Kitabı oku: «Orphans from the Storm», sayfa 5

She started to take down her hair, ready to brush it. She had no nightgown to wear and would have to sleep in her chemise. Perhaps Mr Gledhill might know of somewhere where she could buy some serviceable lengths of flannelette. There was a sewing machine in the nursery, and her nimble fingers would soon be able to fashion some much needed new clothes for the baby and for herself.

Fashionable ladies might wear the new ‘health’ corsets beneath their expensive gowns, to emphasise the sought-after S-shaped curve that the King so admired, but even if she could have afforded such a garment there would have been no point in her wasting good money on it, Marianne reflected, for she had no one who might fasten it up for her.

Tears weren’t very far away as her meandering thoughts brought home to her how very alone she now was. All those she had loved had gone, though her beloved aunt thankfully would never know how cruelly her much-loved orphaned niece had been treated by those who should have cared for her. Her aunt’s estate, which should have been hers, had been sold over her head to pay off a bank loan Marianne was sure had never really existed, but at seventeen she had been too young and powerless to be able to prove it.

Life in the workhouse had come as a terrible shock to a young girl reared so gently. But it had been there that she had met and lost her very best and dearest friend.

And her husband. Poor Milo. He had fought so hard to live. She had seen how much he wanted to do so from the look in his eyes when he had asked her to place the baby in his arms one time. Tears stung her eyes, but she wiped them away. She was here in Rawlesden now, where Milo had wanted her to be.

A dab of salt on her finger, brushed round her mouth and then rinsed away, would have to serve to clean her teeth for tonight, and she summoned the courage to push her sad thoughts to one side. She must ask Mr Gledhill if he would authorise an advance on her wages, she decided, so that she could buy a few small personal necessities.

She was so tired that her eyes were closing as soon as she lay down on the settle beneath the blankets she had found.

Outside the snow whirled and fell in the biting cold, obliterating the landscape in deep drifts.

Marianne woke abruptly out of the dream she had been having. Her body felt warm but her mind was not at rest. She thought about the man upstairs and the ominous heat she had felt round his wound. Pushing back the blankets, she swung her feet to the floor.

It was not her responsibility to worry about him, but somehow she could not help but do so.

That flushed and discoloured wound and what it might portend was preying on her mind.

He would be sleeping, of course, she told herself as she lit a lantern, her toes curling in protest against the cold of the stone floor. And no doubt he would be angry with her if she woke him. But she knew that she would not rest until she had done as her aunt’s training was urging her and checked the wound, in case her fears weren’t merely in her imagination.

The lantern light cast moving shadows on the stair wall, elongating her own petite frame, so that it almost seemed to Marianne that as she climbed the stairs others climbed them with her.

In turn, that led her to think of the other women who had climbed these stairs before her, like the master’s neglected wife, her heart perhaps even more heavy than her body as she fought against her too-early labour pains.

And what of the wife’s niece? Had she too climbed these stairs in dread?

This house had known so much unhappiness and so much death. It needed the laughter of happy young voices to drive away its sadness.

The lantern highlighted darker patches on the landing wallpaper she had not noticed before, where a trio of paintings must have once hung. The chill of the unheated space drove Marianne on until she reached the master’s bedroom. She paused before turning the handle and opening the door.

A fire still burned in the grate, but surely it wasn’t just its glow that was responsible for the flush burning on the face of the man asleep in the bed. His breathing was rapid and unsteady, his body jerking in small spasms, as though even in his sleep he was in pain. His face was turned towards the window. On the table beside the bed she could see the bottle of brandy and an empty glass.

Marianne shivered. Were her worst fears to be realised? Putting down the lantern, she walked over to the bed. Leaning down, she placed her hand against its occupant’s forehead and then snatched it back again as she felt its heat, knowing that she would have to check his wound. She could smell the brandy he had drunk, no doubt to help him sleep and to dull the pain.

If the feverish heat of his face was anything to go by then his injury had indeed turned putrid. As she went to the other side of the bed Marianne prayed that she would not see on his thigh the tell-tale red line her aunt had warned her meant that the poison was spreading.

