Lyon Hearted, page 13
“Mrs. Hocking,” she said. “Is there a meat pie for the doctor? You make the best pies. He should have one while I get his payment.” She gazed up at him as if he were a god. “Two shillings for your troubles.” That was a great deal more than any London doctor received. “And a promise that I will convince her ladyship that you know best.”
He folded his arms. “Then I will wait. Make sure she comes to her senses soon.”
“Perhaps you should tell Mrs. Hocking what should be done for his lordship. She will help me convince the countess. Servants can be very persuasive, you know. Of course, you know. You are a brilliant man.”
It had been a long time since she’d had to grovel like this. Not since she was a servant in China had she flattered a man until her eyes rolled of their own accord. Meanwhile, she ducked her head and tiptoed through the vicar’s prayers into the workroom. She’d found his lordship’s lock box on her first morning here. He didn’t even lock it. She pulled out two shillings and quietly grumbled at the cost. Ridiculous to pay a man this much just to leave because he was an idiot, but such was the way with men sometimes. And women, too.
She made it back out to the doctor, but she spoke to Mrs. Hocking. “The doctor brought his own carriage, yes? It is ready for him?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hocking said. “My eldest is outside caring for the horses. We knew they’d be coming.”
“Good thinking,” she said, meaning it. Then she held out the shillings to the doctor as she walked out of the castle into the courtyard. If he wanted his money, he would have to follow her.
He did. In the end, she had him up in his cart with the reins in his hands before she gave him the coins. “I’ll summon you as soon as I can. I’ll make the mistress see.”
She didn’t wait for him to cluck at his horse. She slapped it on the butt and made it start forward. She bowed to him as he left, giving him this last show of false respect. Then she turned and headed back into the castle, only to run straight into the Vicar who was watching her with a heavy expression.
“Oh, sir!” she enthused. “Have you finished praying already?”
“Who will you turn to now that the doctor has left? He is the man of medicine here.”
“Is there another doctor near?”
“None.”
She nodded. When a man was useless, there was usually a woman who was more than capable. “I will speak with the countess. I am sure after your prayers that his lordship will recover.”
He shook his head, disapproval in every line. “I have another family to visit,” the vicar said, his tone dark. “Five souls, all feverish like this.”
“Has anyone died from it?”
“Not yet,” he said darkly. “But one never knows with sickness. I will return this evening, and if I deem his lordship is failing, then I will bring the doctor back.”
Li-Na bowed her head as the vicar headed for his horse. As she stood with her head bowed and her hands clasped, she evaluated the heat of the day and the position of the sun. If the vicar returned this evening, they had precious little time to help Lord Daniel. And by all that was holy, she would see that he survived.
She waited long enough to hear the vicar mount his horse, then she turned and headed inside the castle. She met Mrs. Hocking in the great room and didn’t mince words. “Who is the medicine woman here? The one you went to see for the fever powder for your son?”
Mrs. Hocking nodded grimly. “I’ll get her for you, but you should know. People think she’s a witch and will say you truck with witches.”
She guessed that an accusation of witchcraft could be dangerous, but Li-Na didn’t care. “Will her powder bring down his lordship’s fever?”
“It helped my son.”
“Then they can call me a witch. I don’t care.”
Chapter Sixteen
Daniel’s chest ached. And his hands. And his legs. And bloody hell, who had been using a cricket bat on his head?
He made a sound. He knew that because it echoed in his head like the bang on a large gong. Then someone lifted him up and pressed a glass to his mouth.
He drank, the first swallow feeling like knives along his throat. The second was only marginally better. The third exhausted him.
Someone settled him back on the bed.
It occurred to him that this particular situation had happened before. He hurt. He drank. He slept. Except this time, after a few breaths, he opened his eyes.
Li-Na was sitting down beside him, and he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Flawless skin, long black hair, and a serenity that made him drink in her presence as if she were the water he’d been needing.
As he watched, she picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and stroked it across a page. He couldn’t see what she painted. Only her. And for a moment, that was enough. But only for a moment.
“You…painting?” he rasped. Then he swallowed. “What are you painting?”
She looked at him. “Do you think I could tend you for three days and night and not paint you?”
Three days and nights?
“May I see?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it is not you. It is fever and sweat. It is the prickliness of your beard, and the sound of your moan.”
Now he had to see it. He tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness flattened him. Worse, when he’d moved, she’d matched him, pressing her palm against his chest to keep him down.
“Do you need to use the privy?”
He didn’t have the strength.
“Mrs. Hocking’s son will be here soon. He has been helping.” She looked at him. “You have been paying him well for the work.”
“I have?”
“Yes. If you didn’t want me to pay your helpers, then you should have locked away your money.”
He waved her statement away. Or he tried. His index finger wiggled. “Don’t beggar me.”
She smiled. “That was my fear as well. So I have looked at your ledger to be sure I did not ruin you.”
