Chapter Nine
T he morning was cold and dark. Beckett stamped his feet to keep warm as he waited for her.
It was unlike her to be late. He walked in a small circle, wishing he’d worn more layers beneath his oilskin cloak.
The rain had been a light mist that drifted into a drizzle, and now threatened to become an even more insistent pattern.
Finally, he heard the church bells strike. She was a full half hour late. Worry struck him. Had she become ill? Had she left without him and been set upon by rogues? He walked to her home, wanting to reassure himself of her safety.
Her manservant Jacobs opened the door. Warmth of the house spilled out, beckoning him. “The lady of the house is still abed, my lord.”
That struck him as most odd. “Is she ill? Does she need anything?” Beckett asked. “This is most unlike her.”
“Indeed,” Jacobs agreed, but did not give any more information.
He waited for more offerings, and when Jacobs gave none, Beckett realized how much access and information his status was usually afforded.
But not here. Not with Mrs. Reid, who was nothing to him, not really.
She was a means to an end—end of a gambling debt for his friend.
That was how he must be perceived by her and her staff.
She’d once told him that she’d tried to make Mrs. Dove-Lyon release her from this duty of entertaining him. His presence was not welcomed.
Beckett turned to go.
“Shall I inform her that you were here?” Jacobs asked.
Dare he the humiliation of a man who was turned away?
A man left in the cold? No, he was able to put his pride away for that.
She was ill, clearly. He doubted that the straight-forward, honest-to-a-fault woman he knew was hovering in the corner, bidding her manservant to lie to him.
He wished he could help, but he knew not what he could provide.
“If it makes her feel better to know that I was here, please do. But if it distresses her, do not.”
He left the decision to the man who knew her better than he did.
He walked away from her small abode, feeling more bereft than anything else.
Even though he harbored terrible niggling suspicions of her time in Colchester, still, they had a habit, a connection, and he missed it.
His questions could wait. He could wait.
When she felt better, she would send for him.
If nothing else, he was a patient person, as anyone who’d had the misfortune to meet him politically had experienced.
“There now, nothing a good cuppa can’t cure,” Sabine said, helping Nell sit up in bed.
Once her aching legs were straightened, Sabine set the tray on her lap. The smallest pot sat wrapped in towels, while a hopeful scone rested beside it. Nell’s stomach turned.
“I know you don’t like to eat after one of your attacks, but it would do you good to put something in your stomach. One must eat something to keep up our strength.”
While Sabine might refer to her episodes as attacks, Nell thought of them as failures.
Her emotions had overwhelmed her, made her insensible, her body tensing all over as she wept and screamed and pummeled her fists at herself.
The punishment of succumbing to her depths was extreme, and the immediate aftermath was brutal.
Her head pounded, her mouth dry. Even her tongue ached from pressing incessantly at the roof of her mouth for however many hours she suffered.
The episodes were rare now, far fewer than when she’d been a girl.
And when she was a girl, the pummeling of her fists did not always land on only herself.
She’d bruised her brothers and sisters, her mother and father when they attempted to hold her down to keep from tearing her own hair out.
She had finally figured out why they came and sought to keep all those experiences at a minimum.
The problems were always rooted in excess: too much noise, too many people, too big emotions for her to process at a given time. It was why she’d not been allowed to join the art classes Monsieur Cobb taught. When he was alive.
Nell shuddered, which caused Sabine to suck in a breath and put her hand on the tray to steady it. “I’m sorry,” Nell said, her voice hoarse and cracked from yesterday’s screaming. At least, she thought it had been yesterday.
Sabine and Jacobs had managed to get a dose of laudanum in her to calm down before they wrested her to bed.
Cook had helped draw a bath, and Sabine squeezed warm water down Nell’s back as she sobbed into her knees.
Nell could still feel the pit of hopelessness and betrayal inside of her but felt too raw to explore it at the moment.
She did not know how she felt about anything.
“It’s all right, love. Everything is as it should be now.”
Nell lifted her head, suddenly suffused with hope. “My paintings?”
