The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Fourteen

The bailiff woke her again, but this time his hand was gentle on her back as she snuggled close to Lady Bushnell. She thought his lips just touched her cheek, but she could have been mistaken, because she was dreaming about soldiers.

“Susan, wake up,” he whispered, his hand warm on her back. “Here’s the doctor, and the Skerlongs will be along soon.”

She reached up and touched his face to let him know that she heard, then carefully disentangled herself from Lady Bushnell. “She was cold and wanted me to get in bed and read her letters,” she explained to the doctor, who was peering close at the sleeping widow. “She said she felt more calm when I was lying close by.”

She thought she heard the bailiff say, “I am sure I would not,” as he turned away, but her mind was still fuzzy with sleep. She got up slowly, careful to tug down her nightgown and acutely aware of her frowsy appearance. What seemed perfectly necessary during last night’s emergency struck her as almost ludicrous now, especially with Lady Bushnell slumbering so peacefully, the picture of old age propriety.

Wishing earnestly for a robe or shawl, Susan stood beside the bed and watched the physician. “She really frightened us last night,” she offered, aware of how lame it sounded.

To her relief the doctor nodded. “I do not doubt that for a minute,” he replied. He looked at the bailiff. “I had my suspicions when you summoned me after her fall.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Long night, Wiggins, long night. If you will excuse me, I will see if I can do Lady Bushnell any good.”

Susan started to leave, but he touched her arm. “I would rather you remained.”

“Let me get a robe,” she said. “Mr. Wiggins, could you build up the fire? I’ll be back in a moment.” She hurried down the hall, took, a moment to refresh herself, then stood by her window in robe and slippers, watching the dawn make its early false attempt.

Against her own will, she thought of the Battle of New Orleans, with its smoke and fog and terrifying accuracy of frontiersmen’s muskets and frightened men marching in columns and firing long before they should have. And there was Charles Bushnell, no leader of men, his own deficiencies uncovered by the death of his commander, with no idea what to do. “It is too bad,” she said as she drew Charles’ name on the icy pane and circled it, before leaving the room.

David waited for her outside Lady Bushnell’s door. “I’m tired,” he said as he leaned against the wall. “Used to be I was fresh for forty-eight hours, but now…” He shrugged. “Peace makes me soft.”

She looked at him, her mind and heart still on poor Charles, and tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, David, the things I have learned this night,” she began. “Charles ... Young Lord Bushnell... was no leader of men.”

“I’ve already told you that. And knowing that, I wonder why he took command that spring before Waterloo.”

“I think I can tell you, but it will have to wait.” She opened the door, then looked back at him. “Where did you find the doctor?”

“Delivering a crofter’s baby far away from here. That child didn’t particularly want to make an appearance, so I had to wait.” He turned bleak eyes on her and she was reminded of his sad part in Lady Bushnell’s letter. How hard was it to cool your heels in the crofter’s and listen to a woman in travail? No matter, she knew she never needed to ask. The answer was in his eyes. Impulsively, she held his hand for a moment, whispered, “I know,” then went inside and closed the door behind her.

Lady Bushnell was awake and resting demurely in the center of the bed, her letters still scattered around her. “I am feeling fine,” she assured the doctor with a glance of determined defiance directed at Susan when the man began to rummage in his bag. “Never better. It must have been a touch of indigestion last night, Dr. Pym.”

The doctor gave a noncommittal “H’mmm” practiced in its neutrality, and removed a slender tube from his bag. The widow’s eyes widened. “I am fine,” she insisted. “I have seldom been better.”

“Lady Bushnell, you are a prevaricator of the first water, and I do not scruple to tell you,” Dr. Pym said smoothly. “Miss Hampton, do me the honor of pulling aside Lady Bushnell’s frills just slightly and positioning this tube where her heart is. I will, of course, not look, Lady Bushnell.”

“You were right to call me,” the doctor said to Susan and David as they stood in the hall later. He moved aside for Mrs. Skerlong to hurry in with breakfast on a tray and good cheer on her lips. “Although she is not in obvious distress right now, there is still some irregularity to her heartbeat. It is certainly angina pectoris, and would indicate other cardiac maladies incidental to advancing years, and less easy to diagnose.” He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “You must inform young Lady Bushnell at once.”