She prayed also that the brandy he had drunk would keep him asleep, because this time she intended to have her way and make sure that some cleansing honey was applied to his wound.

He winced when she removed the bedcovers, his face contorting in a spasm of pain, but he did not wake. In the light of the lantern Marianne could see what she had hoped she might not. His thigh was swollen, its flesh drawn tight and shiny, but when she looked closer she saw thankfully there was no red line. It smelled of heat and blood, but not of putrescence.

She worked as quickly as she could, using boiled and cooled water to draw the heat from the wound, and then covering the site with honey before rebandaging it.

She had worked so intently and so swiftly that she was slightly out of breath, her own flesh warm from her exertion.

Thankfully, through all that she had had to do, the Master of Bellfield had never once opened his eyes, although she had heard him groan on several occasions. Now, with her task completed, she replaced the covers and then, like any good nurse, went round the bed to its head, so that she might straighten the pillows and draw the sheet up to cover at least some of that disturbing breadth of male chest.

Busy at her task, she leaned over her patient and then froze in shock as suddenly his eyes opened and his hand curled tightly into her hair as it lay against his chest.

‘Why do you come here to torture me like this?’ he demanded thickly. ‘Why cannot you leave me be?’

Surely he could not really be meaning to speak so to her?

Marianne guessed that he must be lost in some memory from his past, of another woman. Why should that knowledge bring her such a sharp pain?

‘Why?’ he repeated, plainly expecting her to answer him.

‘I…I’m sorry,’ Marianne apologised. ‘I had no choice. It had to be done.’

‘How sweetly you take the words from my mouth, and how fiercely I long to take the breath from yours.’

He could not possibly mean such words for her. He might be looking at her, but surely either the pain or the brandy must have turned his brain and he was confusing her with someone else. His ward, perhaps, his wife’s niece, the beautiful young girl who had loved his stepson and who some said the master had lusted after so dreadfully that he had pursued her to her death?

Marianne tried to pull away, but it was too late. He was too strong for her. Somehow he had managed to raise himself on his pillows.

Marianne closed her eyes on a small sob as his hands slid into her hair, constraining her whilst he kissed her as a man should surely kiss no woman but his wife.

Shockwaves of feeling rushed through her body, stiffening it to outrage, and then softening it to something she did not know or want to know—something yielding and wanton and oh, so pleasurable that she wanted to cast herself upon its waters and let it take her where it willed, like a small craft being guided by the hands of another and taken with the current into the secret shadows.

She felt his hand move, sliding down her bare shoulder to the strap of her chemise, urging it downwards, the intensity of his kiss mirroring the intensity of his desire to expose the female flesh of her breasts. She was surrounded, possessed by his heat and his urgency. She could feel it in his kiss and in his touch, and she shuddered to see the strong male hand covering the pale flesh of her breast whilst he kissed her throat and then her shoulder.

Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell against him, bare flesh against bare flesh. What she was permitting was wrong, a sin, and yet…

‘You have possessed me—do you know that?’ His words were slurred and thick, the cry of a man in torment as he pressed fierce kisses against her skin.

She must stop this. She raised her hand to push him away, and then felt beneath it the thick softness of his hair. Her palm rested against his head, holding him to her as she leaned over him. This was so wrong—and yet hadn’t she known deep down inside herself that she was drawn to this darkness and to him? Her chest rose with the passion of her thoughts and her breathing.

‘Why do you do this to me?’ His angry cry filled the room. He turned from her as though in revulsion, and then cried out again, this time in pain, as he moved his injured leg while reaching for the brandy.

She tried to stop him but it was too late. He had raised the bottle to his lips to take a deep draught from it before collapsing back against the pillows, his eyes closing and his grip on the bottle relaxing, enabling Marianne to remove it from his hold and then straighten her chemise.

