Chapter 7
Chapter
Farrow Cottage
Julianna stared at the old cedar chest where her mother’s wedding dress was stored as if it were a coffin from which she was meant to exhume a dead body. She’d managed to open the chest and rifle through its contents of folded linens that smelled faintly of lavender and sad, sad memories.
She hadn’t quite been able to take the dress out yet, but she could see it in there.
A heap of ivory muslin and lace, yellowed at the seams and frayed at the hem—still beautiful because everything that had once belonged to her mother was beautiful, although in a different way than it might have been were her mother still alive.
Precious because of her attachment to it, not for its value.
She had not looked at the gown since the day she and Thomas had stored away what few things they kept after their parents had died. She hadn’t even opened the chest since.
Now she stood in her shift and stockings, trying to convince herself to just reach down and pull out the dress.
If she was to have a wedding gown at all it would be this one.
Or else she would go down the aisle in her muddy boots and her special walking dress with pockets, full of the stones she used to throw at foxes.
Or unwanted fiancés. She rather enjoyed the idea of hurling a rock at Frederick Sedgewick.
But instead she sucked in her breath and reached out her hands, retrieving the gown from its cedar-lined burial ground. And then she drew it over her head and reached her arms awkwardly around to try and fasten the tiny pearl buttons that ran along the back.
She twisted and turned but couldn’t quite manage it. One glance at the looking glass on the washstand showed her why: her shoulders and hips were broader than her mother’s had been while her waist was smaller.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek and tugged again at the fabric.
It did not give an inch. Lace and muslin generally didn’t.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to keep moving.
If she stopped, she would think. If she thought, she would feel.
And if she felt—she would do what she ought not to do, something akin to running, screaming, in the other direction from this proposed marriage.
She couldn’t do that as much as she couldn’t throw a stone at Fred. Instead she reached for a pin in the little cushion she’d fetched from the parlor earlier, and jabbed it into the seam at her side. The pin went in crooked and stabbed her.
“Damnation,” she hissed.
“Julie-bug?” Thomas called, his voice thin through the floorboards. “Are you all right down there?”
“Yes, of course,” she shouted back, her voice coming out as sharp as the needle that now pricked her every time she moved. She swallowed and tried again. “All is well.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“I don’t know, Tom. Would you ask me questions you don’t want to know the answer to?”
He laughed and a genuine if tired smile crossed her lips as she bent over the mirror again, adding another pin. And then another.
Her fingers were clumsy with exhaustion; she’d hardly slept at all these last days. The cold spell just wouldn’t break, and she’d only managed to doze upright in a chair pulled outside of Thomas’s room, one ear trained toward the door so she could listen to his breathing.
She’d never tell him that, of course. For all he knew she slept in her little bed in the corner of the cottage every night. But she needed to be closer to him than that. It soothed her to press her ear to the door and listen to him breathe.
She added another pin and thought the dratted bodice might be considering submission when a knock sounded at the front door.
Julianna’s head snapped up. She was wary of unannounced visitors now, thanks to Fred and the doctor.
Perhaps if she remained motionless long enough, the person outside would leave.
But alas, no. The knocking was followed by the unmistakable scrape of boot on stone, and a coughing “ahem” that told her exactly who it was that stood outside her door. She nearly rolled her eyes back in her head. Her betrothed was here. Again.
She glanced down at herself, stuffed half in and half out of her ill-fitting gown and shrugged.
If he was going to continue to show up unannounced she would be wearing what she was wearing when he did.
She threw a shawl over the gaping bodice, pricked herself with half a dozen pins in the process, and went for the door.
But when she reached it, she placed her palm against the cold wood and said, “Go away.”
As if that might work.
“Open the door, Miss Farrow,” Fred said from the other side.
“I said go away.”
“I heard you.”
She opened the door a fraction. It was cold out, too cold and she shivered, causing yet another avalanche of pin pricks against her back and sides.
Fred let his gaze slide leisurely down her ridiculous attire. “You are not dressed to receive visitors.”
“You could spare yourself the sight of me by leaving.”
That’s when a throat cleared and Julianna saw an older woman tucked behind Fred’s shoulder, her white skin ruddy with the cold and her gray hair pulled back into a severe bun. She carried a carpet bag in her hand.
