‘We’ll get you home and into the warmth. Then perhaps I should go for the doctor.’ Lucy took the harness of the little horse again and, with one hand on one of Adam’s legs and the other guiding the horse down the moorside, she slowly made her way from the wild moor down to the farmyard. She was thankful when she arrived in the yard and saw the lights and smoke rising from the farmhouse. She’d found Adam and he was alive – that was all that mattered for now, she thought, as she took the horse and its rider as near the kitchen door as she could, before holding out her arms for Adam to take, as he slid off the back of the horse.
‘Steady now, take your time. Let’s get you up these stairs and into bed. I’ll bring the bed-bottle up, once you are in bed, and that will warm you up.’ Lucy was Adam’s crutch as he walked, step by step, up the stairs to his bedroom.
He sat, still sodden, on the edge of his bed and looked up at Lucy. ‘Sorry, I haven’t the energy to undress. Can you help me, please?’ He shivered and shook, his voice feeble as he begged her with his eyes.
‘Yes, sir. Let’s get you into a clean nightshirt and washed, and then into bed.’
Lucy had never seen a naked man before, and she blushed as she started to peel the peat-covered clothes off her master’s body. She was trying her best to ignore his manly parts as she pulled his breeches off and put a clean nightshirt over his head, before washing his face and hands and then lying him down in bed.
‘I’ll go and get the doctor, as you look to be running a fever.’ Lucy looked at Adam and pulled the sheets over him.
‘No – no doctor!’ Adam protested. ‘You’ll find some laudanum drops in a bottle in the top drawer over there. Just give me one of those drops – it’ll cure my fever and help me sleep.’ He closed his eyes, too ill to worry that Lucy had seen him naked and that now she knew his secret addiction. She passed him the laudanum, which he took with shaking hands and then collapsed onto his pillow. He sighed and looked up at her. ‘Thank you, you’ve saved my life. Now you must go home. Leave me – your parents will be worried about you.’ He closed his eyes.
Lucy looked down at him as she stood up. How could she leave him in such a state? If she had been even an hour later in finding him, he would surely have perished in the cold of the peat bog. She tiptoed out of the bedroom and went to place the kettle back on the fire, and fill the stoneware bed-bottle to put under Adam’s bedcovers. She hung her rain-sodden shawl back up behind the kitchen door and towelled dry her long hair, before taking her sodden boots off her feet and warming them at the fireside. The steam rose from her soaked skirt and she shivered herself, as she filled the bed-bottle with boiling water from the kettle, after taking her dress off and hanging it on the clothes drier above the kitchen fire. She was about to take the bottle upstairs, when there was a knock at the door and she hurried to answer it, opening it only slightly, until she knew who was behind it.
‘You are here then, our lass. We thought something had happened to you. Mother’s bothering to death, and she made me walk up to see what you are about.’ Bill looked at his daughter, half-dressed and with her hair still damp, with a bed-bottle in her hand. ‘It’s like that, is it? Well, don’t come running back to us when you are in trouble. I thought Adam Brooksbank was a decent man, but obviously not, as you have next to nothing on.’ Bill scowled at his daughter.
‘It’s not what it looks like, Father. He’s ill in bed – he nearly died tonight, sucked down into the mire at the top of the moor. I’ve just pulled him out, with the help of the horse. In fact the poor animal is still standing in the yard. I’ve only stripped my dress off because I was sodden to the bone. And this bottle is to warm Adam up, as he’s feverish, shivering and exhausted. Come and see for yourself – he’s in bed and all his peat-caked clothes are on the floor. I don’t think I should really leave him on his own tonight.’
Lucy opened the door for her father and watched as he looked around the farmhouse, and at her clothes drying above the fire.
‘He’s up there – climb up the stairs and tell me what you think. He won’t have the doctor. He’s taken some drops of laudanum and says that will see him right.’ Lucy ushered her father up the creaking stairs to the bedroom, where Adam lay, sweating but asleep, in his bed. ‘He’s caught a chill. Look at the beads of sweat running down his head. He doesn’t want to be on his own tonight, and he should have the doctor.’
Bill looked concerned as he heard Adam mumble in a strange language under his breath. ‘He’s wandering in his mind – that’ll be the laudanum and the fever.’
‘I can’t leave him, Father, he’s too ill. I’ll stop until the fever breaks or goes the other way, God forbid.’ Lucy placed the bed-bottle under the bedcovers and picked the dirty, peat-covered clothes up from the bedroom floor and looked at her father. ‘I’m going to stay,
