Beloved Enemy, page 30
The door closed softly behind him, and the two women drew closer together beside the pallet in the hot, brooding silence, watching for the arrival of death. “Have you news of your husband?” Ginny asked, thinking of the child’s father unaware of his son’s agony.
“Not for some time,” Joan replied. “He and Kit, Alex’s second brother, were with the rising at Colchester. I received news that they still lived, but no more.” She sighed. “Kit’s wife has gone to be with her mother who is ailing, but she left the children here because the journey was too long and fraught. I cannot blame her, but I’ve much need of support.” There was a short silence; then she went on with some difficulty. “I very much fear that they will all blame me for accepting rebel supplies. But what can I do? There is not enough food and fuel, and the children have been hungry. What are we to do in the winter with no glass to the windows, the doors hanging on their hinges, no fuel for the fires?”
“They cannot blame you in such a case,” Ginny said, taking her hand.
“Oh, Ginny, you do not understand the extent of their hatred. Perhaps they would understand if the help had been offered by some rebel other than Alex. But they will not rest until they see their brother dead, and they would starve rather than accept food at his hands.”
“And see their children starve?” Ginny demanded.
“I fear so. It is an unreasoning passion that holds them and their father. If they should come up with Alex, there will be bloody battle, and they will show no quarter.”
Ginny shivered as she spoke what she knew to be the truth. “They should not expect any from Parliament’s general, either, Joan, not if his cause is at stake.”
The child suddenly moaned, his body convulsed beneath the covers, and Ginny reached for a cloth soaked in lavender water, laying it on his forehead, her face grim as she faced the knowledge that the convulsion could be the beginning of the end. The child’s mother knew it, too, and held her son’s burning clawlike hand, her face wiped clear of expression in the moment of despairing certainty. Little Joe was now so hot his skin seared Ginny’s hands as she stripped away the covers and began to bathe the twisted, thrashing body with the lavender water. He cried suddenly and became still.
Joan laid the little hand back on the bed and stood up, turning away from Ginny as she yielded the fight and let grief have its way.
“It is over,” Ginny said softly, straightening the covers. “Thank God for his mercy. I will make a syrup of rose hips directly, for he will be thirsty when he wakes.”
“Wakes?” Joan swung round, her ravaged face bemused as hope waged war with disbelief. “Wakes?”
“Aye,” Ginny smiled. “The crisis is past. He is sleeping peacefully.” Joan fell to her knees beside the bed, and Ginny went out into the gallery, blinking painfully at the light. Her legs felt suddenly shaky, and she leaned against the wall, for the moment unaware of the circle of anxious eyes fixed on her.
“Mistress Courtney,” Patience said hesitantly, “is there news?”
Ginny rubbed her eyes and shook her head with an impatient movement as if to dispel the cobwebs, then raised her head, her face tired but radiant. “Your pardon. The child will live.”
Alex had been standing apart, looking down at the devastation of his family’s park through the now glazed window, when Ginny had come into the gallery. When she had leaned against the wall in a manner almost defeated, his first thought had been that little Joe had died of the typhus, and sorrow had welled, keeping him at the window for a moment, even as his mind reached out to her across the room. Then, when he heard her words, he strode over, taking her in his arms, heedless of the others who were too full of their own joy to pay much attention anyway.
“You are exhausted,” he chided, his voice stern, belying the love and relief as he held her face between cupped hands and examined the drawn skin, the purple-smudged eyes, the gray cast of fatigue. “And you are grown thin.”
That made her smile. “In but three days, Alex? It is not possible. I am as robust and round as ever.”
“You are neither robust nor round,” he asserted. “You must eat and sleep at once.”
“First, I must make a syrup of rose hips for little Joe,” Ginny said, pulling away from him.
“Patience and Aunt Martha will do that,” Alex stated firmly. “Will you not?” He turned to the two women, the old and the young. “Mistress Courtney has done sufficient for the Granthams, I believe.”
