Page 30

‘Of course I was not, my dear Adrian. I am sorry I have not seen you for a while, but I have been so very busy with your Arbuthnot cousins and the dogs. None of them stay still for as much as a minute, so it is not by any means as easy and pleasant as painting you was.’

He moved his head fretfully on the pillow and said, ‘My papa brought the picture here so that you might come and see it. Do you not think that the shadows under the trees are very like the ones you did, when you were out in the square?’

She was crying a little, but smiling too. ‘I would certainly like to think so. I am a great admirer of the artist, and I daresay his work has had an influence on me, even though I cannot hope to emulate it, so yes, it was very clever of you to notice a similarity, and I am most flattered by the comparison.’

‘I’m glad you agree,’ he said sleepily. ‘I miss our lessons.’

She could feel Xan stirring a little restlessly behind her. ‘Perhaps we can take them up again, when you are better, if you would like that,’ she told the boy, though the message was for his father’s ears too.

It wasn’t an empty promise, meant to soothe a sick child and then to be forgotten as soon as he was well. Presumably, once Adrian was recovered – she refused to consider any other possible outcome – Lord Fairmount would take his son out of town before the heat of the summer struck, perhaps to Brighton or some other seaside resort. London in July and August was an unhealthy sort of a place, and this was all the more likely now that Adrian had been so ill. But until he did leave, she would come back as long as she was wanted, for the child’s sake. If anyone thought it odd, she did not care. Such moments as these made one realise how stupid it was to worry oneself about gossip and rumours and other such trivial, fleeting matters. There were much more important things in life. And after all, she and Xan both knew that they must still part; they had agreed to do so. This could have no effect on that decision.

‘Tell me about the monkey, please,’ Adrian said suddenly. ‘I would like to have seen it.’

She laughed. ‘I did not meet him – he must have been elsewhere when I was in the house, and now, of course, Lady Wellbeloved has removed to an hotel and taken him with her. The children were very fond of him, or at least the idea of him as a creator of chaos, but I fear they may have teased him to play with them and made him over-excited, so that he bit Mr Arbuthnot, as you may have heard, twice.’

‘He would not have bitten Papa, I am sure, and I would not have teased him. What is his name?’

‘I asked, when I was painting them, and the older ones said that he is simply called Monkey, but Araminta, the youngest, insisted his name is Joseph Grimaldi and will not budge on it, so I do not know what to believe. She is only four years old, so it seems unlikely that she would invent such a thing.’

‘That’s a good name for a monkey,’ he said, apparently satisfied. His eyelids were fluttering down and he seemed to be slipping off into sleep, but she did not try to pull her hand away, and his grip on her did not loosen.

‘Thank you,’ Xan said quietly behind her, a wealth of emotion in his voice. ‘He seems much more settled now. You have done him an enormous amount of good already, and I hope he will be able to get some rest. The doctor says it is just what he needs. But you can’t go home now, can you, after this? He may well be infectious, for all we know, and so may we all be, including you.’

‘No, I must not,’ she replied. ‘Sabrina has a tiny baby; I cannot risk carrying anything back to her, or any of them. I’m sorry – I will be an inconvenience to you. But I could not just speak a few words and walk away. He was so very glad to see me.’ She still had tears on her cheeks, but did not regard them.

‘No inconvenience at all, but instead a great favour you have done us. I can only be eternally grateful to you. A room will be made up, and I will send someone who has had no contact with any of us over to tell Mrs Da Costa what has happened, and to fetch back anything you require in the way of clothes and so on. My aunt is here, of course, to chaperone you, so there is no need to worry on that score.’

‘Oh, good!’ she said with a brief, ironical smile. ‘I’m so glad the proprieties will be observed. He’s properly asleep now, I think.’ The little hand had slackened its grip and slipped out of hers. ‘Do you want to get some rest while I stay with him for a while? You look as though you haven’t slept in days.’

‘I can’t ask that of you.’

‘I don’t see why not. I’m here now and I can’t go home – which was entirely my doing and not yours, so don’t think I mind it, because I don’t. I’m not a nurse, I have no experience to speak of, but I can ring the bell as well as anyone, I am very happy to help, and if Adrian wakes, he will recognise me, as he has just proved. I see there is a jug there, and I can manage to give him a drink if he should be thirsty. What else is there to do? Xan, you look as though you can barely put one foot in front of another. Go and sleep for a short while, then have a bath. You’ll be no use to anyone, least of all Adrian, if you collapse from exhaustion. As long as you tell your household and Sabrina’s what is happening first.’

‘I can’t summon the energy to argue with you,’ he said, giving in to the weariness that she could see in every line of his face and body. ‘Thank you again. I promise I won’t stay away very long, and you can be sure that the bell will be answered in a moment if you ring it.’

