open, his expression more grim than she had ever seen before. “Libby,” he said, and held out his hand to her.

She was on her knees at his side in a moment, holding tight to his hand, taking in the exhaustion on his face—nothing new to her now, but somehow worse, because there was no hope in Anthony Cook’s always hopeful eyes. She stared at his rigid profile, thinking to herself that if he were to drive by any country lane like that, and wave to the children playing there, they would run from him.

She rested her cheek against his hand. “What has happened?”

He made a visible effort to collect himself, freeing his hand from hers and putting his feet on the floor. He had not changed his shirt or breeches. They were the same bloodstained garments he had been wearing the afternoon before. His face was unshaven, his hair wild, as though he had been tugging at it.

Suddenly the room was too close, too airless. Libby rose to her feet and opened the windows by the examination table, averting her eyes from the bloody basin and wads of crimson cotton waste still scattered about. She pulled the draperies farther back and leaned out, grateful for fresh air, dizzy with the odor of blood and disinfectant.

When her head was clear, she turned around, found a clean glass, and poured the doctor a drink of water. She took it to him and put it in his hand. “Drink that,” she ordered.

He did as she said, still staring straight ahead. He leaned forward then and rested his elbows on the desk, as if he had not the strength to sit upright. To her relief, he smiled briefly and handed her the glass again. She refilled it and he downed it quickly.

Anthony looked about him then. “Place is a mess,” he said. “Sorry, Elizabeth.”

He looked down at himself in disgust. “And I am worse.” He sighed. “This begins to remind me of the worst days in Edinburgh, except that I cannot put in my seventy-two hours and leave the hospital.”

Libby sat on the desk in front of him. “What happened, Anthony? You have to tell me.”

“I do?” he asked.

“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “You spend days and nights listening to everyone’s problems. Now it’s your turn. Where is your father?”

He passed his hand in front of his eyes and all the weariness returned.

She thought for a moment that he would cry, but he did not. He sagged back in the armchair again and then leaned forward, pulled the chair closer to her, and rested his head in her lap.

Her legs tensed in surprise, and then she put her hand on his head. “Tell me, Anthony,” she urged, bending close to his ear, smelling again the rank odor of blood and sweat about him, but not repulsed this time.

He was silent, his breathing regular, and she thought he slept. She continued to stroke his hair until he sat up again.

“My father is upstairs. We spent a long night together, my dear.”

He sat there and she got him another glass of water, which he drank dutifully. She wanted to shake the words out of him, climb in his lap and beat on his chest until he talked, but she merely regarded him.

“Libby, I learned something most interesting last night.” Again the silence. Again she wanted to scream.

“I learned that I had a brother.” He paused and looked at her for the first time. “A brother like Joseph.”

16

“NO!” Libby shook her head in disbelief.

The doctor took her hand. “You are a perfect mirror of my own reaction last night. Why do we always deny what we do not wish to hear? I have puzzled about this for some years.”

He stood up then on unsteady feet. “Elizabeth, I am so weary, but I cannot sit still and talk of this.”

He went to the window and leaned against the frame, not looking at her, but out at the field where she had last seen his father, slumped in the grass. “We sat outside there and Papa talked until the cock started to crow.” He looked away. “It seems I have been doing my best work lately out in fields.”

Libby gritted her teeth. Get to the point, Anthony, get to the point, she thought, and then was instantly ashamed of herself. He would tell her when he was ready, and not a moment sooner.

When he walked back to the desk finally, she took him by the arm and steered him to one of the armchairs in front of it. He sank down with a sigh. Without a word, she pulled up the other chair and propped his feet on it, brought him one more glass of water, and made him drink it.

He handed back the glass. “Tyrant,” he said with a slight smile.

“It’s about time someone tyrannized over you,” she retorted, and pulled his desk chair closer. “Now tell me, and then you can sleep,” she coaxed.

He did as she ordered, his voice flat, monotone at first and then becoming more animated as his own clinical discipline took over.

“He was born in 1776, so he dates me by ten years precisely, my dear. Papa carried a miniature of him on his watch fob.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I have seen it many times, but he never would say and I never would ask.”

“How strange,” Libby murmured.

He looked sideways at her, not moving. “Not if you know the squire. One didn’t ask needless questions.”

“But he is your father!”

Her outburst elicited no response, and she was ashamed, thinking of the myriad questions she had pelted at her own father and his elaborate discussions of tactics and weapons with a child who adored him. And to think that I have been feeling angry of late because Papa was not wiser, or that he left me in uncomfortable straits, she thought as she watched Anthony’s agony. How foolish I have been.

“As far as I could glean from what my father said, they knew right away that the boy was not normal. He was slow to do things and resistant to change in routine.” He reached over and took her hand, pulling it back to his chest where he rested it. “A pillow fight like the one at the Caseys would probably have been beyond his ken.”