Of course, she’d looked. His books were in the same room she worked. If she’d found his lockbox, she’d found his ledger. “Have I enough left to pay Mrs. Hocking?”
“Yes,” she said, a laughter in her voice. “You do.”
“Excellent.” He ought to have enough on hand to pay the entire village for six months’ work.
He slept.
The next time he woke it was to find his sister-in-law sitting beside him. She was embroidering another seat cushion, but she looked up when he whispered her name.
“Are you alive, then?”
“Where’s…Li-Na?”
Nessie set down the embroidery and crossed to the table where she poured water into a glass. A moment later, she helped him drink. It wasn’t quite like swallowing knives, but it came close. When he was done, she sat back down.
“Li-Na is resting now. She and I have come to an understanding. I will allow that she is a worthwhile addition to your household.”
So many words to sort through. “You disagreed with her?”
“I said we have come to an understanding.” She gathered her embroidery but didn’t look at it. “Her paintings are very odd, and I find the sound of that abacus very irritating. But she has cared for you well, and I will not gainsay a useful servant. Indeed, I have even seen the worth of Mrs. Hocking. She has been invaluable these last few days and her soups are excellent.”
He scratched at his chin, pleased to realize he could move his arms without pain. Indeed, beyond a general weakness, he felt much better than he had in a long while. “My head is better.”
“Good.” She straightened off her chair. “I will call Mrs. Hocking’s son. He will tend to your other needs.” She pulled a watch out of the folds of her skirt. “It is time I returned to the inn. Li-Na will see to you after that. I will tell Mrs. Hocking to heat up more broth.”
He nodded. He knew that when Nessie became perfunctory like this, it was best to agree with everything she said. She was under the strain of too much emotion to suffer any debate. Or questions.
“Thank you, Nessie,” he rasped.
“You’re welcome. Don’t you dare do this to me again.”
Seeing to his basic requirements exhausted him. He managed a full cup of broth then dropped into an exhausted sleep. He woke hours later in a room that was mostly dark. A single candle flame flickered to his right, and he turned toward it in hope.
“Li-Na,” he said.
She looked up and smiled. “Do you need help with the privy?”
“I need to see what you’re painting.”
She shook her head. “The light is not good here. I am drawing the sound of your snores, nothing more.”
“Show me. Please.”
“Only when you are snoring.”
He grinned and snored in a loud, shuddering breath that hurt his throat. She arched her brows at him, but he would not be deterred.
“I am snoring. Show me your work.”
“It is a trifle.”
He snored again, this time even louder.
“Stop!” she said. “You sound like a choking tiger. And it probably hurts your throat.”
It did. “I won’t stop until you show me.”
She sighed. “Such a commotion over something I do to pass the time.”
He snored again, and she abruptly flipped the paper around. He lifted up to see better, and he wished that the light was not coming from behind the paper. Or perhaps that added to the design because what he saw was layer upon layer of jagged marks radiating out from two heavy dots. It wasn’t a painting in the typical sense, but it intrigued him. He saw very light gray strokes around the two, evenly spaced black dots, shaping the central image as if they were eyes. And then the jagged strokes radiated outward like lightning or, as she said, snores made into brush strokes.
“Bring it closer,” he said as he dropped back onto the mattress.
“I will not,” she said as she set the painting aside. “You need more broth and perhaps to—”
“I can use the privy myself, thank you.” At least, he hoped he could. Gathering his resources, he pushed himself upright on the bed. He went slow and was grateful that his head did not swim with the motion. She got everything ready, then stood by. At his dark look, she backed out of his bedroom, but she did not close the door.
“I am here if you need help. Do not be ashamed. You have been very ill.”
He wasn’t ashamed. He was embarrassed by his uselessness. “I haven’t needed help with this since I was four.”
“Four?” she asked, her voice light. “By the way the people here speak of you, I expected you were born walking and talking.”
Good lord, what had people been saying? “I think they were speaking of my brother. Peder was the darling of Cornwall.”
“English may not be my first language, but I do know the difference between Peder and Daniel.”
So did he, and it was not a favorite topic.
He accomplished his goal and eventually managed to return to his bed. It hadn’t been easy, but at least he had not humiliated himself.
“Very good, my lord,” Li-Na said from outside the room. “I’ll be right back with more broth.”
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Get me a meat pie.”
She returned with broth. “Tomorrow you may have gruel.”
“Gruel? Is that what that damned doctor told you? Supercilious ass, I wouldn’t trust him with a half-dead cow.”
She grinned at him. A full, stunningly beautiful grin. “I am happy to hear you say that. Mrs. Hocking and I believed that the doctor should not be in charge of your care. We convinced the countess.”
He looked up in surprise. That asinine man had been physicking his family since he’d been a boy. He wondered how they’d gotten rid of him. “I’m glad I got better on my own.”
“You took teas prescribed by the Woman in the Woods.”
“What? The witch?”