It could surely only have been her concern for his wound that had kept her in his hold instead of struggling to break free. It must only be that concern; she could not, dared not, allow it to be anything else, she told herself fiercely. He was asleep now, thanks to the brandy he had drunk, but it was not an easy sleep, she could see. And neither would her own be. Not now and, she suspected, not ever again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MARIANNE looked from the bed, where the Master of Bellfield lay in an uneasy sleep, his breathing shallow and punctured by wild, unintelligible mutterings, to the view beyond the window.

It had snowed heavily during the night, and now everywhere was blanketed in thick white snow. Piled into huge drifts by the wind, the snow had left the house cut off from the town. The Master of Bellfield, though, was unaware of this.

She had been so afraid of facing him this morning, after the events of the previous night, but when she had eventually found the courage to push open his bedroom door she had very quickly realised that her concern should be for the deterioration in his health, not her own guilt.

She had gone back downstairs, hurrying to pick up the telephone, hoping to summon help, but the line had been dead—she assumed as a result of the heavy snow.

Twice now she had checked the Master of Bellfield’s wound, hoping that she might see some improvement, but on both occasions she’d been forced to recognise that there was none. Just the pull of the bedding against his skin had been enough to make him cry out in agony, even through his unconsciousness.

It was plain to see that the wound had become putrid, though thankfully as yet there was no red line. Where the flesh had sealed tightly it pulsed and throbbed and burned against her hand.

Marianne looked towards the fire, knowing what she must do.

The wound needed to be opened and the poison allowed to drain out. It was a task for a doctor, or at the very least a nurse, not someone like her. But there was no one else, and nor could there be whilst this snow lay imprisoning them here. Her employer’s condition was worsening, and if she delayed until the snow had gone…

But what if by attempting to lance the wound she made matters worse? The snow could not lie for ever. Might it not be best to simply wait…?

For what? For him to die?

She thought of the baby downstairs, and she thought of her dead husband and the promise she had made him. What she must not think of was last night, with its dark, hot sweetness and her own wanton surrender to it.

A harsh agonised cry from the bed had her banishing her own thoughts to go over.

‘Lucinda…I must go to her…The baby…’

He was sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide open as he spoke, but Marianne knew that he was not seeing her. She had seen fever like this before, stealing over a person and then consuming them, until there was nothing left other than the pitiful agony of their breathing and then the harsh rattle of death.

‘Shush…shush, sir,’ she quietened him gently. ‘All will be well.’

The pillows on which he had been lying were soaked with his sweat. She could not delay much longer. The wound must be lanced.

Marianne checked that she had everything that she needed, her stomach coiling tightly and her heart hammering against her ribs as she stared at the small sharp knife lying on the tray in front of her. Alongside it lay clean bowls, and next to them new bandages and more honey. She had scrubbed her hands with the hottest water she could stand and carbolic soap. The bedding lay folded back to reveal her patient’s leg. She looked at the bottle of brandy. She had poured some into a glass, ready, knowing the pain she was about to inflict.

Picking up the knife, she held it in the fire’s flames, waiting until the tip glowed red before removing it and going over to the bed.

The pulse of the wound was like a wild thing now, the putridness beneath the sealed flesh clearly visible. She took a deep breath and then, as swiftly as she could, slit the seal to the wound.

Pus spurted from the broken seal. Nausea clogged Marianne’s throat at the sight and the smell of it, but she ignored it to work quickly and determinedly to remove the poison and make the wound clean.

Only when she was as sure as she could be that the poison was removed did she pick up the brandy bottle and dash some over the still open wound.

The man in the bed gave a great cry of pain, and this time when he looked at her Marianne knew that the Master of Bellfield knew exactly who she was. To her relief, though, the pain was such that his senses quickly deserted him, leaving her to apply the honey and bandage the cleansed wound.

The air in the bedroom smelled of brandy and heat and her own fear, Marianne recognised as she cleared everything away.

An hour went by, and then another, as her patient slept—surely a little more easily. Marianne had to force herself to leave the bedroom to see to the baby and her other responsibilities, telling herself that sleep was the best healer of all, as her aunt had used to say. Except that sleep also stole life away…But she must not think of that.

Downstairs in the kitchen she fed the baby and told him how much his father had loved him, and why she had brought him here.