There was a harshness in his voice that made Ginny wince and protest softly, “I have done little enough, Alex. There is no call to speak in that fashion.” But Alex had listened enough to the angry, ungrateful words, and while he was prepared to accept them for himself, he would not allow his family to ignore the obligation they stood under to a stranger who had given so much of herself without thought.
Ginny turned away from their embarrassment with a dismissive gesture and went to the door. Alex followed, catching her arm. “I am going to look after you,” he said. “Come with me.”
Too weary to protest, and, indeed, not loath to yield control in this moment of utter weakness, Ginny allowed him to take her hand and lead her through the corridors into the west wing of the house. Here, no attempt had been made to restore the rooms to habitability. Doors hung on their hinges, giving glimpses of ruined chambers where the wind whistled through smashed windows. Plaster dust and sawdust lay thick on the floors of the passage, and Ginny wondered why he was taking her on this desolate expedition, when all she wanted was to curl up in a corner of the gallery and sleep.
They came to a door at the end of the passage. Alex opened it, ushering her inside with an imperative hand in the small of her back. The room contained a feather mattress, the covering a little torn, but otherwise it was whole, a chair, table, and Alex’s belongings.
“This was my boyhood room,” he explained with a tiny smile. “I have taken refuge here with my memories. Sit down.” He pushed her onto the stool, went over to his baggage, and drew out a leather flagon. “Take some of this, and I will be back in a moment.”
There was brandy in the flask, and the first sip was almost enough to render Ginny unconscious in her fragile state. She sat on the stool and blinked bemusedly, feeling the warm lethargy seep through her. There was such utter silence in this deserted corner of the house she could almost imagine she was alone in the world. But the door opened again, and Alex came in carrying a round tin tub and a jug, both of which he placed on the floor. “I cannot find a proper bath,” he said, “but this will do well enough. Stand up, now.”
Ginny obeyed, taking another sip of brandy first. “Feels wonderful,” she said.
“Yes, well, you may not have any more until you have eaten something,” he told her, removing the flagon from her grasp before beginning to undress her with an efficient objectivity. “Stand in the tub.” She stepped over the rim with unquestioning compliance and stood still, swaying slightly, as Alex sponged her body with cool water from the jug. “You are definitely thinner,” he remarked, passing the cloth over her ribs, lifting her breasts in the palm of his free hand.
“I am capable of doing this for myself,” Ginny murmured, although, in her state of satisfied exhaustion, the sensation of yielding control was quite wonderful.
“You are too tired to do it properly,” Alex replied calmly, sliding the cloth inside her thighs. “For three days you have been wearing the same clothes and have not moved from that room. You stand in sore need of a little soap and water.”
Ginny chuckled weakly but did not disagree. Her eyes kept sliding to the feather mattress that seemed to become larger and fluffier at each glance. There was a knock at the door, and Alex draped a towel over her shoulders and went to open it. She heard Patience say something in a hesitant voice and Alex respond, sounding kinder than he had done before. Then he came back into the room bearing a steaming bowl and a hunk of rye brown bread.
“I am too tired, Alex,” Ginny protested, knowing the food was for her.
“You will eat a little,” he replied. “Tomorrow we must leave here and ride hard, sweetheart. You have to regain your strength quickly.”
He crumbled the bread into the rich broth and patiently coaxed her to take enough to satisfy him, interspersed with sips of brandy. At last, she was allowed to curl onto the mattress, which proved to be every bit as soft and fluffy as Ginny had anticipated. It enclosed her in its softness, and she was asleep before Alex had drawn the coverlet over her.
He left the room quietly, although doubting that an earthquake would disturb the sleeper, and went back to the gallery where the others were having supper.
“Have you supped, Cousin Alex?” Patience asked in a tentative voice. It was the first time he had been afforded any signs of courtesy, let alone friendly acknowledgment, from anyone but Joan.
