“What are you looking for?” Will asked.
“I’m not sure. More of my unsubstantiated suspicions, I’m afraid. I find it curious that every time someone in the family dies, Ronald seems to be elsewhere. I wish I’d had the wit to realize that Virginia and her baby were bound to be his next target.”
“Not necessarily,” Will said. “All he needed to do was wait until the child was born. If it should be a girl—”
“And if not? I think even Ronald might hesitate to murder a baby, and he’d have known that a new heir would be guarded so closely he would have no chance. I’d have camped out at her doorstep myself. But to give Virginia a shove down the stairs...”
The candle’s light showed nothing, and he felt foolish. What had he expected, a list of fell deeds to be done pinned to the mantle with a dagger? He moved to the window, hoping the doctor would at least have dry weather for his early journey, but there were raindrops on the mullioned panes.
And, oddly, raindrops on the windowsill as well. Not many, just a few half-dried spots of water, as though someone had opened the window briefly, not long ago. That was also peculiar. Since no one would be sleeping in this room, the servants would have had no reason to enter—nor would they have opened a window on such a wet, cold night.
Will saw the spots too, and raised the candle higher. “Is that window broken?”
“No…” David ran a hand along the edge of the window frame, up to the latch. “But it’s not latched, Will! Look!” He pushed the window open a crack, leaning out a little. As he’d remembered, the ivy grew thick and tough along this side of the building, the vines heavier than halyards.
“Easy enough to climb up or down,” Will said.
“And easy to leave the window unlatched, if the night is not windy. Those vines are strong as any rigging.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
“Of course. I did my share of night-climbing as a boy, and I’m sure Ronald did, too. He was often out when the household went to bed and back in bed the next morning. I want to find out where he was supposed to have stayed tonight...though I daren’t make it a direct question, or he may guess that we know he came home to visit.”
Will ran a finger along the damp sill, then dried it with the sleeve of his nightshirt and pushed the window open again until some random drops spattered on the stone. “We should see how long it takes for this to dry,” he said, “and we will have a notion of how long ago he was here.”
“I wonder if he will have the nerve to come back in the morning,” David said. “By the way, Will, you were the first to find Virginia—what woke you?”
“I must have been dreaming—nothing I remember—and there was something in my dream about a door closing. I heard it quite distinctly; it woke me. I should have just gone back to sleep, but …” He shrugged. “I had the conviction that the sound had been real, so I got up to look in the hall. I heard the sound of movement from the stair, found that someone was lying there, and came to wake you.”
“You must have heard the closing of this door. We should ask Amelia if she heard it, too. But for now, I think it’s time to wake my father. And as with the doctor’s last visit, I think it would be best if you take yourself discreetly away for now.”
“I hate leaving you to face all this,” Will said.
“And I would love to let you have the honors!” David replied, attempting to lighten the mood. “But you might as well take the chance to get dressed. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”
* * * * *
In any case, it was a long half-hour before the Earl was up and about and convinced that his offspring had taken all the correct actions without his supervision. As they settled around the table in the little sitting-room between Amelia and Jane’s bedrooms, he could do nothing but yawn and complain about the cause of his surprising absence during the crisis.
On Fiske’s orders, he had taken a dose of laudanum himself upon retiring, and had slept through everything, much to his own disgust. “I should have known better. ‘You need your rest,’ he said.” He snorted. “I’m asleep for no more than six hours and that woman decides to go roaming and endanger her child!”
“I’m sure that wasn’t her intention, Papa,” Amelia said wryly. Exactly the right tone, David thought—at least for Amelia it was.
The Earl snorted once more. “Walking in her sleep, I suppose. You haven’t bothered your mother about this, I hope!”
“No, sir,” David answered. “Kirby heard us in the hall and came out to help, but Mother was asleep when she left and still sleeping when she went back. Anne is awake and sitting with Virginia, Captain Marshall is getting dressed—”
“As is Jane,” Amelia put in. “Genie is still in bed. I hope she sleeps as late as she usually does.”
Their father nodded. “I want no mention of this to your mother until after Fiske has seen Virginia. There’s no need to cause her unnecessary distress.”
That had been David’s thought as well, but he had known suggesting it would only irritate his father. “Yes, sir. The boy went off over an hour ago, so if Dr. Fiske is at home they should be here before much longer.”
“Good.” The Earl yawned hugely, covering it with one hand. “Damn that quack’s potion! I thought tea would do something to dispel it, but it’s useless.”
David caught his sister’s eye, and she spoke up. “Papa, would you like to lie down until the doctor arrives, and give the medicine time to wear off?”
“No, I would not!” he said, but the last word vanished in another yawn. “But I had better, I suppose.” He stood up, not quite as steady on his feet as David would have wished. “You may as well see him in and explain the situation; I would only be repeating what you’ve told me. But I want to talk with him before he leaves. Laudanum, indeed! I’m not in my dotage just yet!”
Amelia went with him, disguising her solicitude with questions about what to ask the doctor. David decided to watch rather than help and risk irritating his father again. He was more concerned than he liked to admit over his parent’s uncharacteristic docility. It was foolish to worry; he knew that. The Earl seldom took any sleeping draught other than his customary port or brandy, he was nearing seventy, and the past few weeks had been difficult ones. The dose of laudanum had obviously knocked him out, proving Dr. Fiske’s diagnosis of fatigue although his patient would not admit it. But the shape he was in, even a man as stubborn as the Earl might concede to lying down as a graceful alternative to falling flat on his face.
All that granted, it was still distressing to see the man who had been as strong and immovable as Gibraltar suddenly agree to go back to his bedchamber while there was a crisis in his house. It was wrong, unnatural.
