Chapter Fifteen
Phillip knocked again at the door of the small Inn in Winchelsea. A note had been delivered early this morning asking him to return to the inn as soon as he was able to and he had saddled his horse immediately and left.
When the same woman he’d seen yesterday appeared, he smiled at her. ‘I was pleased to get your note. Where is Mrs St Claire?’
‘She is upstairs, sir, but she has been very ill.’
‘What is wrong with her? Has a doctor seen her?’ Panic filled Phillip. What could be wrong with Willa?
‘She did not wish for one to be called at all, but if you follow me I will take you to her.’
The stairs were steep and narrow and the way was dark. When they reached the top the woman, Mrs Withers knocked on the door and then opened it.
‘I shall leave you with Mrs St Claire, sir. She has requested for privacy.’
Phillip took three steps and saw Willa sitting on the bed, so much thinner than she had been when he’d last seen her in London and so very pale. She looked broken and beaten and crushed.
‘What happened to your face?’ Her first words startled him.
‘I was in a fight with Simon St Claire.’
A slight smile crossed her face. ‘But you dealt with him.’
‘I did. He has taken back all his accusations against you and apologised. He has returned to his home in the north and I have warned him that I never want to see him again. I think he understood the true extent of my feelings and will venture nowhere near London or Hampshire again.’
She nodded and looked away and Phillip did not quite know what to say next. Wilhelmina looked so ill and brittle and so very small.
‘I have been sick.’ Her words were soft.
‘I can see.’
She nodded again. There was a window beside her bed looking over the river. This reunion was nothing like the one he had imagined.
‘How did you find me?’
‘I went to visit the McAllistair sisters and the sister with the glasses told me she had had a dream that you were in a house overlooking a river port with wooded hills behind it. She was very convincing.’
His glance went to the view and he saw exactly what the old lady had imagined in her dream.
‘That is Mildred.’
‘Why did you did not wish to see me yesterday, or did you not receive the message?’ He said this quietly in an attempt to understand her reasoning.
‘I thought it was Simon St Claire who had come to call.’
Phillip crossed the room to be nearer to her but still he could not touch her. ‘I gave my name.’
‘The woman you spoke to, Mrs Withers, gave me a sleeping draught after I fainted and so I only learnt of your visit much later when I woke. A boy was dispatched to Hastings this morning with a note.’
She spoke slowly, none of her usual spark on display.
‘Why did you run, Willa? Why did you tell me that our relationship had to end? Why did you not trust me enough to protect you?’
Her hand came up to her mouth and she bit at a nail. ‘Because no one before you ever has, and I did not wish to ruin your life.’
‘Will you come home to Elmsworth Manor with me? It will be safe there.’
‘Yes.’
He could see that she was exhausted, the dark rings under her eyes a further worry. He would not hurry her and burden her with all the arrangements he was mulling over in his head to get her back to Hampshire. Instead he only said a little of it.
‘I will leave you now to find us a way to get home. I will return around the lunch hour.’
‘You promise you will come back?’
‘I do.’
At this she lay down and closed her eyes, and within a moment she was sleeping.
When Willa woke again she thought seeing him an hour ago might have been a dream.
Phillip had been here, she told herself, but, seeing the expression on his face, she knew what he was thinking.
He was thinking that she looked awful and was trying his very best to hide his shock.
He was thinking that she was only a shadow of the sensual woman he had known not too many weeks ago and he did not quite know what to say.
He was unsure of her and tentative. He had not come close at all.
And now he was gone again to find transport to take them both back to Elmsworth Manor.
She had fallen asleep in front of him, their conversation only half finished and the gap between them wide with uncertainty.
He had not touched her but had stood a good few feet away from the bed.
Willa thought of Gretel and her sickness and knew that she had reminded him of that time, when everything was hopeless and his world had changed.
She tried to keep her breathing calm but the big gulps of air she was taking were anything but that. Tears ran down her cheeks, falling on the sheets and darkening the spots where they fell on the cotton.
She could not make herself feel anything except for sadness. The sensual days and nights in London felt like a dream, as if they had happened to someone else, not to her. She felt no wish at all to talk about their baby, safe inside her and hidden, the only part of her that she was certain of.