“Not yet, Patience,” he replied with the warm smile that transformed the soldier’s generally unyielding countenance. “I wish to talk with Joan first; then I will dine with my officers.” The club-footed Jonathan Marshall humphed at this. “We shall be gone from here by tomorrow noon, Jonathan,” Alex told him tonelessly. “I’ll not come within your sight again, you may rest assured.”
“And what of Mistress Courtney?” Aunt Martha demanded. “You’ll leave her here to help Joan?”
“I’ll do no such thing!” Alex exclaimed. “It is not her job to bear the burdens of the Granthams. It is for you to support Joan, something you will do a great deal more effectively if you spend a little less time complaining!” With that, he stalked into the little chamber where his nephew lay, attended by his mother.
“Oh, Alex,” Joan said softly, “you should not have said that to Martha. It is hard for her with that inflammation of the joints, and she is in pain much of the time. Ginny said she would make up a poultice for her.”
“Ginny is asleep, and if I have anything to do with it, she will remain so until just before we leave on the morrow,” Alex stated with a degree of force. “She seems to think it her duty to aid the afflicted whenever they come to her notice, and I do not seem able to break her of the habit.”
Joan smiled slightly. “Will you lift little Joe for me? I wish to give him some more of this physic. I am sure it is what has saved him. Ginny has been giving it to him every two hours.”
Alex sat on the pallet, raising the scrawny little body against his shoulder, whispering soft reassurances as Joe whimpered. “Are you able to manage alone, Joan?” he asked bluntly.
“Now I am,” his sister-in-law said steadily. “Had you not come when you did, I do not know what would have happened. Joe would have died, I am sure, and I . . .” She shrugged. “I was at the end of my strength, without hope or resource. Now, I am strong again and we can live, if not in great comfort, at least without too much hardship.” She was silent for a moment, then bit her lip before saying, “I can but hope that when your brothers come to hear of your assistance, they will not castigate me too severely for accepting it.”
“They were not always unreasonable,” Alex said.
“No,” Joan agreed, “but their enmity goes beyond rational thought. I pray that you do not come up against each other, else the blood spilled will be a dark blot on the Grantham escutcheon.”
“There will be no brother’s blood shed if I can avoid it,” Alex said quietly, and Joan felt immeasurably comforted, although she could not say why, unless it lay in the sense that Alex was in command of so much more than his own destiny and could be safely entrusted with so much more.
“What of Ginny?” she asked, that thought following naturally from the previous one. “Does her future lie with yours?”
“I would have it so,” he answered, getting to his feet. “But the future is a mere chimera, my dear Joan. When this war is finally over, if we still live and I am whole, not some wounded piece of war’s flotsam, then we shall see.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Ginny, we have to leave now!” Alex paced the gallery, his spurs jangling, his hand on his sword hilt, trying to keep a rein on his swelling impatience.
“In a minute,” Ginny said over her shoulder. “Can you move your wrist just a little, madam? I know it hurts, but I wish to feel the movement of the joint.” Aunt Martha, huffing and puffing, obliged, giving vent to a pitiful little moan.
“I will make a poultice to reduce the inflammation.” Ginny straightened. “Patience, if you will come with me to the kitchen, I will show you how to do it, so that you may prepare fresh ones when I am gone.”
Alex swore beneath his breath and strode out of the gallery, into the outer court where the division’s officers waited under a lowering sky. “We are obliged to bide our time,” he said in clipped tones through set lips, “until Mistress Courtney has manufactured a cure for Aunt Martha’s arthritis!” His audience maintained a prudent silence, keeping their expressions neutral. Alex looked up at the sky. “There will be a deluge before this day is done,” he muttered. Five minutes later, he snapped, “Diccon, fetch her!”