No. It was the most natural thing in the world. It was the way of things that the older generation would step back so that the next, younger and stronger, could shoulder the burdens. But, God in Heaven, there could not be a worse time, with the responsibility falling in one direction and the power in another.
David picked up his teacup and drained it, in agreement for once with his father—the tea did nothing to make him feel more alert or rested. He might as well go get into his own clothes, and see whether Will had sat down for a moment and gone back to sleep. Poor Will. David almost hoped he was catching forty winks.
He also hoped that Dr. Fiske arrived before Ronald came sauntering back, feigning innocence and full of false solicitude, or someone else might go tumbling down those damned stairs.
* * * * *
Daybreak was near by the time the doctor arrived, a wet, grey dawn appropriate to the occasion. “Where is the lady?” Dr Fiske demanded, pausing in the doorway only long enough for Leland to take the rain-soaked coat from his shoulders
“This way, sir.” David was no more willing than the physician to stand on ceremony and wait for Leland to lead the way. He didn’t much like Virginia, never had, but this …
“Your boy didn’t say anything but ‘she’s dying,’ Fiske said. “What’s happened?”
“She took a bad fall down the staircase. No one has any idea why she might have been wandering around in the dead of night. Her maid has a bruise on her temple, and when I found her she was hard to waken.”
“Do you think her ladyship struck her own maid?”
“I could not say, sir, and I would not attempt to guess why she would do so.”
“The question ought to be
how
she could have done it. Did she take her cordial at bedtime?”
“Yes, sir, my sister Amelia watched her drink it.”
“It would take a great deal of resolve to overpower that medication. Was she in an hysterical state?”
“According to her maid, no. But I imagine that in her state of mind, anything might be possible. She has been unconscious since we found her a little over two hours ago. My sister says she muttered briefly, after she was put to bed, and her breathing has grown harsh this past half-hour. But ...well, sir, you were here not long ago. She had remained uneasy in her mind on the matter of my brother’s death, full of fears and accusations.”
“Yes, yes. Were there any visible injuries? The child…?”
David could only shrug, and then they were at the bedroom door, where a knot of anxious servants melted away at the advent of the physician. Kirby opened the door and led them through the sitting room. As they entered the bedroom, Margaret left off bathing her mistress’ forehead and turned back the counterpane.
Fiske took hold of Virginia’s lax wrist. After a few seconds he glared at the hapless maid. “When did she stop breathing?”
“She –” The woman bent closer, and let out a shriek. “Oh, my dear Lord! No! Just this moment, it must be, oh, dear heaven! She turned away when I touched her just a moment ago—” She took a couple of quick, squeaky breaths and turned frantically to Amelia, standing at the far side of the bed. “You saw, my lady?”
“Yes,” Amelia said, her face white but composed. “Just as you entered, I believe. A few harsh breaths...then stillness.”
Fiske took a small disk from his pocket and polished it on his sleeve. A mirror, David saw. A chip of silvered glass that stayed bright and undimmed by breath when he held it up to the woman’s silent lips. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I am too late.”
And then, in the deathly quiet of the room, they saw a small movement under the coverlet stretched over Virginia’s belly. David cringed inwardly. The baby, so near to term, would die slowly, suffocated. Another death on the household.
“Go get a basin of hot water,” Fiske told the maid. “Go. Now. And you, Lady Amelia.” He cut David and Will out with a look. “Not you two.” He folded back the covers, set his black bag down on the spotless counterpane and unbuckled it. “Navy, you said?”
Will swallowed. “Yes.”
“Seen some bloodshed?”
“More than I care to remember,” Will said. “What are you—”
“Up on your Shakespeare?”
“Julius Caesar?” David guessed. “Do you think we can save him?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his sister pull the door shut behind her.
“We might,” Fiske said. “Due in two weeks’ time. If we’re quick about it…” He selected a small, sharp instrument from the case and sliced ruthlessly through the soft wool of Virginia’s nightdress. “Hold that shawl ready. You— Marshall? Stir up the fire, we’ll need to keep the child warm.” Probing carefully with his left hand—”Ah, there you are, you rascal, stay there…” he raised the scalpel once more and brought it down, and David had to turn his head away.
She should have screamed. Any sailor under the knife would have. More than the cloudless mirror or her marble pallor, that unearthly silence convinced David that his sister-in-law was indeed dead. Not all the blood he’d seen shed in battle could have prepared him for the sight of the gruesome birth, but he managed to keep hold of his nerves as well as the squirming infant that Fiske deposited on the delicate woolen shawl draped over his shaking hands.
David swallowed his gorge. He’d seen calves born, and horses, and that one summer Freya had delivered her pups right in the nursery...they’d looked very much like this, but smaller. It was just a baby, he told himself, just a baby...and it wasn’t breathing. “Oh my God.”
“Steady there,” the doctor said. “We must unwrap the little chap—Oh, pardon me, the young lady.” He peeled off the caul and cleared the child’s wrinkled face, pushing gently on her belly. With a great whoop, the tiny chest expanded and color rushed into the wizened body. A thin wail wavered in the air, and Fiske grinned foolishly. “The finest sound in the world. There, there, my dear, your uncle David will look after you.”
He wrapped the ends of the shawl around the baby and pushed her toward David. “Hold her there while I deal with the cord.” Once again, David looked away. In a moment the doctor said, “Take her into the sitting room and keep her warm by the fire. I need to tidy up here, before that maid comes back in and starts howling like a banshee. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Jordan, in the village—wet-nurse—in case she might be needed. You’d best send someone for her—tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her.”
David nodded numbly, and took the baby over near the hearth, finding a strange comfort in the jerky, involuntary movements of its arms and legs. He sat down in the low chair near the warmth, and realized his knees were shaking. After a moment he felt Will move closer to stand beside him, hovering, one hand on his shoulder. “A little girl,” Will said under his breath.