Chapter 13
Blood dotted the white pillows and left a wretched smear of pink beneath Violet’s nose. Her curls were damp. Her breathing loud, labored in the silent room.
“No.” With a weak hand, she swatted something away from her face, eyes shut. “Get them off me. Hate them. Papa, please.”
“She has been doing this an hour.” Jenny settled a ceramic leech jar next to the bed, her jerky movements rattling the lid.
“I have sent a manservant for the doctor, but who knows where he is. And Lord Cunningham departed early, as soon as …” Jenny’s sentence faltered and she glanced at Meg through accusing side eyes.
Guilt fissured like an earthquake ripping through ground. “He departed to look for me.”
“The servants cannot find him anywhere.”
“He shall return.” She swept to the bed. “Soon.” Ripped back the coverlets. Peeled off the leech in the crook of Violet’s thin, white-colored arm. “I need linens to staunch this blood flow and Cinchona bark powder. Hurry.”
“But the leeches—”
“Do more harm than good.” She wasn’t certain where the words came from. Something her uncle had believed, despite common practice? “Jenny, hurry!”
The maid whimpered but rushed from the chamber, the door crashing shut behind her.
Meg wiped at the blood with a damp rag. Her heartbeat galloped as she placed a finger beneath Violet’s earlobe and counted the dim pulse. The fever was too high. Some sort of infection. If they could diminish the fever, perhaps she would not …
Die? Meg nearly choked. She swept her hands along the girl’s soft, burning cheeks. “You shall be well, dear Violet.”
“Papa.” The girl squinted her eyes open, tears leaking down her face. “I want Papa.”
“He is coming.”
“I want him now.” Violet coughed and a fresh stream of blood trickled from her nose to her lips. She wept.
Mouth dry, chest tightening, Meg pulled back the coverlets and slipped in bed beside the child. She pulled Violet into her arms. Do not let her die. She kissed the scorched forehead and shuddered. Please, God. Please.
The corridor was silent, black, save for the dull light under Violet’s door.
Lord Cunningham had returned an hour after dark.
Mary had told him first. Then Tillie had brought him upstairs. Then Jenny had cried and asked if she ought not to have listened to Miss Foxcroft and taken away the jar of leeches.
Meg had still been in bed with Violet when Lord Cunningham burst in.
His hair had been wild, wet with the evening rain, and his eyes were strange and unreadable when they collided hers. “Please, leave us.” Not unkindly. Just tentatively, as if his voice were close to giving out and his composure near to demise.
Meg had departed the chamber and found the nearest hall chair. One by the window where a steady pitter-patter of rain tortured the panes. My fault. Lord Cunningham should have been here when his daughter awoke sick.
He would have been had Meg not disappeared.
She was thoughtless.
Rash.
Terrible.
Pulling her legs beneath her, she leaned her head against the hard wooden chair. Hours passed. She closed her eyes but did not sleep.
Sometime during the night, a soaked Dr. Bagot hurried down the hall, wet boots squeaking, breathing hard. He hurried into the chamber and did not come back out.
Meg covered her face with both hands. She wanted to be inside. She wanted to help.
But she was not certain Lord Cunningham would let her even if she could.
“Well?” Tom stared at the crinkled letters that Mr. Telfner spread out across his ink-stained counter.
Another grunt.
A closer glance through his quizzing glass.
Then Mr. Telfner straightened, nodding his head as if he had determined something significant. “It is most certainly wove paper.”
“I need more than that. What about the black edges?”
“Yes, indeed. The edges.” Mr. Telfner scratched his oiled black hair, and turned his attention back to a package of uncut quills.
He spread five on the counter before he went to work with his penknife.
“Mourning, to be sure. I have heard of the sentiment, but have yet to see it practiced.” He glanced up at Tom with a smile. “Until today, of course.”
“Then you did not line the pages?”
“I should think not.” Mr. Telfner pointed at the letters with his knife. “You must examine the edges, my good boy. They are uneven, and too much ink has been applied so as to make the paper overly saturated. Work of someone inept, and certainly no job I would lay claim to, even if I had done it.”
Exasperation rippled across Tom’s shoulders. He should have known this would lead him nowhere. Everything else did. “And the handwriting?”
“The most fascinating of all.” Mr. Telfner glowed as if the puzzle—the mystery—was a playful challenge to his intelligence. “It is very strained and deliberate. Notice how many places the pen stilled, as if mind and hand did not work in effortless rhythm.”
“Which means?”
“Either the writer used a hand they are not wont to using.”
“Or?”
