Intermezzo (13 page)

Adela, taken by surprise, whisked off her cloak and pirouetted like a matador as the child came straight for her. Rebecka was somewhat brighter than the average bull and she began making a tighter and tighter circle around her prey. Within that circle, Adela was twisting and turning round and round and round in order to avoid a collision. Then Rebecka, exhilarated with success, bolted for the house, while Adela, really quite dizzy, continued to turn slowly and began to sink, laughing, onto the ground.

Suddenly she was being supported and the twirling stopped. The world was quite still and she found herself in the arms of his lordship. Neither of them knew precisely how or indeed what had happened. Their eyes met.

Adela panicked, and then, although every instinct in her screamed to break loose and run, she managed to look down and say with a very creditable imitation of that other so prim and proper Miss Adela Trowle, “So sorry. Thank you, my lord. I seemed to have lost my balance.”

And she waited for him to release her.

He hesitated a few moments, sighed, and said with equal formality, “I am pleased to have been of service, Miss Trowle. Shall we proceed in to tea?”

“Yes, of course. Rebecka will already be waiting for us.”

He placed her arm on his and they began to walk back toward the house.

Waterston was the first to speak. “It will, I think, be a good year for roses.”

“Yes, the roses seem to be doing particularly well,” she answered.

They continued on in silence for a few moments. Most people do not welcome self-revelation and neither Adela nor his lordship were exceptions to that rule. Neither of them was given to long bouts of honest self-examination. They were both therefore almost totally unprepared for what had happened in that one instant when he had held her in his arms.

Adela was shaken. What had happened? How had it happened? Surely her existence was confused enough already without this added complication. Nothing in her life had prepared her for that moment.

Somehow she forced herself to speak. “These tea roses are quite different from any I have seen before. Are they a local variety, my lord?”

“Quite local. My mother bred them herself and I am told the strain is named for Ashleigh.”

Good God, he thought to himself. What an incredible fool you’ve been, Waterston. How blind. Waterston, who had, after all, a great deal of experience in the potent chemistry of the man-woman relationship, had no trouble identifying the experience in the park for what it was. He wasn’t threatened; he was stunned. In fact, he began to see the world as if a great fog had suddenly been lifted. When had he begun to spend all his evenings in that library? When had the lush charms of Miss Oliver begun to cloy? Or when had the porcelain beauty of Lady Diana begun to chill his being?

How he had deluded himself! Miss Trowle at the piano was one person and Miss Trowle in the drawing room quite another. How very blind he had been.

The subject of the roses having been exhausted, Adela turned to Horace’s collection. “I had meant to ask you, my lord, about a particular harpsichord marked Leipzig and dated 1705.”

“Now that you mention it,” Charles said, “I had meant to tell you about that harpsichord. Horace had reason to believe it belonged to Bach or one of his sons. We purchased it from a Lord Simpson who claimed to have had it from Karl Philip Emanuel Bach himself.”

“Do you think he himself brought it to England?”

“Quite possible, I suppose. It is undoubtedly one of the best instruments in the collection, although Horace always felt it would require some repair work to have it at its full potential.”

“Yes, I should think so. But not too much repair work.”

And so, dispassionately, they continued to discuss the merits of the Leipzig harpsichord until they reached the house.

That evening, Adela, with a headache, excused herself from dinner with the family and remained sequestered in her room, picking at the food on a dinner tray sent up from the kitchens.

Later, with Rebecka in bed, his lordship sat awake nursing his port and waiting for the music to begin. But that one night Adela did not come down to the music room. The music room at Ashleigh was quite public and her internal turmoil was, as yet, too great. It would have stood revealed to the world in one movement and a cadenza. So while Waterston sat up with his port, Miss Trowle lay curled in her bed flaying her new emotions and waiting for morning.