“Oh, but surely...” Susan began.

“At once,” he repeated, then fixed the bailiff with a stare. “Perhaps I was unwise to listen to you after her slip on the stairs. I should have insisted then that Lady Bushnell make that final move to the family estate, where she can be watched over day and night”

“It will kill her to sacrifice her independence!” Susan burst out.

“It will kill her to stay here!” Dr. Pym argued, exasperated, out of sorts, and looking for the world like a man who wanted his bed. “My dear Miss Hampton, I’ll give you and Mr. Wiggins three days...”

Susan burst into tears and threw herself on his chest, sobbing, crowding so close to the doctor that he had no choice but to put his arm around her or topple over. And once his arm was around her, suddenly it became his problem.

“Now, see here, Miss Hampton... oh, do not cry ...!” He cast a desperate glance in the bailiff’s direction, but it was a wasted effort, because the bailiff was minutely examining the wallpaper as though it were a new discovery, and humming to himself. “This unmans me, Miss Hampton! Oh very well, one week!”

Susan managed to detach herself from the physician. “Oh, thank you, Dr. Pym!” she exclaimed, careful to keep her dry eyes averted. “I can’t tell you what this means!”

The doctor took her by the shoulder and shook his finger at her. “And if a week from today I do not receive a missive from you or Mr. Wiggins, stating that you have done as I said, I will personally go to London and deal with young Lady Bushnell!” He nodded to the bailiff, who was standing closer now. “Sir, if you would send someone to the apothecary in Quilling, I will have a compound stirred up for Lady Bushnell that will ease her angina. Good day now.”

With a nod and one last uneasy glance at Susan, who was still sniffing dangerously, he trotted the length of the hall and clambered down the stairs with a velocity surprising in one of his years. When she heard the front door close, Susan began her own inspection of the wallpaper.

She was appalled at her behavior, she had never done anything so blatant before. Perhaps some men are simple, she considered. I wouldn’t dare attempt such a stratagem with the bailiff.

He seemed to read her mind, which further disconcerted her, because it was not the first time. She was beginning to think that was the problem of dealing with a man who knew women as well as the bailiff did. Now someone like the vicar would be forever in the dark if she attempted subterfuge. But it was the bailiff’s turn now.

“Susan, that was the most... the most...” Words failed him for a moment. “Don’t ever try that on me.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked. It was an innocent enough question, and she wondered why her cheeks burned from asking it. Can it be that I think it is a useful tool, or is it that something tells me I’ll find much better ways of getting what I want out of the bailiff? she considered as her face flamed and he laughed.

She was spared fumbling around for any more conversation when Mrs. Skerlong opened the door, her face serious. “Lady Bushnell is this close to sleep now, thanks to that draught from the doctor, but she wants to see you two for a moment.” She opened the door wider.

Lady Bushnell’s eyes were closed and her face relaxed and calm, likely the result of the sleeping potion. She opened her eyes, patted the bed, and Susan sat down. She held Susan’s hand.

“My dear, thank you for putting up with my crotchets this night,” she said, her voice low and dreamy.

“I didn’t mind a minute of it,” Susan said, and meant every word. Lady Bushnell held up her hand to the bailiff, who grasped it. “But now you’ll sleep, my lady. We promise to tiptoe around and not disturb you.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. Susan got up to go, then sat down again when Lady Bushnell tightened her grip.

“My dears, I have two favors to ask of you,” she said. “Simple things, really.” She opened her eyes, as close as she could come to a look of mischief, with the doctor’s sleeping powders doing their work.

“Say on, my lady,” said the bailiff.

“You and Tim the cowman can get my harpsichord up here sometime tomorrow, and Susan and I will resume our lessons as soon as we have rested a little. Susan, don’t sigh and bite your lip like a baby! I wish Hamptons had some backbone!”

The bailiff laughed. “I am certain we can do that. And the other thing, my lady?”

“I want to go to Waterloo,” she said in the same conversational tone, but drowsy now, her words elongated. “Do you realize I have been on every major battlefield the army has fought over for the last two decades, except that one? Arrange it, Sergeant Wiggins. I want to see where Charles died.”