The baby slept in her arms. Her gentle words to him lingered in her mind. Had she done the wrong thing in waiting? Should she have confronted the Master of Bellfield with the truth right from the beginning?

‘Your father begged me to bring you here because this was his home,’ she told the now sleeping baby softly, confiding to him the secret of their presence here and the worry that lay on her conscience.

The Bellfield Hall Milo had remembered and talked to her of so often had been a happy home for him as a boy. He hadn’t been able to remember his father, who he had told her had been killed by a runaway carriage in Manchester. He had, though, told her of his anguish when his mother had died in childbirth, and her child with her. He had told her too of the anger and the bitterness he had felt against his stepfather.

‘I blamed him for my mother’s death. It was the mill he loved, not my mother, and I could not understand then…I didn’t know then what love can move a person to do.’

Marianne blinked away her tears as she remembered that conversation.

‘I am dying, Marianne,’ he had told her. ‘We both know that. I want you to take baby Miles to my stepfather, and I want you to give him this letter I have written to him. He is a hard man, but a fair one. He will, I know, recognise his duty to my son—for after all I am his heir, and my son after me.’

Marianne hadn’t wanted to argue with a dying man, but she had promised herself that she would say nothing of her real purpose in coming here, nor of baby Miles’ true identity, until she had satisfied herself as to the way the baby would be treated. The master had, after all, driven Milo away from his home. He had married a woman he did not love in order to become Master of Bellfield. He was a vigorous man in the prime of his life; what if he should marry again and father children? What, then, would be the fate of the baby she was supposed to entrust to his care?

She had planned everything so carefully, but she had not planned for what had happened the night before, and the way it had made her feel.

Marianne got up, still holding the baby, pacing the kitchen floor as she tried to calm her agitated thoughts.

The day passed slowly, long hours dragged out minute by minute, and the Master of Bellfield slept whilst Marianne tussled with her conscience. Was it wrong of her to want to be absolutely sure before she revealed the truth to him? She had, after all, given Milo her promise that she would see his son to safety.

A dead wife, a dead stepson, and a ward disappeared without trace. Was this truly a man fit to have charge of a helpless child?

And what about her own feelings?A widower who had married for gain, and who had by all accounts passionately loved a young girl who did not return his love. Was this truly a man fit to have charge of her vulnerable heart?

Where her heart was concerned it was too late for her to save it, Marianne acknowledged. But for the child she would fight with the strength she hadn’t been able to muster on her own account.

It was evening before Marianne could finally assure herself that the wound was clean and the Master of Bellfield’s sleep was a healthy, healing one.

Her duty to him was done. Now she must attend to that duty which had brought her here.

For every voice that gainsaid Milo’s stepfather there was another voice to praise him. Milo himself had said that his stepfather had shown him great kindness in the early days of his mother’s marriage to him.

‘It was only after my mother’s death, when I told him that I wanted to marry Amelia, that he changed towards me,’ he had told her. ‘He said we were too young, that I had no money other than the allowance he gave me. I cursed him then for persuading my mother to make him my trustee.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS hard to believe that three short days could make such a difference, Marianne acknowledged. The snow had gone from the town, and from Bellfield Hall, even though snow still lay on the hilltops, and the sun was shining. The Master of Bellfield was improving in strength by the hour, his wound was clean and healing well, his fever was gone, and his irritation was growing along with his recovery.

He had made no mention of the subject she had been dreading, and Marianne had grown to believe that he had no memory of that fever-driven intimacy. That knowledge was the greatest relief to her—of course it was. How could it be otherwise? That ache within her heart was a foolishness she should sweep out with the same vigour with which she had been sweeping out the housekeeper’s rooms.

That, though, had been this morning. The improvement in the weather, combined with the spread of the news through the town of the Master of Bellfield’s recovery had brought a growing number of visitors to his front door to enquire after his health.

The ever-cheerful Charlie had delivered a parcel discreetly and firmly wrapped up and tied with string. Inside, Marianne had discovered a smart new frock, and an apron to go over it, along with a note from the mill manager explaining that it was being supplied to her under the Master of Bellfield’s instructions. It had not come a minute too soon in view of the status of her employer’s visitors. Mostly they were eminent men from the town, including his fellow mill owners, although there had been no return visit from the doctor—nor, thankfully, from the nurse.