The next day Adela was up before breakfast and practicing. Her head still ached abominably, but she had decided that music, which had stood her so well as a confidant and therapist, would not abandon her now. She played from the partitas and fugues, and after several hours of classical precision on the harpsichord, she felt reasonably prepared to face the day. The staff, remembering with affection Horace’s eccentricities, listened indulgently to the music and held up her breakfast.

In the afternoon Rebecka suggested another fishing expedition and Adela, who was more than willing to spend the entire afternoon away from his lordship, readily agreed. They changed into their shabbiest gowns and old gloves and, with John Coachman, set out for the trout-filled stream. Adela, who found fishing quite grim under ordinary circumstances—when and if she caught fish—was depending primarily on John Coachman’s repartee to distract her from her own preoccupation. That afternoon, however, John Coachman was curiously reticent, almost obsequious, and Adela thought, He doesn’t like me. What have I done to alienate poor John Coachman?

“Oh, John.” Becky giggled. “Don’t be such a gudgeon. You were always used to tell us such wonderful things about Uncle Charles. Adela is not such a prude, although Adela dear, you really do look a little starched up at the moment.”

“Humbug, lassie, his lordship is above reproach, always has been,” John grunted and began discussing the peculiar intelligence of Ashleigh trout.

All the while that Adela and Becka were fishing, John Coachman instructed them, and took the fish as soon as they were landed. “Wouldn’t do to have the young ladies messing with slippery cold trout.” They stopped for lunch, and while John Coachman went to return some of the gear to the house, Becka began a game of hide-and-go-seek.

Quite suddenly the sun was blotted out and it began to rain—a blinding squall one expects on a hot August afternoon, but not on a chilly day in March. Adela called for Becka, but the child was still in hiding.

“Becka, come here this minute we
must
get back to the house.” Adela was really quite annoyed. Jon would never have hidden like this. Jon was such a well-behaved child. It was just like Rebecka.

Adela saw a flash of color in the bushes and lunged just as Becka turned and ran past her toward the stream. The child stumbled into the water. Adela ran after her, pulled her out, and they both ran dripping and shivering toward the house.

John Coachman met them halfway, and as they came in through the kitchens, they were greeted by Thurgood, the Beaumonts’ ancient nurse. “Quick now, both of you, upstairs and out of those clothes. We’ll get you to a warm fire right quick and stop all this ashivering and shaking. Quick now, those wet clothes will be the death of both of you.” Mrs. Thurgood bustled them up the stairs.

They were whisked to their rooms, deposited in warm baths, and changed into woolen dresses. At tea both Adela and Rebecka huddled near the warmth of the fire. Still shaking, they sipped their tea silently without even making a pretense of conversation.

“Good God!” his lordship exclaimed as he entered the small saloon, “what has happened to the two of you?”

“Nothing, Uncle Charles. We were just out in the rain. Just a trifle wet and cold.”

“Don’t you go listening to them, your lordship, sir. They’ve been bad girls, the both of them. Drenched to the skin and cold to boot,” nurse added as she came in with some warm woolen scarves. She tucked them both up right and tight and made up some sugared milk tea for Rebecka, directing his lordship to give Adela a spot of brandy for her chill.

Adela tried to refuse, but as she was not up to an extended debate with his lordship, she lowered her eyes, took the brandy, gulped it down, and promptly went into a coughing fit. His lordship, amused despite himself, patted her on the back and slowly, solicitously, rewrapped the stole around her. Adela fumed silently but thanked him, never lifting her eyes from the fire.

After tea, Nurse and Waterston decided between them that the two young ladies should be sent off to a warm bed and should have a sustaining gruel for dinner. Astonishingly, Rebecka went without a murmur and was followed by Adela, who for reasons of her own was quite eager to leave his lordship’s presence.

That evening Adela was feeling relatively well, but she decided not to hazard a dinner in the dining room. She was about to make her excuses when Nurse came to tell her that the little miss was not doing well, not doing well at all.

Adela shedding all her own concerns, ran to Becka’s room. Rebecka was in fever. Nurse explained that it was nought to be concerned with. Children often run high fevers.