Perhaps Phillip would not come back. Perhaps he had mounted his horse and left for good, with his bruised face and knuckles. She was too much of a bother, too much hard work, and it was better to sever all ties and return to a life that was easier.
She shook her head and blew her nose.
No, he was too honourable to do that, and therein was the crux of the sadness of it all.
Two days later they were at Elmsworth Manor. The journey home to Hampshire had been a difficult and arduous one but now Willa was finally tucked up in a bedroom just down the hall from Phillip’s.
He had told her that they’d always called it the Rose Room, both for the rose that climbed up the front facade and because during a summer sunset the whole room glowed pink.
When she woke again Phillip was sitting on a chair next to her bed, his long legs stretched out before him.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ Her voice was weak.
His head turned and he met her eyes. ‘How do you feel? It was a long journey.’
She smiled at him, seeing his worry. ‘I am tired after the travel but…better, I think. For the first time in ages I feel hungry, which must be a good sign.’
With a fresh nightgown on and her hair brushed Phillip thought that she did indeed look better. She was still far too thin, and the dark circles under her eyes were as easy to see, but her smile looked happier.
‘I will ask the housekeeper to bring you up a meal and tomorrow I shall send for the Elmsworth physician. There may be medicines he could supply that we do not have here.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want him to examine me. I just want to rest.’
‘Very well.’ He went to stand but she stopped him with a gesture.
‘Could you just stay until I am asleep, for I have nightmares sometimes…?’
He sat back again. ‘You are completely safe here, Wilhelmina. Simon St Claire will never come back, I swear it.’
‘It’s not that…’ she began.
‘Then what is it?’
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked at him. ‘I dream I have lost you. I dream you are somewhere…gone.’
His breath caught. ‘I am here and I shall be here until you ask me to go.’
‘I won’t.’
But she was asleep already, in that strange way that she managed now. One moment wide awake and the next in full slumber.
‘You did before,’ he whispered when he was certain she would not hear.
He sat there until the moon was high and the sounds outside were quieter. Then he walked to the window and looked out.
‘Thank you for letting me bring her home.’ Whether it was God he thanked or the land around him or the whisper of ancestors he could always feel at Elmsworth, he did not know.
But Wilhelmina was home with him and she was safe.
His housekeeper came down to see Phillip in his study the next morning just after nine.
‘Could I have a word with you, my lord?’
‘I hope there is not a problem.’
‘None, I assure you. Mrs St Claire is a perfect patient but it is a warm, sunny morning and I was wondering if you might walk with her outside for a little while.’
‘You think her up to such an exertion?’
‘We have located a wheelchair in one of the attics and have had it brought down. I think the sun on Mrs St Claire’s skin and a bit of fresh air will be good for her.
She has eaten some breakfast and the maid watching over her said her sleep, although broken, was also deep.
Mrs St Claire has asked if it is possible for you to push her, Lord Elmsworth. ’
At the front porch Phillip found Wilhelmina waiting there in the sun, face turned up to the rays and in a pretty yellow gown.
‘I understand you would like to go out in the sunshine on this warm summer morning.’
‘I would.’
‘Then you will have me as your companion and we will begin in the garden.’
It was so beautiful here, Willa thought.
Elmsworth Manor in the sunshine had turned into a different building altogether than the one she had left from in the rain and wind after kissing Phillip Moreland in his kitchen.
Today the pale stone glowed in the light and the circular driveway was not full of puddles.
The gardens, too, were so much closer to the main body of the house than she had realised, for they surrounded the stone in a wild array of colour: the blue of cornflowers, the yellow of daisies and the white of a rose that scrambled over the portico, the same shade as the one outside her bedroom window.
It was joyous and uplifting and it was also fragrant. Willa breathed in and the perfumes engulfed her, warmed and potent in the morning sun. For the first time in weeks she felt…alive again.
He slowed down and turned the chair into an arbour of purple, the long blooms hanging down towards the soft green of the manicured lawn below.
A seat was placed beside it in the shade of small topiary bay trees and it was this he pushed her over to, positioning her chair at one end of the bench before sitting down next to her.
‘This is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen.’