Now, wearing her new uniform, and with tea trays and china cups at the ready in the kitchen, Marianne felt confident enough to face the mayor of the town itself on her employer’s behalf if necessary.

She could face the mayor, perhaps, but she was certainly not confident enough to face the increasingly intent and probing gaze of the Master of Bellfield himself.

A knock on the front door heralded the arrival of yet another visitor. This time the visitor announced himself not as a fellow mill owner but as the Reverend Peter Johnson. He was tall and stooped, his face thin and his cheeks sunken, and the zeal shining in his eyes reminded Marianne of how Milo had described the Reverend—how stern and zealous the churchman was, and how Amelia had been in fear of him. Milo had told her that local gossip said that as a young man he had yearned to work as a missionary, and that being disappointed in that hope had soured him and caused him to preach of the hellfire awaiting his flock if they should slip from the path of righteousness.

Milo had also told her, with a small laugh, of how the Reverend had read out a fierce lecture from the pulpit after he had seen Milo and some of the other young men from the town wearing fashionable trousers with turn-ups.

Whether it was because of that memory, Marianne did not know, but the burning-eyed look the Reverend turned on her made her feel that she had been found wanting.

‘I’ll inform Mr Denshaw of your arrival,’ she told him, intending to show him into the library—now polished and free of dust, with a warm fire burning in its hearth.

But before she could do so the Reverend shook his head and told her sharply, ‘My business will not wait. Take me to him immediately.’

Marianne did not dare refuse to obey him. Her heart was hammering against her ribs as she led the way up the stairs and then knocked on her employer’s bedroom door.

At his ‘Come’ she pushed it open.

The Master of Bellfield was seated at the small desk he’d had brought into his room by a couple of stout men from the mill, so that he could work whilst his wound healed.

‘The Reverend Johnson, sir,’ she informed him, before starting to back towards the door.

‘Wait,’ the Reverend ordered her, then addressed the Master of Bellfield. ‘The woman must stay to hear what I have to say, since it concerns her and her presence here in the house of an unmarried man.’

Marianne folded her hands together tightly, unable to bring herself to look directly at either of the two men, although she could sense that her employer was looking at her.

‘I could not believe my ears when it first came to my attention that you, sir, a single man and a widower, were allowing a young woman to act as your nurse and to perform such intimacies for you as must cause repugnance and shock to any decent person who came to hear of them. This woman must be sent from your house immediately, whilst you yourself must repent of your sins in allowing her to be here.’ The Reverend’s voice was thundering now, as though he was speaking from his pulpit.

Marianne looked up at him, and wished that she had not when she saw the burning anger in his gaze.

‘It is a sin for a man and a woman such as yourselves to live beneath the same roof when—’

‘I am glad that you have called to see me, Reverend Johnson, since I was on the point of requesting my manager to ask you to do so.’ The master’s voice was calm but cool.

‘You wished to see me?’

‘Yes. I wished to speak with you so that I might advise you of my intention to marry Mrs Brown, and to ask you to put in hand the arrangements for that marriage as speedily as you can.’

Marianne didn’t know which of them was the more shocked. The Reverend Johnson or herself.

Both of them had certainly turned to stare at the Master of Bellfield in equal disbelief. But it was towards her that he limped, taking hold of her hand and squeezing it in warning rather than affection as he asserted meaningfully, ‘There you are, my love. I told you that we must not linger over making our plans known in case others misjudge the situation.’

‘You are to marry?’

The Reverend’s face was flushed, and Marianne wondered if perhaps he was more resentful at being deprived of the prospect of denouncing them both from his pulpit than a true man of God should have been.

‘You are the first to know, Reverend, and I know I can rely on you to speedily dismiss any gossip that may be being spread.’

‘When…when is this marriage to take place, may I ask?’

The Reverend’s voice was stiff with what Marianne suspected was angry disapproval.

