“Thirsty,” she said.
Potter poured out a glass of the barley-water that stood on the little table by the window. Philip helped her to sit and drink. She felt very shaky, and was grateful for his help. She would have liked to have continued to rest against him, but mindful of the proprieties, he gently laid her against the pillows when she had done and sat back on the chair.
“Tell me,” she said simply.
“How much do you remember?”
With her hand in his, Lucy felt safe enough to go back. “I can’t tell what is real and what isn’t,” she said. “Please - am I married?”
He shook his head, smiling. “No, not yet.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. Most of the dreams of the last - however long it had been had centred on the altar. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday. About six o’ clock.”
She could hardly believe it. Her look of astonishment must have told him what she was feeling, for he said, “You were given a massive dose of laudanum. I think your mother wanted to keep you docile at the altar, but your maid gave you another dose on top of it, and by the time they got to you, you were dangerously near the edge.”
“I’m not used to laudanum,” she said. “But my mother takes it a lot. Perhaps she gave me what would be a normal dose for her.”
He shook his head. “It was criminal in her not to tell anyone what she had done. Your maid gave you a small dose for a headache, but it could have been enough to kill you on top of what you’d already had.” His grip on her hand tightened momentarily.
“They kept you awake for a while,” he said, “Afraid to let you sleep, but when you began to recognise people and your surroundings, they put you to bed. I arrived this morning. You were past any danger then.” He paused for a moment. “I would never had gone had I thought they would do such a terrible thing.” His voice nearly broke.
“My mother likes everything to be as she arranges it. I kept telling her I wasn’t going to marry Geoffrey, I threatened a scene at the altar, so she must have decided to keep me tractable. I thought I might bring her round at first, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“We’ll look after you here until Saturday - if you still want to go ahead, that is?”
The carefully controlled query nearly broke her heart. She smiled at him as warmly as she could. “More than anything else.”
Her reward was an answering smile and a slight squeeze of her hand. “Thank you.” His relief was palpable. “I won’t rest safe now until I have you safe.”
They looked at each other in peace for a moment until he said; “Everything else is arranged. Uncle George is back at his house and willing to marry us on Saturday. I have the licence safe.”
“My mother doesn’t know about that,” she told him. “She doesn’t know about you, unless I babbled it in a laudanum dream. She knows you’re involved - Edward Wenlock’s presence and the involvement of the
Carmichaels
must have told her that - but I didn’t tell her. I think I was afraid to tell her. I thought I could get away, but they posted Greene outside my door, and I couldn’t. I was planning to refuse him at the altar, so my mother thought to drug me to stop me doing it.”
“My poor love.” he said warmly, and then, “You would have been better off without your fortune, wouldn’t you?”
She smiled, realising the truth of what he was saying. If Philip had been given the bulk of the money as well as the estate, her mother would have been a lot more accepting of her choice. The money had brought nothing but trouble recently. The knowledge that her mother had been clandestinely dipping into the funds made her sorrowful, rather than angry.
Potter came forward. “I’ll go and find some dinner for you, my lady, and tell the others that you’re awake. I won’t be more than ten minutes.” She bobbed a curtsey and left the room.
“Tactful woman.” said Lucy, opening her arms to him.
He held her tightly against him for a full minute before he drew back a little to kiss her. She responded with all the passion her exhausted mind and body could summon up. “I like it here,” she said, finally. He smiled at her comment, but said; “When I think how close I came to losing you without even knowing it. You might have had grounds for annulment, but the scandal would have been terrible, and you might even have decided to make the best of it.”
“Oh no,” she said. She looked at his face, smiling. “I would have come back to you, one way or another. If you wanted me, that is.”
“Always,” he said, and kissed her again. “I still can’t believe what I looked for hopelessly all those years is about to happen. Perhaps that’s why I had a feeling of foreboding on Easter Sunday, or perhaps I just missed you.”
“Maybe,” she replied. “I missed you, so much.”
