One Perfect Rose (28 page)

Soft, heavy flakes of snow whirled through the air, adding to the bleakness of the north county landscape. Winter came early in Scotland. Michael gazed out the window at the snow, taking an occasional sip from his tankard of scalding hot whiskey punch.

Someone joined him at the window carrying a matching tankard. Without looking, he knew it was George Blackmer. Their travels through England had produced an odd camaraderie that was, if not friendship, at least familiarity.

Blackmer said, “Do you think we'll be snowed in here?”

“Probably for a day or two, no more.” Michael sighed, weary to the bone. “But the storm is a sign that it's time to give up and head south.”

“I didn't think you believed in surrender,” the physician said dryly.

“Sometimes one must. Call it a soldier's superstition, but this whole expedition has been cursed. We've been searching for weeks, always in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Michael swallowed more punch, craving the warmth. “The crowning folly was following a carriage with the right description but the wrong travelers all the way to bloody Scotland. I should have behaved like a sensible man and waited for my brother to return in his own time.”

“Why didn't you?”

Their weeks of travel together had made Michael even less inclined to say that he wanted to get Stephen to a different physician. He settled for saying, “The need to be doing something. Anything. A rather primitive form of magic, I suppose. As if putting effort into searching will prolong my brother's life.” Saying the words aloud made him realize how foolish that instinctive hope had been. He glanced at his companion, tired enough to give in to rude curiosity. “Why did you come all this way? Ashburton may be your most prominent patient, but you're neglecting the rest of your practice.”

“A sense of responsibility. Or perhaps guilt.” The physician's face twisted. “If…if I had done things differently, the duke would not have run away.”

“If my brother's dying, there won't be much you can do about it.” Michael gazed into the steaming depths of his drink. “And if your diagnosis was wrong and he is prospering, he won't need you.”

“Perhaps not.” Blackmer shook his head. “The more time that elapses since I last saw him, the harder it is to predict his current condition. I simply don't know.”

“You're very honest for a physician. Most of your breed prefer obfuscation.”

“You don't like physicians much,” Blackmer said bluntly. “Why not?”

Michael shrugged. “Pills and potions and complicated schedules for dosing. Most of it designed, I think, to impress patients so they'll fill the doctor's purse. My dealings have mostly been with surgeons.” He thought of Ian Kinlock and almost smiled. “The ones I've known are cheerful bloodthirsty sorts who approach the world with a knife and a smile. I can understand that sort of directness much more easily.”

There was extended silence while they watched the blowing snow and the rapidly falling night. Then Blackmer said, “I treated the old duke when he was at the abbey, but I never really knew him. What was it like to have him for a father?”

Michael smiled without humor, glad that the physician couldn't know how ironic that question was. “Difficult.”

“Better a difficult father than none at all.”

Michael thought about the vicious beatings he'd endured, the scathing lectures that were even worse, the humiliating sneers, and knew that Blackmer was wrong. Being raised by a man who hated one's very existence was far worse than being alone. But he supposed it was only natural for a foundling to romanticize what he'd never had. “Families can be heaven or hell. You were spared both.”

The family Michael was raised in had been hell. With Catherine he'd found heaven. He supposed that was preferable to the opposite order.

Catherine. The chronic ache of missing her flared into overpowering urgency. He needed to be with her. To lose some of his grief about Stephen in her arms. And, of course, to make love to her until they were both senseless. Just before he received Blackmer's letter and went haring off on this mad chase, she'd said that it was time to think about another child. He was willing. More than willing.

He'd written Catherine several days earlier, asking her to meet him in London. If Stephen wasn't at Ashburton House, they could go on to the abbey together. Stephen loved the blasted place and would probably choose to die there.

Stephen, dying…. Michael drew a deep, slow breath, then turned from the window. It was time to go home.

Day Twenty-nine

A stab of pain brought Stephen from drowsing to full wakefulness. He lay still for a moment, gauging the strength of the attack. He'd taken two pills the night before and they'd helped him sleep a little, but the effect had worn off.