“Well. ..” He hesitated and she tightened her lips into a straight line and looked daggers at him. “Perhaps when you’re better, Lady Bushnell.”

“Arrange it,” she repeated, then closed her eyes in sleep. Her hand relaxed, and released Susan’s fingers.

David closed the door behind them and walked slowly beside Susan. “She is planning a bolt across the Channel to Waterloo, and we have to tell her that she’s about to be incarcerated at the family estate?” he asked no one in particular as they strolled along as though it were the middle of the afternoon. “Oh, Susan.”

Oh, Susan indeed, she thought, her mind foggy with sleep. “And I have bought us a week’s time for what? David, she will be so disappointed in us, so betrayed when she ends up on a golden chain of young Lady Bushnell’s forging! And all this done out of kindness. I am provoked.” She sniffed back her tears and glared at him. “But I am not going to waste my tears on you, sir! It would be quite useless.”

“Quite,” he agreed. He steered her to her room and followed her inside. It should have surprised her, but at the sight of her bed she felt her bones start to melt and she forgot about him.

“I am so tired,” she said, looking at her pillow almost lovingly.

“So am I,” he agreed. “Go to bed, Susan. I’m sure Kate Skerlong will hold our porridge until the noon hour.”

She nodded, shucked off her robe, and crawled into bed, too tired to object when the bailiff tucked the covers around her and then sat on her bed. “You need to know something,” she began as her eyes closed.

“H’mm?”

He sounded so close, and then she realized that he had flopped back on her bed and was lying draped across it, his feet dangling over the edge. She was so fuddled that it seemed perfectly logical. She wiggled her toes down until they met the resistance of his body outside the covers, then stopped.

“She can’t read anymore. She’s been fooling us with those letters on her lap,” Susan said as she turned onto her side and tucked her legs closer to her, since she couldn’t stretch out with the bailiff lying there.

“What?” The bed jiggled as he turned over. She could feel him flop back again, and his voice sounded disgusted. “And here I think I am so clever and take care of her so well! I had no idea.”

She opened her eyes and raised up on her elbow so she could see him in the faint light of earliest dawn. “She had me read some of her letters to her while we waited for you to return with Dr. Pym. Oh, David, her son’s letter from New Orleans is a study in anguish! Charles was so desperate to not ever command men again, and I know she forced him into it.”

“And that is why we got Charles at Waterloo, I suppose,” he finished. He reached out and rested his hand on her ankle as it lay outlined by the covers. “She was the warrior and he was not.” He patted her ankle.

“I don’t want to be alone like that when I am her age, with nothing to comfort me but letters I cannot read,” she said, offering no objection when his fingers remained on her ankle. He didn’t really need to rub it that way, but it would take too many words to object.

“You could have accepted my offer,” he said.

“But I didn’t,” she reminded him as she closed her eyes. “I read about Jesusa on the withdrawal from Burgos. Oh, David.”

His fingers were still then, but remained resting on her ankle. His sigh was so huge she felt it through the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He was silent so long she thought he had fallen asleep, except that his fingers were massaging her ankle again. “Never mind. It was a long time ago.”

“Not so long,” she said, drowsy again with the rhythm of his fingers.

“Long enough. Jesusa was a wonderful part of my life.”

She knew he was near sleep, too, because his voice was slow and heavy. She shifted her foot, wondering if he would let go. He did, but she discovered that she missed his fingers. “Did you love her?” she asked.

He nodded, moving himself farther onto the bed and raising up on his elbow. “She could love me cross-eyed, Susan,” he said frankly. “I cannot begin to express what a relief she was to me after the terror of a battle. I could forget everything but reveille in her arms.”

My blushes, she thought. Why is this man so blunt? The gentlemen she was acquainted with would perish with mortification before they would describe a relationship with a woman in such terms. Then again, a woman would never have to wonder what was on David Wiggins’ mind. She thought of her own kind—the bows, the simpering, the smirks, the quizzing, the games—and smiled. I could ask this man anything, and he would tell me. He would even tell me if he loved me, if I asked him. I do not know if I am that honest. Or that brave.