Philip drew back hurriedly when the door opened to admit Christina and Mrs. Carmichael, but they merely smiled in a knowing way and came to the bed. After a long, searching look, Mrs. Carmichael kissed her forehead and sat on the chair Philip found for her. “We were very worried about you for a little while,” she said, “But you seem to be well enough now.”
“You didn’t know any of us,” added Christina. She sat on the edge of the bed, the room having no more chairs to offer, and settled her skirts. “We thought you’d lost your wits completely.”
“No, it was only the drug,” Lucy said. “I knew you all very well as my good friends and protectors. I’m so grateful you came for me.”
“We tried earlier,” said Mrs. Carmichael, “But they wouldn’t let us in and even offered us violence.”
“Oh dear.” Lucy said. “I spent a lot of time in my room, because I didn’t want to be with them. That’s on the second floor, at the back. Perhaps if I’d been downstairs I might have heard you.”
“Perhaps.” Mrs. Carmichael shrugged. “But we came back yesterday with Mr. Chumleigh and a bailiff. Lord Wenlock was visiting at the time - “was it her imagination, or did Christina blush? The girl had a florid complexion, but Lucy was sure that becoming shade of pink wasn’t the heat - “And he offered to come with us. The combination of his lordship, Mr. Chumleigh and the bailiff did the trick.” She paused. Lucy had slipped her hand back in Philip’s, but she reached the other one to her kind friend. Mrs. Carmichael smiled warmly. “That was a scene I would like to see again. Perhaps I might prevail on someone to make a play of it.” She took a deep, sighing breath. “But when we saw you, my dear, I thought the game was up. You were dressed for your wedding, and seemed quite reconciled to it. But it soon became obvious you were confusing two events, so we brought you home.”
“Yes,” agreed Lucy. “Home.”
“I fear we may receive a visit from your mother,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “We’ll refuse her if you wish, and we’ll refuse Sir Geoffrey too.”
“No,” said Lucy. “If they come here I want to see them. I want to tell them about my real wedding myself. Especially Geoffrey,” she added reflectively.
***
They made Lucy stay in bed and rest for the remainder of the day. The only person who didn’t come to see her was Janet, but Lucy had her suspicions about that.
Frances
brought her some flowers; Millicent stayed and read with her for a while. It was as though she was a proper sister to them, and Lucy knew she would never cease to be grateful.
Thursday morning brought a surprise. Potter was busy helping her to dress when a knock sounded on her door. “There’s a very superior female outside,” Mrs. Carmichael told her. “And she says she’s your maid, Curtis. She also has a carriage packed with what she says are your clothes.”
“Well Curtis is my maid,” Lucy said. “Send her up, if you please.”
While she was waiting, she explained the position to Potter. “You’ve done very well for me here,” she said, “But you haven’t yet got the experience to serve me as lady’s maid when I marry Lord Royston; you can’t do a grand toilette, and there are other things you need to learn. I’ve asked Curtis if she will take you as her assistant, to be trained in the things you don’t know. Would you like that?”
Eyes shining, Potter said; “Oh yes, my lady.”
“I don’t know if I want to keep Curtis,” Lucy continued, “But I will keep you.”
The woman in question entered the room. While Curtis was a slim woman, she was tall and imposing, and in this room, so much smaller than Lucy’s bedroom at home, she seemed to fill more space than she was entitled to. She curtseyed. “Good morning, my lady. I have packed all your belongings and brought them here. Lady Royston says she doesn’t want to see me again, but she will provide me with a reference. If you wish, I would prefer to stay on with you as your ladies’ maid, but I will leave immediately if you want me to.”
Lucy looked at her straightly. “One question. When you gave me that second dose, did you know my mother had been dosing me too?”