She scooted closer, resting her hand more comfortably on his chest. “Surely they tried to work with him. Joseph has learned so much since his accident.”

“Apparently they did not, my dear.” The doctor shifted restlessly. He tensed to rise again and continue his fruitless pacing, but Libby pressed her hand down firmly and he stayed where he was. He looked at her sharply, then relaxed. “You are a determined minx, aren’t you?” he asked, half in exasperation, half in amusement.

“Oh, yes, Dr. Cook. Now lie still. You are exhausted.”

He removed his spectacles, handing them to her, and rubbed his eyes. “Oh? Is that why I feel so tired? Bless my soul. No, Libby, no one seems to have given my father very good advice. And Father was—is—a proud man. You know him. You have seen him. He is a handsome devil with a quick wit and a shorter fuse. The knowledge that a child of his loins could be less than perfect must have been a real abomination.” He grimaced. “When I came along later, I suppose he was more prepared for the shock.”

“Anthony . . .”

He kissed her fingers and placed them again closer to his heart. “Well, Father was, shall we say, somewhat incoherent last night, but I gathered from what he said that one of my uncles, mercifully long dead now, suggested that the boy be placed in an asylum in Tunbridge Wells. And so it was done. That was when my parents moved here.”

“That would explain . . .”

“. . . why no one around here ever chose to enlighten me. No one knew. This estate was one of Papa’s from his mother, and he apparently had long been contemplating such a move. The timing was perfect.”

“How old was your brother then, do you know?”

“As near as I can gather, around eight.”

“Oh, God,” she said, unable to keep the sadness from her voice. “He must have been terrified.”

His hand tightened over hers. “An active little lad who was slow in the head, sent to asylum in Tunbridge Wells.” He rested his other hand on his eyes, as if to shield them from a glare that only he could see.

He slept then suddenly, as if sleep was something he could no longer put off. Libby did not waken him, did not remove her hand from his chest. She tried to keep her mind a deliberate blank, but all she could see was a small boy being led to an asylum, the gates clanging shut behind him.

In fifteen minutes the doctor woke, looking about him in surprise and some embarrassment. “My apologies, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice rusty, “but the physiology of the body is such that if you put one in a comfortable position that has not slept for a long time, it will sleep.” He patted her hand. “At least you did not take advantage of the lull to escape.”

“Of course not,” she said calmly, considering. “I think the time to escape was back when we set that gypsy child’s leg, Dr. Cook.”

He stared at her, an arrested look on his face. “I suppose it was,” he agreed. “Never thought of it that way.”

He settled himself more comfortably in the armchair. “Two years after my brother’s incarceration—Father never visited; he could not bring himself to visit—he received a letter from the asylum’s director, advising him that the boy was near death. Papa went immediately to Tunbridge Wells.”

Anthony swallowed convulsively several times. “Libby, I feel so cold!” His heart pounded rapidly and sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Tell me,” she urged, “tell me!”

“When Father got there, riding all night in the rain, my brother was dead. He went into the room . . .”

Anthony leapt to his feet, unable to remain seated any longer. He went to the window, leaning out for a long moment as she had done earlier.

Libby did not move, fearful of breaking his concentration. She stared at him, dry-eyed, her heart in her throat.

Anthony was crying now. He wiped his eyes and forced himself to continue. “For two long years he had been chained to that bed and kept in the dark. Good treatment, his keeper said, for lads who kept trying to escape. Father said . . . Oh, Libby, he said that my brother’s fingers were worn down to bloody stubs where he had been scraping at the wall, trying to get out.”

Libby ran to the doctor and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, as he sobbed and held her close. Tears streamed down her face and she forced herself to think of Joseph in such a place—Joseph a little slow, never to be normal now, but harmless, likely as harmless as Anthony’s brother must have been.

They clung together for a long time, and then he freed himself and drank the rest of the water directly from the carafe. His eyes looked like two coals in his dead-white face.

“He’s buried in Tunbridge Wells, God rest his soul.”

He allowed her to lead him back to the chair and sat down again. “Well, Papa had to have an heir. I gather that my mother wanted nothing more to do with him after the boy died.” He shook his head to clear it, unable to meet her eyes. “Father’s a big man, and strong. He got what he wanted from an unwilling wife. God, I only hope that my mother conceived quickly. Imagine the torture, if you can.”

Why are some people so cruel to those they love? she thought, embarrassed at the intimacy of what he was telling her. She said nothing, knowing that he would continue when he was ready. His wound needed no further stretching or poking about. It bled freely enough already.

“She died when I was born. Except for my height, I am her image. We can safely say that Father was disappointed and draw a curtain over that little episode.”

Libby sat in troubled silence, hands tight together in her lap. The doctor, astute even in exhaustion, noted her puzzled expression. “You are wondering where all this leads with Joseph, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Joseph never did your father a harm.”