“The Woman in the Woods,” she repeated, her tone more stringent. “The countess said she treats the poor and the superstitious in the area.”
“Of which I am neither.”
“And yet you are better.”
He frowned at her. “You really called the…the…” He couldn’t say the word anymore.
“She made sense. Your doctor did not.”
Well, he could hardly argue the results, though most likely the illness had simply run its course. Either way, he was more interested in Li-Na than any witch.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Three days.”
“And you sat by my side? Managed the doctor?”
“The countess and I did.”
“Thank you.” It was all he had the breath for. He was rapidly tiring. A moment later, Li-Na brushed her hand across his forehead.
“You need to rest, Lord Daniel.”
What he needed was to see her painting again. But for now, he would sleep and pray that she was the one beside him when he woke.
Chapter Seventeen
“This pickled whiting is just the thing when yer under the weather.”
“It’s whelk ye need. Boiled till it ain’t nothing but bones, then drink the broth.”
“It’s tea, my lord. My special verbena, dog’s piss mixture. I have it right here.”
Li-Na laughed at the last one. Lord Daniel was in a feisty mood this evening as he mocked all the well-wishers who had brought gifts of one sort or another. Most were food, some were unguents, and his favorite so far was a fine bottle of smuggled brandy given by the ancient Lord Cardyn who lived on the southern side of Cornwall.
“You know I’ll have to try them all then remember who to thank for my miraculous recovery. And I’ll bet every one of them is better than this.”
He threw his spoon into the gruel he’d been allowed on this second day without a fever. Over the past two days, he’d given lots of special names to his unappetizing meals. Spackled clouds that tasted like angel’s piss. Fish-like lumps that deserved to die. And her favorite beige mystery added to brown meal made thin with brackish water. Something about the repeated “b” sounds made her giggle.
And that, apparently, was the point. He clearly loved making her laugh. He would sit up taller and, if it was a good laugh, would wink at her as if they’d just shared an even deeper moment.
She couldn’t deny that it was effective. Over the past two evenings, he’d managed to cajole her into talking about her life in China. She explained her daily life, how she started painting, and even who had been the subject—or the cause—of her early attempts. He learned about the oldest Zhong boy who had given her moon cakes and read her love poems. She’d taught the boy mathematics because he was dreadful at it. And together they’d shared a kiss.
Which is how she ended up in England when his father found out.
Lord Daniel, in turn, told her about his first kiss in the confessional at the local church. He and a tenant’s daughter had slipped into the dark recess to explore in the way teenagers do. “To this day, I cannot go in there without conflicting thoughts.”
Then he’d asked her what her favorite foods had been, and they shared a pleasant evening with her trying to describe what she’d eaten and guessing how it was made. She had no earthly idea. The Zhong daughter had not been interested in cooking, so they had not spent any time in the kitchen.
“Are you going to paint tonight?” he asked, after he’d told her about his favorite cream tea. That food was not tea at all, but clotted cream and jam on a fresh scone.
“The light is too poor, and you are faring better.”
“I won’t interrupt you. Paint to your heart’s content!”
She might have, but she was too new to evening conversation to want to interrupt it with painting. For two nights now, they had talked about any number of things, and she found it unexpectedly delightful. No one shared conversation like this at the Lyon’s Den. At least not with her and certainly not about Cornish mead and the teenage antics that resulted from an overindulgence in it. They both shared tales, and Li-Na found herself relaying things that she hadn’t thought of in years.
And the oddest thing about it was that as she told her stories, Li-Na felt like she was living them again. She went through her childhood—laughing at the funny parts, touching upon the sad bits, and even trembling again at the dangerous ones—feeling as if she were growing up again, but this time mixing it with the warm rumble of Lord Daniel’s voice or the rich sound of his laughter. He touched her hand when she talked about hearing that her father had died. The news had struck her as awful not because he’d died, but because she couldn’t remember him. And he, in turn, had spoken about his parents’ passing years ago while they’d been traveling on the Continent. It had taken a month for the news to reach him and his brother, and even longer for the legalities to be handled. They did not even have the bodies for the funeral.
She squeezed his hand at that revelation.
The next day he refused to stay in bed. Instead, he joined her in the workroom to write his correspondence. He was a talkative soul when he worked. He would laugh at the letters he received or mutter as he pondered the best way to respond. To her surprise, he posted letters to people all over the Continent, often in their own language. She already had an idea of the size of the estates he managed. She was working on the ledgers for them. But by mid-afternoon, she began to appreciate the scope of his business dealings in art.
Also his stubborn nature after his seventh yawn while sitting at his desk.
She set down her abacus. “I am going to take a walk.”
He frowned and looked at his pocket watch. “I hadn’t realized it was so late. You should have quit a few hours ago.”
She still thought it ridiculous to insist that she work on the ledgers no more than five hours a day, but knew she would not win that argument. So she looked out the window and admired the bright day. “I shall wander back to the water, I think.”