Rosalind, bless her, still enjoyed the sleep of the pure in heart, her arm over his chest and her face tucked into the angle between his shoulder and neck. Slowly he extricated himself, sliding a pillow into her embrace. He'd learned over the course of numerous bad nights how to leave without waking her.

The bedroom was cold, more like winter than autumn. He fumbled in the dark to locate the woolen robe thrown over a chair. Then he made his way to his dressing room by touch. When the door was safely closed, he used flint and steel to strike a light.

The dressing room had become his refuge in the dark watches of the night when his body betrayed him and he wanted to conceal the evidence. Besides two armoires and a washstand with a pitcher and basin, the room held his favorite wing chair, a decanter of milk on the table beside it. The milk had startled Hubble, who had arrived from Ashburton Abbey several days before. The valet had scolded like a mother hen because Stephen had escaped his ministrations for so long.

Stephen took another opium pill, washing it down with a glass of the milk. Some days milk was the only nourishment he could keep down. Sipping the cool liquid, he drew aside the curtain that covered the small window. Almost dawn.

In a few hours, he would take Rosalind to Richmond to meet her grandmother and other relatives. She had recovered somewhat from the exhausting revelations of her evening at Cassell House. Though her eyes were shadowed, he sensed a new peace in her. The past might be tragic, but it was no longer a mystery.

Knowing he would be unable to sleep until the pill took effect, he stretched out in the chair and mentally tallied the amount of business remaining. His last will and testament was complete. All debts paid, his charities funded, Kirby Manor placed in Rosalind's name. Everything was shipshape for his successor. Within a few days, he'd be free to return home to settle estate matters there.

He'd already written Michael in Wales, asking his brother to meet him at the abbey. Some business should be done face to face with his heir. He also wanted to see his brother once more, though it would be a miserably painful business for them both. In fact, he'd seriously considered not letting Michael know of his impending death. It would spare them both a wrenching scene. But he knew his brother well enough to realize that Michael would not thank him, or forgive him, for taking the easy way.

Was there any chance of a rapprochement with Claudia? He'd sent her a letter, and it had been returned unopened. He would try again, but he was not optimistic. His sister was not known for changing her mind once it was made up.

The gnawing internal pain turned virulent with shattering suddenness. He gasped, and the glass slid from his nerveless fingers. Lurching from the chair, he staggered toward the washstand, hoping to reach the basin in time. He failed and crumpled to the floor, conscious but helpless in the grip of wracking pain and violent sickness as his near-empty stomach tried to lacerate itself with futile heaving.

Gradually the sickness receded, but the paralyzing weakness remained.
It's happened. The balance has shifted irrevocably from health to disease
. He closed his eyes in despair. Instead of being a reasonably healthy man with episodes of illness, he was now a dying man whose periods of apparent normality would be hard-won, requiring enormous energy and impossible to sustain for long.

Would he be able to go to Richmond? He must, for Rosalind would need him on this first encounter with her mother's family. Concentrating on that, he slowly collected his strength until he could roll onto all fours. He crouched, shaking with effort, until he was able to pull himself to his feet by clutching the chair. Then he sank into the upholstered depths, hoping the weakness would ebb.

Death was closer now, almost near enough to take a chair and strike up a conversation. What would death be like? Heaven and harps? Hell and flames? Or simply oblivion? It was the great mystery, along with the equally great mystery of what was the purpose of living in the first place.

The day before he'd visited his banker in the City of London. On the way his carriage passed St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a vast, untidy establishment that had been founded in the twelfth century. He'd stared at the sprawling buildings, struck by the knowledge that those old walls must contain many patients on the brink of death. The desire to order his coachman to stop was almost overpowering. He wanted to go inside and find a dying man and demand to know what the poor devil saw. Perhaps someone in Bart's would have the answer—would know the reality of death and be willing to share the secret.