Adela, suddenly terrified, pretended to make light of it, but she insisted on sitting with Becka until there was some sign of improvement.

Adela sat alone and talked to an increasingly feverish child for two hours. At first Becka was in good spirits, but gradually she began to fret and complain of a pain in her throat and in her ears. The doctor was sent for, and although he took a professionally grim view of the situation, he did not think it was desperate.

He diagnosed the influenza, recommended fluids and bed rest, and predicted that it would take some time for the fever to break. After sharing a brandy with his host, he left.

Adela remained with Becka, rocking the child, talking to her, and reassuring her—or reassuring herself. Slowly Becka’s fever mounted and the child was becoming slightly delirious. The terror, which had begun as a small knot in the pit of Adela’s being had expanded. Adela Trowle wrapped her arms about herself, and began to rock back and forth slowly as she watched over the feverish child.

When his lordship came, at midnight, to look in on Becka, he found Adela hunched up silently by the side of the bed. Approaching her from behind he gently placed a hand on her shoulder and said, very softly, “Miss Trowle, I think you had better get some rest. I will sit with the child.” Adela failed to acknowledge his existence; indeed, she seemed oblivious to any other presence in the room. He came around to help her up and looked into her face. It was white, drawn and almost devoid of expression. She began to moan again, rocking back and forth. Then she looked up at Waterston, not recognizing him, and said, “Mother, I did try. I tried so very hard—please forgive me. I tried and tried and tried, but it didn’t help. He’s dying.”

Charles shook her gently, but she continued to look up at him with eyes that did not see. She was willing herself into some other world. She was escaping.

He held her close and spoke softly, urgently, “She is
not going to die
, Adela. Becka is not going to die. Look at me! She is not going to die.” But Adela sat unseeing and unknowing and continued to mourn.

Charles rang for Nurse to come and take charge of Becka and had the footman ride for the doctor. Then he gathered Adela into his arms and carried her across the hall to her own room.

Until the doctor came, he held her and rocked her as a mother would an infant and he repeated, again and again, “Becka is not dying, do you understand? No one is dying.” And, finally, “Don’t leave me, Adela.” It is doubtful that Adela, who had achieved a coma of sorts, was aware of anything he said.

The doctor came and, after diagnosing a morbid brain fever precipitated by a chill, ordered, as was usual in such cases, that Adela’s hair be cut short and that she be given laudanum. Charles cut the hair himself but rejected the laudanum.

He sat with her the next day refusing any help or any food while Nurse and the maids sat with Becka. Finally, toward evening of the second day, Becka, having come through the worst of her fever, demanded to see her cousin Adela. She was told that Adela was very ill and his lordship did not want her disturbed. Becka broke from her nurse and came tearing into the room where Adela lay silently on the bed with his lordship holding her hands and looking near collapse himself.

Instantly, Rebecka hurled herself at the still figure and began pounding Adela on the chest. “Wake up, Adela! It’s me, Becka—wake up, wake up, Adela! You must wake up. I need you. You must.” The child was frantic. “Wake up, Adela, wake up.”

His lordship did not stop her.

Adela moved and said very softly, “There, there, Becka. Be still. I’m
very
tired and I’m going to go to sleep. Let me sleep.” It had been the first sign of conscious life in thirty-six hours.

As she slipped back into unconsciousness, Charles clutched at her shoulders and then instinctively slapped her very hard across the face. “Wake up, damn you! Wake up!”

Suddenly he was crying, and almost as suddenly, Adela was awake and crying: Rebecka, overcome with relief, tiptoed from the room.

Adela did not know how long she had cried. It seemed that she had been crying for an eternity. She remembered being in Becka’s room and the child had been so sick and here she was in her own room in his lordship’s arms and they were both crying. Finally when there were no more tears, she looked up and said quietly, “I think I shall be all right now. Thank you.” And after a moment, “Am I worth saving?”