the way to Mayfair. That's what I need you for.”
“Mayfair?” he said with disbelief. “What'd anybody from 'ere be doin' in Mayfair?”
She debated whether to tell him to mind his own business, and decided swiftly against it. She needed him too much. Enid was too ill to wait until she found another cabby who was less skeptical or inquisitive.
“She lives there. She's been helping us organize the hospital for the fever!” She said it in her own most cultured accent.
“'Ad enough o' Limehouse, 'as she?” he said dryly, but there was no unkindness in his voice, and she could not see his face since he had his back to the light.
“For a while,” she replied. “Change of clothes and some more money.” It was a lie, but one to serve a better purpose. If she told him the truth, he might well whip up his horse and she'd never see him again.
“Get in!” he said agreeably.
She climbed in without hesitation, ignoring her wet skirts slapping around her ankles, and immediately the cab lurched forward.
As he had said, it was less than five minutes before they were outside the fever hospital, and she went inside to fetch Enid, who was by now so dizzy and faint she was unable to walk unaided. Hester and Callandra were obliged to come, one on either side of her to support her, and Hester thanked God in a silent prayer that the street lamp was around the corner and the cabby could see only the lurching figures of three women and not how ghostly the center one looked with her ashen face and half-closed eyes, and the sweat streaming off her, making her skin wetter even than the fine rain of the night could explain.
He peered at them in the gloom, and snorted. He had seen gentry drunk before, but the sight of a drunken woman always disturbed him. Somehow it was worse for a woman than a man, and the quality had not the same excuses.
Still, if she gave money for the sick, he would reserve judgment… this once.
“'Yal in,” he said, holding the horse steady as it smelled fear and threw its head up and took a step sideways. “'Old 'ard!” he ordered, pulling the rein tighter. “Come on!” He turned back to his passengers again. “I'll take yer 'ome.”
The journey was a nightmare. By the time they reached Ravensbrook House, Enid was hot and cold by turns, and seemed unable to keep her body from shaking violently. Her mind wandered as if she were half waking and half in dream.
As soon as they drew up, Hester threw open the door and almost fell to the pavement, calling out commands to the cabby to wait exactly where he was.
She rushed up the steps and rang the bell violently, then again and then a third time. She heard it jingling in the hall.
A footman came to the door, his expression fixed in furious disapproval.
When he saw a white-faced, bedraggled young woman with wild eyes and no hat, his offense knew no bounds. He was a good six feet tall, as a footman should be, and with excellent legs and a suitably supercilious mouth.
“Lady Ravensbrook is extremely ill in that hansom!” Hester said curtly.
“Will you please assist me to carry her inside, and then send for her maid and anyone else necessary to make her comfortable.”
“And who are you, may I ask?” He was shaken, but not to be stampeded by anyone.
“Hester Latterly,” she snapped back. “I am a nurse. Lady Ravensbrook is very ill. Will you please hurry, instead of standing there like a doorpost!”
He knew where she had been, and why. He wavered on the edge of argument.
“Are you hard of hearing?” she demanded more loudly. “Go and fetch your mistress before she falls insensible faint and may injure herself.” “Yes, ma'am.” He galvanized into action, striding past her down the steps and across the pavement gleaming wet in the lamplight to the hansom where the cabby was fingering the reins nervously, staring down at the doorway as if it were an open grave.
The footman flung the door open and with the expression of a man about to spur his horse into battle, poked his head and shoulders inside to lift Enid, who was now fallen sideways and almost unconscious. As soon as he had grasped her, which even for a man of his strength was not easy, he pulled her out and straightened up, bearing her in his arms back across the footpath towards the door.
Hester took a step down, fishing in her reticule for money to pay the cabby, but he stood up in his urgency to get his horse going, flicking the long whip over its ears, and was already away from the curb and increasing pace before she could go any farther.
She was surprised only for a moment. He knew where he had picked up his fare, and seeing the address to which he brought her, and the liveried footman, he had guessed the truth. He did not want her close enough to touch, or to take anything, even money, from her hand.
Hester sighed and followed the footman, closing the door behind her. He was standing in the center of the hall helplessly, Enid in his arms as lifeless as a rag doll.
Hester looked for a bell rope to pull.
“Bell?” she asked sharply.
He indicated with his head to where the ornamental rope hung. No other staff had come because presumably they knew it was his duty to answer the door. She strode over and yanked the rope more roughly than she had intended.
Almost immediately a parlormaid appeared, saw the footman, then Enid, and her face went white.
“An accident?” she said with a slight stammer.
“Fever,” Hester answered, going towards her. “She should go straight to bed. I am a nurse. If Lord Ravensbrook is willing, I shall stay and look after her. Is he at home?”
“No ma'am.”
“I think you should send for him. She is very ill.”
“You should have brought her sooner,” the footman said critically. “You had no right to leave her till she was in this state.”
“It came on very suddenly.” Hester held her tongue with difficulty. She was too tired and too distressed for Enid to have patience to argue with anyone, least of all a footman. “For heaven's sake, don't stand there, take her upstairs, and show me where I can find clean water, a nightgown for her, and plenty of towels and cloths, and a basin-in fact, two basins. Get on with it, man!”
“I'll get Dingle,” the parlormaid said hastily. And without explaining who that was, she turned on her heel and left, going back through the green baize door and leaving it swinging. Hester followed the footman up the broad, curved staircase and across the landing to the door of Enid's bedroom. She opened it for him and he went inside and laid Enid on the bed.
It was a beautiful room, full of pinks and greens, and with several Chinese paintings of flowers on the walls.
But there was no time to observe anything but the necessities, the ewer of water on the dresser, the china bowl and two towels.
“Fill it with tepid water,” Hester ordered.
“We have hot-”
“I don't want hot! I'm trying to bring her fever down, not send it up. And another bowl. Any sort will do. And please hurry up.”
With a flash of irritation at her manner, he took the ewer and left with the door ajar behind him.
He had been gone only long enough for Hester to sit on the bed beside Enid and regard her anxiously as she began to toss and turn, when the door swung wide again and a woman of about forty came in. She was plain and dowdy, and wore a gray stuff dress of rigid design, but extremely well cut to show an upright and well-shaped figure. At the present she looked in a state of considerable distress.
“I am Dingle, Lady Ravensbrook's maid,” she announced, staring not at Hester but at Enid. “What has happened to her? Is it the typhoid?” “Yes, I'm afraid so. Can you help me to undress her and make her as comfortable as possible?”
They worked together, but it was not an easy task. Enid now ached all over, her bones, her joints, even her skin was painful to the touch, and she had such a headache she could not bear to open her eyes. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, suffocatingly hot one moment and shivering the next.