He would have done exactly that if he'd thought there was a chance of learning the truth. But he suspected that the only ones who really knew were beyond answering.

His body had recovered a little while his thoughts wandered. Even so, the only thing that got him to his feet was knowing that making a supreme effort would take him back to his bed, and Rosalind's arms.

 

It seemed a good omen that the day was sunny. Rosalind held Stephen's hand as the carriage took them to Richmond, a community on the Thames just west of London. He looked distinctly unwell today. She knew he'd risen in the night, because she'd woken when he returned, shaking with cold. Wordlessly she'd wrapped herself around him, and gradually he had warmed again.

But it would no longer be possible to conceal his state of health. Anyone who knew him well would immediately notice his gauntness and the bleakness in his eyes. She clamped down on the rage in her heart at the bitter unfairness of it. If she ever allowed that anger to break loose, she might never be able to control it again.

The carriage swung between a pair of open iron gates into a driveway that circled in front of an elegant Palladian villa. “What a pretty house,” Rosalind said as Stephen helped her from the carriage.

“Charming,” he agreed as they climbed the front stairs.

The door opened before Stephen could lift the knocker. An elderly butler bowed. “Welcome, Your Graces,” he said, expression sober but eyes bright with excitement.

Rosalind mentally braced herself. One of her stage parts had been as a long-lost prodigal daughter. She could play that role again.

They stepped into the foyer and were immediately greeted by a small, fragile-looking woman with pure white hair and a fine-boned face wreathed with smiles. “I'm your grandmother, child,” the old woman said. “Let me look at you.”

Lady Westley clasped Rosalind's hand with thin fingers as she made her examination. Rosalind looked back with equal interest, though she felt large and clumsy. Obviously her height hadn't come from her grandmother.

Her study completed, Lady Westley gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Anne was right. You are very like Sophia. But you aren't her, of course. You are Rosalind.”

Rosalind bent and kissed the pale, parchmentlike cheek. “I've never had a grandmother before,” she said. “I'm not quite sure what to do.”

Lady Westley laughed. “Just indulge me. I've ruthlessly used my age and general infirmity to spend a few minutes alone with you. After all, it isn't every day that I get a new grandchild, much less a lovely, full-grown one.”

She turned to Stephen. “We've met a time or two, Ashburton, though it's been a good few years. I knew your mother. A wild girl, but a good heart. I'm so glad that you're now a member of the family.”

A satiric glint showed in his eyes at the mention of his mother, but Stephen's bow was impeccable. “The pleasure is mutual, Lady Westley.”

“We'd best go to the others before all of my descendants coming boiling forth to meet their new cousin. The younger ones think your story most romantic.” Lady Westley made a face as she led the way to the salon. “They haven't yet learned that romantic tales are deucedly uncomfortable.”

Rosalind laughed, liking her grandmother. Stephen opened the door to the salon, and in an instant the three of them were surrounded by people. Clearly these unknown relatives really were delighted to meet a long-lost member of the family.

As Lady Cassell efficiently took charge of the introductions, Rosalind realized that for the first time since she was a tiny child, she had no need to prove anything. Here she belonged by right of birth. That right was visible in the faces of the people around her, in their coloring and height and bones. She went from one new relation to another, looking for signs of kinship. Her uncle, Lord Westley, was a large, mellow man. Was that easy disposition a Westley trait that had come to Rosalind through her mother? And that pretty girl, Cassandra, who was just out of the schoolroom. She might almost have been Rosalind at seventeen.

As Rosalind laughed and talked and tried to remember names, the pain of her parents' death slipped further into the past. She'd experienced the misery of a family lost. Today she was discovering the joy of a family found.

 

Stephen stayed in the background throughout the introductions and the luncheon that followed. This was Rosalind's day, which was fortunate because he would not have had the energy to share center stage. Instead, he sipped wine and moved his food around his plate while keeping an eye on his radiant wife. Here were more people who would offer support when the time came. As a countess by birth and a duchess by marriage, she would be secure in every sense of the word.