There was a chair between the window and the bed, where Lady Deborah had been sitting earlier, and Bianca moved to it. Adrian was sleeping peacefully and there was nothing she could do for him just now but stay by his side in case he awoke or grew worse. A book had been set down on the table, and she picked it up. Lady Deborah had a bookmark to save her place, so Miss Constantine turned to the beginning without fear of irritating the Dowager, rather than standing up and trying to find something else to read. She saw that it was a novel that had been published while she was abroad, and so she had missed it; she began reading, and was soon absorbed in the young heroine’s story, which seemed to her enormously realistic. It had been written by a lady, and was, in her present situation, rather soothing in its lack of dramatic incident.

She could not have said how long had passed when the door opened again. Adrian had not stirred, and when she had once very gently touched his hand where it lay on the covers, it had seemed cooler than when she had first held it. But when she looked up from her book to see who was coming in, she could see that the sun was gone from the square and the sky darkening towards evening.

Lord Fairmount looked much better, and his appearance was restored to more or less its usual precision. He had plainly bathed, as she had suggested, and his dark hair was still a little wet. Noticing these things in such circumstances was not helpful at all. Imagining cradling it between her naked breasts while she dried it more thoroughly with a towel was even less so. She rose, and said quietly, ‘He has not woken all this while, and he seems a little cooler to me. But you will know best.’

Xan crossed to her side and put his hand on his son’s forehead. ‘Yes. Yes, I think you are right. Thank God for it! But I was away much longer than I intended, and it is outrageous of me to take advantage of your kindness in such a fashion. There is a maid waiting to show you to your room, where you will find a bath, and the clothes that your sister has sent across for you. My aunt expects you downstairs for dinner in an hour or so – but there is no need to rush, she will wait for you, and I will join you both later if I feel that I can leave Adrian with Nanny Hodge. She wants to wake him up and feed him some broth, but I have persuaded her to tarry a little longer and let him rest.’

Bianca could see that there was no point objecting that she didn’t expect to be treated like an ordinary guest, so she merely smiled and closed the door softly on the pair. It was perfectly true that she would be grateful for a good dinner and a glass of wine; it had been a highly emotional afternoon, and the day was not over yet.

50

Xan sank into the chair that Miss Constantine had just vacated. It was still warm from her body, and he found a precious scrap of comfort in that, and more in the fact that Adrian was, as she had said, sleeping soundly and, unless he was deluding himself, looking a little better. Certainly he was less feverish than he had been that morning, and it had been many hours since he complained of the headache.

It might just be coincidence, that his son’s marked improvement had come immediately upon seeing Bianca, or it might indeed be true that the boy’s anxious mind had seized on an irrational cause for worry, and could now be easier. His aunt, the physician, and several other people had told him that persons in the grip of fever often behaved unreasonably, and fixated upon objects or people. Lord Fairmount didn’t care which it was. He only knew that she had come without hesitation, and done all she could despite the danger, and somehow it appeared to have worked. He would never forget it even if he lived another fifty years and never saw her again once she left.

It was impossible to tell if he was overreacting to poor Adrian’s illness; he might be. He had so little experience to set it against. Perhaps it was a trivial thing and would soon pass. But Aunt Deborah had lost a child to measles in circumstances not so very different from this, though they never spoke of it. And Louise’s death must also lie heavy on their minds. Life was very fragile, and it was too easy to forget this. Imagine if his son had fallen gravely ill while he was away in Europe… It did not bear thinking of. That sort of guilt could kill you.

Adrian was stirring, and Xan was by his side in an instant. ‘Has she gone?’ the child said. ‘Or was she not really here? Miss Constantine, I mean.’

‘No, she was here to admire the picture and see how you did, and she sat with you for a good long while as you slept. She has not left the house, just gone to change and have her dinner. She has been very good and agreed to stay here as long as you need her.’ We need her, he might have said. No point in talking of infection and making Adrian feel responsible for something he could not help. ‘I am sure she will come back and see you later, to say goodnight, if you wish her to. But you must eat something too first.’ He stood and rang the bell, and in a short time a tray was set before the patient, and he was coaxed to drink a little broth and eat a spoon or two of Dr Ratcliffe’s Restorative Pork Jelly, in the healing properties of which both Lady Deborah and Nanny placed an almost religious faith.

Xan then helped Adrian use the chamber pot, finding him a little steadier on his feet this time, and sat with him, talking idly for a while. But soon the child’s lids began to droop again and his speech to trail off into cavernous yawns, at which point Nanny shooed his parent away and produced a large, hairy piece of knitting, saying that they would do very well together while Lord Fairmount had his dinner.