“They are mimicking the writing of someone else.” Mr. Telfner shrugged. “Either way, of course, the author of such letters wishes to remain unidentified.”
Tom gathered the letters, stuffed them back into his pockets. He took a deep breath that smelled of papery vanilla and Mr. Telfner’s too-strong hair oil. “Thank you, sir.”
“Come by more often. The street is not the same without you and …” He seemed to think better of speaking her name, so he coughed and said instead, “Mrs. Musgrave will wish to see you, to be sure. You will call on her?”
“Yes.” Tom started for the door—
“And boy?”
“Yes?”
“It is not much, but as most periods of mourning are less than two years, perhaps that shall aid in your search.” When Tom didn’t respond, Mr. Telfner shrugged. “Our unknown author, it would seem, has lost someone they very much loved.”
Which was exactly what would happen to Tom if he could not discover who that person was.
“Dr. Bagot.” Meg fell in step beside the man, aware that blood ringed his fingernails. Earlier that morning, she’d witnessed Jenny hurrying back into the chamber with the leech jar. “How is she?”
“She would be better if you had allowed her nurse to follow my instructions.”
“With all due respect, sir, I did not think it wise.”
“You have enough knowledge of medicine to gainsay common practice then.” His steps quickened. “Remarkable, Miss Foxcroft. Especially for one who cannot remember her own name.”
She accepted the injury without so much as a blink. “You do not answer me.”
“The child will live.”
“For how long?”
At the end of the hall, the doctor narrowed his eyes on her. Then he gripped the banister and started down the stairs, tautness in his shoulders. “The fever has broken. Your ministering of bark powder was serviceable. That much I can praise you for.”
“I do not seek your praise, sir.”
“Good.”
“You shall remain at Penrose Abbey?”
“Unlike you, yes.” At the bottom of the stairs, he looked at her again. Something about his eyes, the searching expression, troubled her. “A word of advice, Miss Foxcroft, if you permit it.”
Her limbs tensed. She nodded him on.
“You say you have forgotten your past.” The faintest embers of disgust burst into flame. “Do not think everyone else will too.”
“Sit here. Let me look at you.” Mrs. Musgrave placed a steaming cup of honey tea into Tom’s hands, then gave a slight tug to his beard. “You should dispose of this, you know. I miss that impish face of yours.”
“It keeps me warm.”
“Humph. Like as not, you fear showing the boy beneath it.” She settled into a wingback chair, sunlight from the curtained millinery window streaking across her face. Her skin seemed papery, pallid, as if she’d ceased the afternoon strolls she used to love. “Your sister is well?”
“Aye.”
“You must bring her to see me. We should get along very well, I think, and perhaps I shall send her home with a bit of lace or ribbon.” Had she not done as much for Meg a hundred times?
His old life—not so many days ago—heaved through him. Kneeling here in this same parlor, winding the longcase clock because Mrs. Musgrave forgot how. Meg on the floor, feeding bits of muffin to Lenox. The smell of spices and springtime through the open window. Days that were lazy, quiet, slow.
Days he missed.
“I wish you would bring Miss Foxcroft to see me too.” Mrs. Musgrave blinked at him, her expression shifting. “You shall, will you not?”
“Meg is not the same.”
“She must not lose all her friends, even if she has lost her memories.”
“It is not that easy.” Tom gulped down the tea in one scalding swallow. He leaned forward and placed the rose-painted cup back on its saucer. “She wants very little to do with the likes of us.” He paused. “With me.”
“You must have patience, Tommy.”
Something he did not have. Along with responsibility, sense, and a hundred other things Papa never allowed him to forget. Tom stood, restless. “I must leave. Joanie and I will be moving to the cottage tonight. For good.”
“Heavens. However shall Meade manage without you?” Mrs. Musgrave rose to grab his hand. She smiled, but the corners of her lips quivered a little and a twinkle of moisture filled her gaze. “Indeed, how shall any of us?”
“Ye know I’ll be back to see my favorite lass.”
She nodded but couldn’t speak. Her cheeks whitened.
“Mrs. Musgrave?”
“I …” A breath escaped. She reached back for her chair, grasped it, sank into it with a little whimper. “I am sorry … I just …”
Tom knelt beside her. “Ye’re sick.”
“No, my dear.”
“I’ll go for a doctor—”
“You are not listening.” Mrs. Musgrave clucked, though a tear escaped the corner of her eye. “You never listen. You are always off and running and doing whatever it is you do.”
He wasn’t certain what to say, nor what she meant, so he only stared at her.