There was no mistaking the command, or the fact that the general had finally lost patience. Diccon went into the house at a run. “Ginny?” he called through the echoing hall. There was no reply, so he thundered up the broken staircase, paused, heard the murmur of voices, and burst without ceremony into the gallery. “I beg—beg pardon,” he stammered, at the incredulous, indignant faces turned toward him. “But, Ginny, you must come at once. The general is about to explode.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “Five more minutes will make no difference, and I must see little Joe before I leave. There, now, madam. Does that not feel better?” She turned back to Aunt Martha.
“Ginny, please,” Diccon pleaded urgently. “You do not understand. The division is drawn up and ready to leave on the instant. The general will not stand to be kept waiting any longer.”
Diccon appeared to be quite genuine in his urgency. “Very well, I will come directly,” Ginny said. “Tell him that I am coming.” She went over to the pallet in the corner where the little boy had been moved, now that the danger of infection was past, back amongst the company.
The aide-de-camp wrung his hands in pathetic indecision. He did not dare return to the general without Virginia since that would be tantamount to disobedience, but the longer he delayed the greater would be the commander’s ire.
Joan read his expression correctly. “Ginny, I will accompany you downstairs,” she said with a soft choke of laughter. “That poor young man looks as if he expects to be drawn and quartered on the instant.”
“At times, your brother-in-law is a veritable bully,” Ginny told her unequivocally. “But he does not make me quake in my boots.” She examined the child’s eyes carefully and felt his pulse. “I do not think there will be a relapse if you do not allow him to overtax his strength. Keep giving him the medicine. It is prepared from foxgloves and has some tonic effects on the heart. If there has been any strain, it will help to counteract it.”
“Ginny,” Diccon almost whimpered, and she got off her knees.
“Yes, Diccon, I am coming right away.” But she did not join him until she had gone round the room making her farewells. Joan was hard pressed to keep a straight face, and even more so when they gained the courtyard and Ginny greeted Alex, whose face was black as thunder, with a cheerfully insouciant apology.
Alex clenched his fists tightly and waited in grim silence until the two women had completed an extended good-bye. Then he clasped the dilatory Ginny around the waist and lifted her onto Jen where she landed with a jarring thump. “You may have been a civilian for the last three days,” he told her furiously, “but you will please remember that you are now back in the army, Virginia Courtney, and an entire division is not to be kept cooling its heels at the whim of a headstrong girl.”
“I had matters to attend to,” Ginny countered, aware of the interest this heated exchange was generating in the courtyard, but unable to accept the public rebuke without defending herself.
Alex chose to ignore that and went over to bid farewell to his sister-in-law “I do not think you will ever have the last word,” Joan whispered, chuckling. “Mistress Courtney is more than a match for a mere general.”
At that, Alex smiled reluctantly. “I am afraid you are right, sister, but I shall persevere, nevertheless.” They embraced, briefly and silently, each knowing that this might be the last occasion on which they would ever meet. Alex mounted Bucephalus, and the group rode through the gatehouse and into the park where the division waited in marching order.
The drums sounded, sharp and alert, and they moved out under the gray skies, down the driveway and out into the country lane. Alex did not once look back, although Ginny kept her head turned toward the house nestling in the lee of the hill until it was lost to sight. In Joan Marshall, she had felt something she had hitherto not experienced—a sense of sisterhood, of shared emotions and attitudes that sprang, not just from similar experiences, but from the universality of the female condition. She had had no true women friends; in her childhood there had been Edmund, and he had provided her with all the friendship she desired. Her husband’s sisters had made no secret of their dislike of her, and, until the last three days, she would have said that the friendship of her own sex was an irrelevancy, something she neither wished for nor needed. Now, she felt a deep regret for what she was leaving behind, for the fact that she must lose so soon what she had so recently discovered.
She glanced sideways at Alex. His expression remained somewhat severe, but it was impossible to tell whether that had still to do with her keeping them waiting or was caused by his own thoughts on leaving his ancestral home for possibly the last time. No one seemed inclined to disturb his silence, and the atmosphere became as leaden as the skies.