“Was she pretty?” she asked instead.

Ha lay down again, but he did not touch her. “No, not really,” he said finally, having given the matter some thought. “She was a bit full-blown to be English-pretty, like you, but her eyes were simply matchless.” He laughed softly. “It is enough to say that I loved her.”

“But you did not marry her,” Susan pointed out, wondering where her boldness came from. It was as though I have a stake in this, she thought, even though I know it cannot be so.

“No.” He sat up then and rested himself against the footboard of her bed, crossing his legs and watching her. “I wanted to. I even asked little Charlie Bushnell for permission—he was his father’s adjutant then—but he only laughed.”

His voice sounded hard to her ears. She sat up, too. “How mean of him!”

The bailiff shrugged. “Maybe not, Susan.” He sighed again and got up, stretching, then went to the window to peer out at the coming dawn. “Soldiers and camp followers—older than time. When wars end, they go away to other bivouacs.”

“But you have come here,” she reminded him, lying down again, this time on her back, so she could watch him at the window.

“I have.” He sat by her again and looked into her eyes so long that she wanted to squirm, except that they were hip to hip and he would have felt her nervousness. If nerves it is, she considered. Nerves never gave me a warm feeling. “I have made so many promises to so many Bushnells that here I remain.” His eyes went to the window. “I am tied by my own wheat. And now you are here. I cannot leave.”

She knew he would kiss her then, and he did, but it was only the briefest of kisses. “Go to sleep, Susan,” he murmured when his lips were just a little above hers. “And if you think of anything,” he said at the door, “share it, please. I’m fresh out of ideas, and I think the doctor has us over a barrel.”

Susan did not see the bailiff again for three days, and she wondered what kept him away. She went quietly about her own duties, practicing on the harpsichord in Lady Bushnell’s room as the widow kept time with her cane on the floor by the bed. She listened to Lady Bushnell’s advice, whispered softer now, and took it, practicing downstairs in the evenings when she wanted to run to the succession house and watch the bailiff measure, weed, and record the wheat’s progress.

Or it could be that he has no more ideas than I do and cannot bear to see his defeat mirrored in my own eyes, she considered one night over dinner. I could ask Mrs. Skerlong right plainly where he is, she thought, and try not to blush if she winks at me.

“Mrs. Skerlong, where is David?” she asked point-blank, putting down her fork, which had been shifting food from one side of the plate to the other, in imitation of eating. “Sometimes I see a light very late at night in the succession house, and I think I heard him walking to Lady Bushnell’s room this morning, but I do not see him.”

Mrs. Skerlong, bless her, did not wink or blink or make any remark to tease. She pushed a mugful of tea in front of Susan. “Oh, my dear, ’tis the lambing. Since he will not pension off Ben Rich, and the Welsh lad is but a child, he must be there, too.” She smiled at Susan over the rim of her own mug and took a cautious sip. “In the Cotswolds, no farmer’s time is his own until March is over.” She leaned closer across the table, looking around as though to make sure that Cora was not within earshot. “We women have a joke in the Cotswolds: ‘No virtuous farm wife has December babies,’” she said, and laughed at Susan’s blank stare. “My dear, it’s the rare farmer that gets between his sheets or his wife’s legs during March. He belongs to the lambs.”

Susan gulped the scalding tea and coughed. “Oh!” she exclaimed as she reached for the water pot and took a healthy swallow. “You must think me such a dunce.”

Mrs. Skerlong only smiled. “I am thinking you are learning our ways here. But then comes April, and January babies, if there’s time between plowing and plastering fields for fertilizer, and sowing and dipping and shearing, come June.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder farmers ever plow their own fields, lass.”

And this is the life he chooses, Susan thought after Mrs. Skerlong patted her shoulders and took up her customary spot by the stove. It is all work, and rhythm of the seasons, and it could be that I feel its pull, too. But right now, I wish I knew what to do about Lady Bushnell.

They finished Emma that first afternoon, and then her time was devoted to the letters, putting them in order back to the days in India and on to the final entries as the army moved in triumph over the Pyrenees toward France. She began to copy the letters in a large hand, showing each to the widow until the woman nodded and said. “I can read these. Oh, pray continue.”