‘As soon as it can be arranged. Certainly I wish to be wed before Christmas, so that we might celebrate it as man and wife. Now, if you will excuse us, my bride and I have much to discuss and arrange. I dare say you can see yourself out?’

Marianne might have laughed at the expression on the Reverend Johnson’s face if she had not been in such a state of shock.

The moment the door had closed behind the affronted minister she turned towards her employer, intending to demand an explanation, but before she could say anything he had swept her into his arms and was kissing her with a ruthless determination that made it impossible to do anything other than allow him to continue to do so.

When he finally released her she was trembling so much that she was actually leaning against him instead of moving away from him.

‘I…You…We…You cannot mean to marry me…’ she finally managed to get out.

‘I cannot do aught else, Mrs Brown—especially not now, after having treated you so fiendishly. Surely you must agree with that?’ he said. ‘After all, have I not taken advantage of you in the most vile manner, pressing an intimacy upon you that no man should press on a woman to whom he has not offered the respectability of marriage?’

‘You have kissed me,’ Marianne agreed. ‘But—’

‘That kiss was merely a mark of our betrothal,’ he told her softly. ‘The intimacy to which I refer was the one that took place in my arms and in my bed when I—’

Marianne’s face burned. She covered her ears and shook her head, telling him frantically, ‘Sir, please—I do not wish to talk about that. It is best forgotten.’

Instantly his expression changed, a look of triumph darkening his eyes.

‘So it did happen, and was not solely something I conjured up from my imagination. Well, Mrs Brown, there is no getting away from it now. We are both condemned to one another, and we have no choice but to commit our flesh and our sins to the sanctity of marriage—as I am sure the Reverend Johnson would be the first to tell us.’

Was he actually daring to laugh? Marianne could see that he was.

Her thoughts were in the most painful kind of turmoil. On the one hand—yes, she must admit it to herself there was nothing she wanted more than to give herself where she had already given her heart and become his wife. On the other, she was bruisingly conscious of how much she had deceived him, kept him from the truth.

‘You cannot want to marry me, Mr Denshaw,’ was all she could think of to say as she made to move away from him.

‘I find it telling that whilst you say that I cannot wish to marry you, you say nothing of you not wishing to become my bride, Mrs Brown, and that leads me to infer that in fact you do not have any objection.’

The colour came and went in Marianne’s face.

‘I…I am your housekeeper, sir. A servant. Naturally…’

‘Naturally you would not refuse to become my wife? Is that what you were about to say? Well, it may interest you to know that it is not the humble Mrs Brown, widowed and with a child to nurture, I wish to marry. No, it is the delicious woman who came to my arms and my bed, who gave herself to me with such sweet abandon, that I intend to make my wife—and for reasons that would no doubt cause the sour Reverend Johnson to call down hellfire and brimstone on my head if he were to know of them. But of course he won’t. It is only you, Marianne, to whom I shall whisper them, in the privacy of our marriage bed, when I kiss every inch of your quivering silk-fleshed body, when I silence your sweet cries of pleasure with my own greater cry of need to share that pleasure…’

‘Sir…Mr Denshaw…’

‘Heywood, Marianne. My name is Heywood, and I have ached badly these last days to hear the sound of it on your tongue…’

His words dizzied and enraptured her, and Marianne knew that if he were to take her by the hand now and lead her to his bed and those pleasures he had spoken of she could not and would not deny him.

‘You are saying that…that you wish to marry me, sir…Heywood…and…and make me your true wife in every way there is?’ How her voice trembled and shook with the force of her feelings and her hopes.

‘I am saying exactly that, Marianne.’

‘But we have only just met. You hardly know me.’

‘I know that you saved my life, and I know too that you are a good housewife.’

Marianne looked up at him and saw that his last words were meant to tease her. Suddenly the grey eyes were sparkling with fun and laughter. Her heart turned over inside her chest.

‘You are also a good mother.’

Marianne’s heart became as heavy as a stone. ‘Sir—Heywood…’

‘The child—what name does he have?’

‘It is Miles…’ Marianne answered him quietly.