“No indeed, my lady,” she replied in indignation. “And - forgive me for saying it - if you had succumbed to the drug, I think I would have been the one to take the blame. I do not believe her ladyship would have admitted her part in it, and I gave you the dose openly.” That aspect of it hadn’t occurred to Lucy yet, but under consideration, she knew Curtis was right. Her mother wouldn’t have hesitated to throw Curtis to the wolves if it meant saving her own skin.
It was enough to persuade her. “Very well. If you could unpack what I need here. And one more thing - I’m to marry Lord Royston on Saturday.” She waited for her maid to react. The lady flushed bright red and her small eyes opened wide in astonishment. “So I might not need too much here. I shall require you to take the bulk of my luggage to the house in
Grosvenor Square
and settle it there.”
The excellent maid recovered her equilibrium quickly, and curtseyed. “I’ll see to it at once, my lady.”
“You remember Potter?”
“Indeed, my lady.”
“She will assist you from now on, in any way you see fit.”
Curtis came forward and took the brush from Potter’s unresisting hand. “Then may I suggest this?”
***
Lucy found herself coiffured, dressed and downstairs quicker than Potter could ever have managed. Curtis knew exactly where the morning gowns were, and sent Potter to unpack a yellow cotton gown, self striped and decorated with slashes and rouleaux around the hem. She met Mr. Carmichael and his son in the dining room, having a late breakfast. They were fully dressed, and Lucy guessed they had been out already, about their business. She smiled warmly at them. “I’m so glad to be back.”
“We’re glad to have you back, my dear” said the elder Mr. Carmichael. “We’ll be sure to keep you safe until Saturday.”
“I know,” she answered. “But I hope my mother realises now that I mean what I say.”
“I cannot believe she would do such things.” said Rodney. His usually pleasant face darkened in a frown when he thought of what Lady Royston had done.
“She’s used to having her own way,” Lucy told him. “And she will do a great deal to accomplish it.” She went to the sideboard where a tempting array of hot dishes lay, picked up a plate and began to help herself to breakfast. “I hope she’ll persuade herself that calling off my marriage to Sir Geoffrey is her idea. That’s what she usually does.”
In a way, that proved to be the case. Lucy expected Lady Royston to visit and she wasn’t disappointed. At two that afternoon she waited with some tea things in the drawing room, at her request on her own, and she watched from the window until her mother arrived.
The disparaging look her ladyship cast at the house didn’t go unnoticed, and when she was shown up to the drawing room she looked around her for a long minute.
“Red Lion Square.” she exclaimed in a voice which had as many vowels in it as it could take, each long drawn out word a condemnation. “Come home my dear. You can’t possibly stay here.”
“Why not?” Lucy demanded. She set to pouring the tea. “It’s respectable and the family are good to me.”
“But it’s the City. Lucy.”
“Yes, mother?” Lucy brought her tea over to her, since they were alone.
“The family here must be quite beyond redemption.”
Lucy sat down again. “They are Lord Royston’s cousins and perfectly respectable. In fact, they are more than respectable. If I were marrying for money, mother, I would be hard put to it to find a better match than Rodney Carmichael.”
Her mother stared. “But they’re only Cits.”
“They own warehouses, shops, even a manufactory in the North,” Lucy said. She watched her mother’s reactions carefully. Snobbery warred with avarice, she guessed. She knew her mother well.
Lady Royston looked about her again, this time more carefully, and then looked back at her daughter. “Still - “ she said. “
Red Lion Square
. How can your friends visit you?”
“In their carriages,” Lucy said calmly. “It’s not far. I can walk if I want to.” She remembered that long walk down
Oxford Street
.
Suddenly brisk, her mother asked; “I have to know what you mean to do, Lucy. I am still hopeful of carrying this off without any scandal. You cannot stay here, society will think there has been a breach.”
“Hasn’t there?” Lucy said. “I was drugged by my mother, almost compelled to marry a man whose attentions had become repellent to me, and you want to avoid scandal?” her voice rose a little; with an effort she controlled it. “Do you know what he did? Did Aunt Honoria tell you?”