“Well,” Sabine said, looking away. “That hasn’t been put to rights yet, I suppose. But it will be soon. It’s a delicate thing, to accuse a lord of stealing.”
The demon inside Nell—no, it was her parents who called it a demon, not her.
She felt it was more akin to having that creature inside her, one that raged and howled at injustice.
The creature shivered and quaked, slavering to be released if circumstances baited it too much.
Nell had to force herself to drink the tea, her hands shaking as she brought the cup to her lips.
It was chamomile. It wasn’t any of Beckett’s teas, and she was glad there was no laudanum. They believed her to be herself again, which felt like trust and friendship all rolled into one. This was the ugliest bit of herself.
She drained the cup, accepting the wave of shame that washed over her. She’d hoped to never feel this again. “Thank you.”
“I could read to you, if you like, while you rest,” Sabine offered. “A novel? Your correspondence?”
“A novel might be nice,” Nell admitted, not wanting to delve into any correspondence just yet. She was too frayed for intellectual stimulation. Stimulation of any kind, really. She needed to cocoon herself both literally and figuratively in order to rest and recover.
Jacobs knocked at the door, opening it a crack, as he knew Sabine was already attending her. “Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
He entered, and it was the tugging of his shirt that made it obvious that he was uncertain of himself. “You had a visitor.”
A flash of hope that it was Beckett surged through her at the same time the wave of betrayal came from the other side to extinguish it. Her hands trembled and she buried them in her bedclothes. “Oh?”
“They did not leave a calling card.”
Her muscles tensed all over, and she strained to calm herself. She took a great, steadying breath. Sabine and Jacobs exchanged glances, which Nell knew was for her benefit.
Sabine poured her another cup of chamomile from the small pot. “Have another sip, love.”
Nell took the cup into both hands, still fighting off the tremors that threatened to slosh the tea all over the tray and her nightshirt.
“It is of no consequence, ma’am. Is there anyone you would like me to fetch for you? A physician of some sort?” Jacobs asked.
It seemed needling, but Nell tried to think of it as solicitous.
She shook her head. There was nothing a physician could do, and she certainly didn’t want one to find her and shut her into one of those health institutions.
A woman could die out there and no one would notice. “No one, thank you, Jacobs.”
He bowed his head and left, but not without him looking to Sabine for guidance first. Not long after, Sabine excused herself to fetch a novel and more tea, but Nell knew there would be talk down in the kitchen between them. Nell slept again.
It was Jane who woke her next. She sat on the edge of the bed, withdrawing her hand from Nell’s forehead, as if she had been checking her temperature. Jane clucked her tongue in sympathy.
“Oh, my dear friend, I’ve been so worried that I had to come check on you myself.”
Nell pushed herself upright. “Why?” she croaked, finding her mouth dry as she blinked herself into awareness. The daylight seeping in looked barely different than it had when she’d fallen asleep last.
“It’s very unlike you to ignore my notes.
And then when Jacobs said you were abed when I came to call, I insisted upon seeing you myself.
He assures me that you are not contagious in the least.” Jane eyed her, and Nell knew she had thoughts as to what Nell suffered from, but she knew not what those options could be.
“How long have I slept?” Nell squinted to see the face of the clock on the mantel.
“Quite some time,” Jane said, her mouth thinning to a single line. “I told Jacobs to bring tea up here for the two of us. I hope I wasn’t too presumptuous.”
Nell blinked and pulled herself up in bed. Her body felt heavy and raw, and not entirely her own. Her mind shifted into more awareness. “You’re here at your regular visit?”
“Of course I am!” Jane said, patting her hand. “The last time I missed a visit without giving advance notice, you wrote me a twelve-page letter outlining my wrongs. I won’t ever make that mistake again.”
Nell’s head throbbed. There must have been more than chamomile in her tea. She’d slept through the whole day and into the next. She repositioned herself, finding her back aching from the lack of movement. Even her calves were stiff from the lack of movement. “I should get up.”
“I can help you, if you don’t mind me playing lady’s maid.” Jane got to her feet, her arms outstretched, as if Nell were so fragile that she needed aid to get out of bed.