She was no closer to a solution as the end of the week approached. The vicar, all blushes and fumbling for words, had paid a visit, and she had spent some time closeted with him in the sitting room, seeking his advice. He had none to offer beyond what she feared. “Miss Hampton, I do not see that you or the bailiff have any recourse but to tell young Lady Bushnell how the wind blows here.” He almost took her hand, but shied off at the last minute. “She needs the care of relatives.”

He was right, of course. She knew it, and surely the bailiff knew it. After an evening of reading to Lady Bushnell, she administered her medicine, stayed to make sure that she took it all, saw her tucked in bed, and went to her own room. She almost went downstairs again, because she knew that all she would do would be to stare at the calendar and cross off another day without an idea. It was worry at its fruitless worst, and she hated it.

She opened the door and stepped back in fright. Someone sat in one of the chairs before the fire. She looked closer. It was the bailiff, and he was asleep, his head nodding forward; he even snored a little. She smiled to herself and closed the door quickly so the light from the hall would not disturb him. Taking off her shoes, she tiptoed across the floor, took up a throw from the foot of her bed and draped it lightly over him as he slept.

She could not go to bed with the bailiff there, so she put a few more coals on the fire, then quietly eased herself into the other chair. With a quick glance at the man, she rested her stockinged feet on the grate and relaxed in the chair, feeling a strange relief at nothing more than his company. He smelled of wool and sweat, and she wondered when he had shaved last. If I had charge of you, she thought as she leaned back and made herself comfortable, at least you would change your linen every day and take time to wash.

She slept in peace and comfort, waking up only when the bailiff covered her with the throw. She jerked awake, then settled quickly as he rested his hand on her arm. She looked at his arm and tried not to gasp, but it escaped her anyway.

“Your arm! And the other one!” she said in dismay, seeing even in the dim firelight the chap, fissures, and cracks running all the way to his elbows. He had pushed up his sleeves, obviously to keep the rough fabric from brushing against what must be painful.

“It comes with lambing,” he said, “and washing my arms over and over in cold water and wind. The cure is lanolin, which I will apply after I am in my own bed and not touching anything.” He grinned at her expression. “Of course, if I turn over too fast, I slide right out of bed. Don’t stare like that! They’ll be better in a month or so when the lambs are hopping around in the pasture.”

She settled lower in the chair and stared into the fire again. “Did you come to tell me that you have no solution, either?”

He was a long time answering. “I come to tell you that 1 wrote to young Lady Bushnell and requested an audience Friday morning in London.” He sighed heavily. “And I wrote Dr. Pym. My underbailiff and his new bride have returned, and I can leave him in charge while I take the mail coach.”

“Then I am coming, too,” she said.

‘To resign?”

She glared at him, hot words on her lips, but she could not deliver them because the bailiff looked so tired. “Certainly not, David,” she said softly. “Perhaps if she sees that the two of us could take care of her mother-in-law, she would be content to let well enough alone. Mrs. Skerlong says that young Lady Bushnell is about to remarry. Surely she does not need the added distraction of a frail mother-in-law.”

The bailiff nodded. “I’d like your company. Two may be better than one in this matter.” He smiled at her. “Actually, that was why I came here—to ask you just that. And here I was, snoring away and smelling up your room.”

“Never mind,” she said, sleepy now, relieved to be in the bailiff’s presence, and not overly troubled by the odor of hard work. “Yes. Let us go to London and attempt this.”

“Good then. I will take the news to Lady Bushnell first thing in the morning, and tell her what we have to do and why. I think she will bear it well enough, if she knows that we are doing our best to keep her here. Then we can catch the midmorning mail coach.”

Susan shook her head. “The first thing you will do is wash, and then visit Lady Bushnell.”

“Am I pretty rank?” he said and grinned at her.

“You are disgusting,” she assured him. “If this is how a whole army of you smelled in Spain, I wonder that you even needed muskets to mow down the enemy.”

“They smelled worse, plus garlic,” he said as he rose and went to the door. “Good night, Susan dear. Pack a bag and be ready to go to London in the morning. I do not know that we will succeed, but it won’t be said that we didn’t try.”