Anthony relaxed in the chair again, his feet up. “Father managed to carry on through the years. I suppose he would still be normal enough, if you and your brother and mother had not moved in with Sir William. Father was reminded all over again of his son.”

“So that’s it,” she said.

“There’s a rub to it, of course, my dear. Isn’t there always a rub to life, a little bit of sandpaper where it grates the most? He saw how happily Joseph fit in your family, how devoted the two of you are, and how everyone found simple tasks that Joseph could do quite well. I think it harrowed him up, knowing that perhaps he could have done the same for his boy. He’s taking out his punishment on your brother. I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but that’s the story, as near as I can gather it together.”

“Where is he now?”

“I finally convinced him to go upstairs to bed, along about dawn. He was talking wildly then, intent upon suicide, so I have sedated him heavily. I sat with him until I couldn’t stand it anymore and came in here. The scullery maid sits with him now.” He closed his eyes, and she thought he would sleep, but after a struggle with himself, he opened his eyes again.

“How long can you keep this up?” Libby asked. When he did not answer, she stood up. “I’m going to help you upstairs now to your own room,” she said, “and when you are comfortable there, I am going to sit with your father so the maid can go about her duties.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” he protested.

“You didn’t ask me; I told you,” she replied, and was gratified when he managed a weak grin. “When the maid finishes her duties, I will send her for Candlow. Come now, stand up, sir.”

He did as she said, leaning on her for a moment before he found his balance. “I feel like a baby,” he grumbled as she helped him up the stairs.

“You would probably be a dreadful patient,” she replied. “See that you stay healthy, sir, and spare the world.”

They walked slowly down the hall to the room where the door was open and his father lay sleeping. Anthony stopped in the doorway watching the squire out of bleary eyes suddenly alert through sheer force of medical habit.

“Should he come around while you are sitting with him, another two drops will put him under for an hour or so, and that will be enough for me,” he said.

“It is not enough,” Libby said indignantly. “You can’t do this to yourself.”

“I can and will,” he said firmly. “The first rule of medicine is, ‘You must attend.’ Don’t be a snip, Elizabeth.”

He motioned to the next door and she opened it, not at all surprised to see the same order and neatness of the surgery downstairs. Her quick glance took in more books, piles of books, old dark furniture smelling strongly of polish, shabby and lived-in, and a bed with a homely sag in the middle.

The doctor sat down on the bed, opened his mouth to say something, and closed his eyes before anything came out. He sank back wearily on the bed.

His shoes were downstairs, so Libby covered his legs with the light blanket at the end of the bed and unbuttoned his waistcoat with the blood caked on it.

“You are a great lot of trouble, Dr. Cook,” she said out loud, and stepped back in surprise when he opened his eyes.

“So are you, my dear,” he said, and then closed his eyes. In another moment he was snoring.

Libby laughed softly to herself and went to the escritoire by the window, rummaging about for paper, pen, and ink. Sitting in the chair with a padded seat conforming to the doctor’s ample contours, Libby composed a note for Candlow that briefly outlined the events. She begged him to hurry over and, while he was at it, to think of a steady couple who could be prevailed upon to restore order to a household at sixes and sevens for years and years.

She folded the letter and affixed a wafer, her eyes straying to Anthony Cook, who lay as though dead in the middle of the bed. She came closer, peering at him, amazed how completely he could abandon himself to sleep. She touched his hair. I wonder when you last had a good night’s sleep with no interruption, she thought. I suppose that is the unenviable lot of physicians.

The scullery maid was relieved to see her. She jumped up and darted to the door almost before Libby could grab her by the arm, shove the note at her, and urge her to hurry. The maid took the note, curtsied, and paused in the safety of the doorway for one last look at the squire. She crossed herself and ran down the hall.

Libby allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloom and came closer to the bed, peering down at the squire. Such stillness, she thought. He seemed hardly to breathe and she found herself watching anxiously for the rise and fall of his chest. She pulled the chair closer and sat down.

He looked so old, so unlike the lively man who had come to her uncle’s stables only two days ago, full of restless energy and vituperation. His strong-featured, handsome face was sunken now, fallen in upon itself like rotting fruit. She searched for some resemblance between the squire and his son, who slumbered in the next room, and saw none.

Libby noticed the black bottle on the night table. Quickly she picked it up and took it to the bureau, where it was out of the squire’s reach. On the bureau was a small mound of coins and keys, the contents of a man’s pockets and waistcoat. There was a watch and fob. She picked up the fob and turned it over. Tears came to her eyes as she gazed at the miniature of the little boy, a charming light-haired child with startling blue eyes and cheeks pink and glowing with health. If there was something vague about the expression, it was nothing anyone would notice at cursory glance. He was a handsome child, much like his father.

Libby sat down again by the bed, prepared to hate the man she watched, the man who had ruined the life of the little boy in the miniature, blighted the existence of his wife, worked his mischief daily with his living son, and nearly killed her own brother. She found that she could not hate him. She took his hand.