Chapter 13
Thirteen
Harry was confined to her bedchamber for several days. Dr. Andrews attended her in the mornings. He would examine his patient and then come downstairs and give Thomas a brief synopsis of Harry’s progress.
She had better color, and her pulse was not racing as it had before.
She was doing as she was told, drinking the broths and the tisanes Dr. Andrews had told the cook Mrs. Haversham to prepare.
With the assistance of Smythe, she was walking in her bedchamber a bit every day, strengthening her legs. However, she was still weak.
Thomas, for his part, would visit Harry before dinner every evening.
She had not been cordial, exactly, but she had received him and thanked him for his inquiries regarding her health.
On the evening of the fourth day, he found Harry pacing up and down before the fireplace while Smythe stood off to one side.
“Ah, Lord Drake,” Harry whirled and her dressing gown flared out for a moment, revealing very slender ankles, “see how well I am. How I walk? So steady. Such long strides!” She took a very long step and tottered for a moment, unbalanced, and Thomas caught her around her waist to keep her from falling into the fire screen. Harry glared at him.
“Yes, I see, you are quite the Pheidippides,” Thomas said and made sure she was upright and stable before he released her. But she had been against him for a few moments. Such a small waist under her dressing gown.
“Yes,” she was breathing a little hard, “and I think it’s time I find my room.”
Thomas looked at Smythe.
“A room for my lady’s books, Lord Drake.” Smythe curtsied.
“A room for the mind that will prove Fermat’s conjecture,” Harry corrected.
“Of course, I can take you on a tour of the house tomorrow if Dr. Andrews permits,” Thomas said.
Harry turned and stalked back to the bed. “Dr. Andrews will permit it.”
Dr. Andrews did permit it. Thomas thought perhaps he had taken one look at Harry’s knitted brows and had known what was good for him.
First, Thomas suggested the morning room.
Surely, that was where the lady of the house received visitors, did her correspondence, approved menus proposed by the cook.
Harry scoffed. Her room could not be a place where she might be bothered with menus.
She needed something far more private. Besides, if she had her way, they would all eat porridge every meal of the day, every day of the year.
The food must be managed as it had always been before she came to Sommerleigh.
Thomas led her on a slow tour of all the rooms. If Harry was astonished by the size of the house, she did not say so. He was very careful to insist she sit in most of the rooms for a few minutes. “To see what it’s like,” he said diplomatically, rather than saying it was for her to rest.
“My room should be big,” she said and gestured with her arms. “I have been thinking my mind has been cramped by the narrowness of my accommodations in London. My room should also have a good view, perhaps like the view I saw from the window on the landing on my first day here.”
After luncheon, up one of the smaller staircases, among a set of modest bedchambers, Harry found the room.
It was at the very top of the house. A spacious room with some odd angles.
Wide wooden planks on the floor. Well-plastered white walls and ceiling with nary a crack.
Empty, except for a wooden chair and dust floating in shafts of sunlight coming from one of the two unusually large windows.
“Most of these attic rooms are for the servants of guests who come to stay. It has been a long time since bedchambers have been needed in such abundance in this house.” Thomas faced one of the windows and swiped at the dust on the sill.
“But this room . . . my sister Jane told me my mother once used this room for watercolor painting.”
“You have a sister.”
Thomas did not turn from the window. “I did have one. She was more mother than sister to me. She is gone now. But you will meet her son, Phillip. He is at university. Cambridge.”
“Cambridge?”
Harry’s voice was pitched higher than usual. Thomas turned and thought her face might be paler than it had been before.
“I need twenty pounds,” she said.
“Of course,” Thomas said.
Harry abruptly sat in the lone chair. “And I need the money sent to Cambridge.”
“Cambridge?”
“It’s a debt. A return of a gift. I forgot until just now. I was given twenty pounds by someone who thought I needed it. But I didn’t, of course, and I don’t know where the banknotes might have gotten to. I might have used them to mark my place in a book.”
“I’ll arrange for the funds to be sent.”
Harry looked relieved. “Good. But it must be anonymous. No, it must be from Mr. White. I will write a note.”
“Who is Mr. White?”
She hesitated. “I suppose I should have no secrets from my husband. I am Mr. White.”
The whole story came tumbling out. How Harry had first written to Dean George Haddington seven years ago.
How she had used the name Mr. Henry White.
How the dean had then begun a correspondence with her about number theory, all the while thinking Mr. White was a clever clerk in Harry’s father’s bank.
And then the dean had died, and his widow had sent twenty pounds to her so she might prove Fermat’s conjecture.
“And I don’t think the Widow Haddington is likely to be very rich, my lord.”
“No,” Thomas said. “It will be arranged, don’t worry.”
“Good,” Harry said. And then, “Thank you,” and her eyes skittered away from him.
The large attic room was cleaned that afternoon, and Smythe supervised the moving of the trunks of books and the installation of a large table by the west-facing window.
When Thomas came to see Harry in her bedchamber before dinner, she was sitting by the fire, and was it possible? She looked happy.
“There must be a lock put on the door to the room, and I must be the only one to have a key,” Harry told Thomas peremptorily.
“Do you suspect a rival mathematician will sneak into the house to crib your work?” Thomas asked, amused.
Harry just glared at her lap.
“It will be done, Lady Drake,” he assured her.
Harry then looked at the ceiling and smiled. “I have decided to call it my aerie.”
“I am glad you have found a nest, my lady.” Thomas turned to leave.
“Perhaps . . .” At the sound of her voice, Thomas paused at the door. “Perhaps I shall dedicate my proof to you, Lord Drake, since you have made it possible.”
Thomas bowed his head, sensitive this was a great honor being bestowed upon him. “Thank you.” And then, “Oh, and I go to London tomorrow.”
“Oh?” Harry said diffidently.
“I tell you so you will not expect a visit from me tomorrow evening.”
“Just so, my lord.”
“Goodnight, my lady.”
Thomas closed the door behind him. Harry was improving.
He could now depart Sommerleigh with a clear conscience.
The urge to return to London had been building since their arrival.
This was the longest he had gone without a woman since his father died.
He relieved himself, of course, but his need seemed to abate for only seconds.
He would leave in the morning so as to be in town quite early and have his choice of the doxies.
From then on, at least once a week, Thomas went to London.
He would ride up on Octavius, indulge in a night of debauchery, and ride back the next day.
It was two days of hard riding with a sleepless night between.
It made no sense. He could afford to stay in London for a week or two.
He often took the clothes and coin to stay a week.
But, without fail, the day after his arrival in London, he found himself saddling Octavius for the return to Sommerleigh.
Because staying in town for a long spell didn’t agree with Octavius. Although it was true Octavius had, for years, spent many weeks at a time stabled in London while his master grazed on female charms.
Because the estate needed Thomas’ attention. He would never again let it fall into the financial disarray that his father and his grandfather had.
And Lady Drake. He must see to her health. She was his responsibility.
If Jackson noted that his lordship, upon his return from London, was quick to ask for a bath to remove the dregs of perfume and rouge left on his body, the valet said nothing.
Thomas would stand outside the aerie, shaved and clean, and wait for Harry to come out.
He would take her down to dinner. He would eat heartily and then retire, able to sleep through the night.
It was often his only full night’s sleep until the following week, when he would repeat the cycle again.