He thought again of her likely remarriage. Her cousin James, Westley's heir, looked so dazzled that he might have offered on the spot if Rosalind didn't already have a husband. Young Westley was about her age and seemed a good sort. She could do worse.

The topic was not one Stephen wished to dwell on. He scanned the rest of the group. Rosalind's grandmother sat opposite. When their gazes met, the dowager said, “As soon as we rise from the table, you must escort me to the garden, Ashburton.” Her faded blue eyes twinkled. “A prerogative of age is that I can order the handsomest man present to bear me company, and he daren't refuse.”

Stephen laughed. “I have no desire to refuse.” Which was the truth. The exuberant family party was tiring him. He would welcome a walk in the garden.

Young Cassandra dashed upstairs to get her grandmother a shawl, returning also with a cane and the dowager's elderly dog, a small beast with massive amounts of fur and dignity. Stephen exchanged a smile with Rosalind across the room. Then he and the old woman went outside, the dog walking sedately beside his mistress. It was a lovely October day, with golden sunshine burnishing the changing leaves and autumn flowers.

One hand on her cane and the other on Stephen's arm, Lady Westley guided him into the garden, a rich landscaped area that sloped down to the Thames. Cleverly winding paths made the garden seem much larger than it was. Despite the lateness of the season, masses of blossoms were everywhere. Admiring a bank of roses planted before a sun-baked brick wall, he said, “Your garden is very lovely.”

“Autumn is its peak, I think. Soon a frost will kill most of my flowers. The leaves will fall and the bitter winter winds will blow off the river.” She stooped to pick a golden chrysanthemum and absently rolled the stem between her fingers. “I'm sorry I won't be here to see the spring. I've lived in this house for half my life, and every spring the flowers are more beautiful than the year before.”

“Will you be moving in with one of your children?”

“Oh, no. I'll be dead,” she said in a calm voice.

A jolt ran through him. “Surely you can't know that.”

“I can.” She glanced at him. “I do.”

Thinking she must be in a similar situation to himself, he asked, “Are you ill?”

“Age,” she said simply. “My body is wearing out, and swiftly now. I would have died earlier, I think, but perhaps on some level I knew that Rosalind was coming.”

They came to a clearing with a weathered stone fountain in the center. Lady Westley regarded the laughing cherub whose vase spilled water into a moss-edged pool. “There is no pain like that of losing a child,” she said softly. “One never gets over it. Never. Meeting Rosalind is a little like having Sophia back again.” She touched the chrysanthemum to her lips, then dropped it into the water by the cherub's plump toes.

As they continued along the path, he said, “I gather that the resemblance is strong, but Rosalind has lived a very different life from that of her mother.”

“When I think of that sweet little infant digging for food in the rubbish, it makes my blood curdle.” Lady Westley shook her head, then said in a lighter tone, “And imagine, a Westley on the stage! I wish I could have seen her.”

“Rosalind is quite a good actress, though she hasn't the passionate need to perform that many players do.” He smiled, thinking of her as Caliban. “Since the mere idea didn't shock you senseless, you would have been well pleased with her skill.”

“It's hard to shock someone my age,” the dowager said with a laugh. “For all that the girl has had a difficult life, she's still much like her mother. I knew the moment we met that she had Sophia's sweetness of disposition.”

“No one knows that better than I,” he agreed.

The next clearing held a sunny bench with a good view of the river. “Let's stay here a bit,” she said. “This is my favorite spot. I like to watch the boats and barges.” They sat down side by side, the little dog curling up by the dowager's feet.

“Sophia was my youngest, you know,” the dowager said. “I almost died giving birth to her. Perhaps that created a special bond. Though truth to say, there is a special bond with each of my children. With Anne, my eldest, who fusses over me like a mother hen. With Richard, my only son. I've been fortunate in my children.”