“If you don’t mind, Miss. It’s awfully cold out.”
Julianna narrowed her eyes at Fred but stepped aside to allow them in. She wouldn’t let an elderly woman freeze on her doorstep, no matter how much she disliked her fiancé.
“This is Mrs. Sykes,” he said, as though he were announcing a dinner guest. “She is a nurse.”
The woman dipped her head. “Good morning, Miss. I’ve been engaged to assist your brother.”
“Engaged by whom?” Julianna asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“My Lord Chester,” the nurse said.
“I see. Thank you, but we’ve no need for your services.”
Fred removed his hat and held it—there was no butler nor footmen here to collect the thing from him.
“Miss Farrow,” he said politely, “please allow Mrs. Sykes to do the job I have hired her on to do.”
“No.”
Mrs. Sykes shifted uncomfortably, but she remained where she was, eyes downcast.
Fred’s expression did not change. “Miss Farrow—”
“No, Fred. We don’t need or want your charity. I can tend to Thomas’s needs myself, just as I always have.”
His eyes swept over her again, pausing, she was certain, at the purple smudges beneath her own. And at the ragged pallor of her normally warm complexion. Not to mention the ill-fitting dress, her stockinged feet, and the pin cushion she still clutched in her one free hand for no good reason at all.
“It isn’t charity.” His voice was perfectly even, which only made the whole situation feel worse. “It is a necessity.”
“Just as the physician was a necessity?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t. He only confirmed Thomas’s worst fears. He’s been sicker ever since, not better.”
“And he’ll be sicker still if this weather doesn’t break. Thomas needs around the clock care, which I’m certain you could provide, just as I’m certain you shouldn’t.”
Julianna went very still. Because—the issue was—he was correct. No matter how much she might wish it otherwise. Nor how much the idea of taking even a farthing from Fred made her want to gnash her teeth and rend the fabric of her gown and otherwise behave as badly as she could possibly manage.
“You have no right,” she hissed instead of saying any of those things, “to decide what Thomas, or I, might need.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I have every right,” he said finally, “as your betrothed. And no interest in pretending otherwise.”
Mrs. Sykes cleared her throat. “Miss—my lady. I’m only here to help your brother. That’s all. And I can see you need a break, if you don’t mind my saying. What can a little rest hurt?”
Julianna opened her mouth to reply, when Thomas began to cough again. And not one that could be managed with a little steam and tea. This was a ripping, violent sound that dragged itself up from deep in his lungs, as if they were trying to claw themselves free from his body.
It went on too long. And when it broke briefly, it was followed by the wet, horrible gasp of her brother trying to breathe.
Julianna’s stomach dropped. “Tom!” she called without thinking, already turning toward the stairs.
She took a few lurching steps, but the gown—her mother’s beloved, damned, wedding gown—caught beneath her feet. She tripped, listening to the sound of it ripping just as the pins buried themselves into her side in unison.
Fred caught her before she hit the ground, but not before he’d surely seen the look of panic on her face. He’d definitely heard her shriek.
“Julie-bug,” Thomas rasped from upstairs. “Don’t come running. I’m—” His sentence dissolved into another hacking fit.
“Enough,” Fred spit out, putting Julianna back on her feet. “Mrs. Sykes, upstairs. Miss Farrow, with me.”
With an apologetic glance in Julianna’s direction, the nurse rushed up the stairwell to attend to Tom. Fred watched her go, then moved toward Julianna.
She shot out a hand, blocking him. “No.”
His eyes dropped to her hand. “No to what exactly?”
“To everything. You’ve already done enough. Stay where you are until the nurse has done what she came here to do and then leave.”
“Very well.” The stare he leveled at her could probably stop a fox in its tracks, no stones needed. “I shall stand here while you bleed.”
“I am not bleeding.”
“The droplets of red against your side beg to differ.”
“I am not—” Julianna did not finish that sentence because she looked down and could see, just as well as he could, that she was, in fact, bleeding. She’d torn her mother’s wedding dress and now she’d bled on it.
And—heat flared in her face at the realization—the bodice was still gaping.
She closed her eyes, as if this whole scenario might disappear if she could no longer see it. She was not so lucky, of course.
“Perhaps,” Fred eventually said in that sneering tone she despised, “you might deign to accept my assistance?”