“Nonsense,” retorted Lady Dalrymple, her voice as hoarse as a whisper. “You have dances and parties to attend—walks—and shopping with that delightful Miss Austen. Never mind an old lady like me. Life is for the living. Besides,” she added, gesturing to a slender figure shyly hanging back amid the shadows, “Mary can stay right at my elbow. I have full confidence in her nursing abilities.”
Mary? Mary Sykes?
Lady Wickham’s former scullery maid stepped forward into the candlelight. In livery that properly fit her narrow frame, and with clean and shining dark hair peeking out from under her white mobcap, she was not at all an unattractive girl. With no thought of censoring her behavior, C.J. rushed forward to greet her. For a moment, they held each other like long-separated siblings, their faces streaming with tears.
“I’ve tried to do my best by ’er ladyship,” Mary sniffled apologetically, focusing her attention on the palsied medic who was pacing the room.
Dr. Squiffers appeared self-conscious when C.J. cornered him. “At your insistence, Miss Welles, I have not bled her ladyship,” he assured her.
She shot him a look of warning. “You had best be telling me the truth or you have only begun to taste my displeasure.”
Suddenly, C.J. realized that two more pairs of eyes had been upon her since she’d entered her aunt’s room. Lady Oliver sat by the other side of the bed like Cerberus guarding the gates of hell. If she had indicated her disapproval when Miss Welles embraced the new serving girl, C.J. never heard it. Lady Oliver’s nephew had positioned himself by the window, where he hung back, alternately twisting his signet ring and anxiously chewing on his thumbnail in a most ungentlemanly fashion.
C.J. had not seen him since the first and only time they had made love.
“I was watching for you, Miss Welles,” he admitted as he drew C.J. into his arms. Not even Lady Oliver could object to such compassion during a time of crisis. His warmth and the security of his embrace were a godsend.
“What is Dr. Squiffers doing here?” C.J. whispered suspiciously.
“What he perceives to be his duty, I imagine.”
“I expressly forbade his presence.” She noticed someone skulking in a corner of the bedchamber trying to appear invisible. Saunders. Only the mistrustful lady’s maid could have been responsible for Squiffers’s return.
“Have no fear,” Darlington soothed. “He has done nothing but wring his hands and wear out the carpet with his steady tread.”
“I should like everyone to leave the room,” C.J. requested of the earl. Her wish became his effectively issued command, and with minimal fuss the countess’s visitors were hastily ushered from the bedchamber.
C.J. filled a tumbler with cool water from the ewer by the bedside table. Then she opened the carpetbag, removed the blue velvet spencer that had protected the bag’s important contents from discovery, and drew out the various envelopes of pills, placing them on the table by the bed. She had no way of knowing that Saunders had sent Mary down to the kitchen on some pretext and was herself squinting a jaundiced eye through the keyhole. Lady Oliver, refusing to wait in a corridor like a commoner, suggested that Dr. Squiffers join her in the parlor for a glass of her hostess’s finest ruby port, declaring, “Neither time nor wine should go to waste.”
C.J. extracted a nitroglycerin tablet, electing to give the countess a low dosage of the beta-blocker. “Aunt, I am going to make a highly irregular request of you: I pray you not to ask me what apothecary provided this remedy, nor how I came by it.”
Lady Dalrymple looked at her “niece,” her eyes as wide and trusting as a small child’s. She regarded the colorful object in C.J.’s hand. “It looks quite like a pastille,” she said, managing a laugh. “You truly believe that this magical pill will cure me?”
“If you do not take it, I cannot promise that you will regain any greater degree of health than you enjoy at present,” C.J. counseled gravely.
“Well then,” the countess sighed dubiously, “if following your regimen will enable me to feast at your wedding breakfast,” she continued slyly, “I see no other alternative. Hand me the glass, Cassandra.”
There was a discreet knock at the door. C.J. hid the envelopes, then admitted Mary, who slipped into the room with a cup of tea.
“For ’er ladyship.”
“Thank you, Mary. But you did not have to make tea at this late hour.”
“But I did,” the serving girl corrected. “Saunders told me ’er ladyship required it. And not to dawdle, or I’d get what for, for sure.” She placed the steaming cup of fragrant chamomile tea on the table by Lady Dalrymple’s bedside.
Saunders again.
“Not to dawdle?” C.J. was appalled. “Mary, I can only surmise by your presence here that you no longer work for Lady Wickham. And you certainly are not to take orders from Saunders. She is out of her part if she is giving you instructions, and I assure you, my aunt will hear of it. And Mary? No one in this house gives anyone ‘what for’; do you understand?”
“But I arrived just yesterday morning. And Saunders has been in ’er ladyship’s employ ever so much longer than I have,” protested the new girl in her own defense. “’Sides, she’s a proper maid, and I’m just lucky to have a situation at all.”
C.J. gently drew Mary aside. “You sweet, trusting girl. We do not threaten anyone with eviction or termination here. We are the ones who are lucky to have you in service. Remember that, Mary. Mind you, I have no proof in any way,” she whispered to the former scullery. “It’s merely a feeling that I have in here,” she continued, her
