A Baron for Becky (25 page)

Chapter Twenty

There was a fog. No.
Heavier than a fog. A bank of clouds. A blanket, almost, covering
everything. Sometimes, she could see through it a little, or hear a
few words, or feel a touch. Sarah came to visit. She was sure of
that. Her belly hurt. Was it the baby? No. The baby was gone. There
was a grief there, somewhere just out of reach, waiting to consume
her, but she wouldn’t think of it. She was so hot. No, she was
cold. So cold, she was sweating.

Voices. Hands
washing her, changing her. Hands touching her intimately. No! She
wasn’t going back there!

“Hush, Becky.
Hush. Don’t struggle, my love.” Hugh’s voice. She must be dreaming,
then. Hugh didn’t love her. She leant into the arms that restrained
her anyway.

Another man’s
voice. It must be a dream. Hugh would never hold her for another
man. “...fever, my lord... infection... best I can do... crisis...”
Becky held desperately to the belief that if Hugh were there, she
was safe, and tried to ignore what was happening further down: the
scraping, the vile smell.

More washing.
So hot. Cooler, please... There, someone lifting her, holding a
cool drink to her lips. Hugh’s voice again. “Slowly, Becky,
slowly.”

She had been
sick for two weeks, her maid told her. They had been sure she would
die. The master would not leave her side, “No, not for a moment,
not till the doctor said the crisis was past. Then, off he went to
sleep, and that was fifteen hours ago, my lady.”

She turned, but
he was not in the bed he had promised they would always share. Even
the last weeks before Christmas, after she had driven him away with
her sordid story, he had come each night to their bed. He didn’t
desire her anymore, and who could blame him? But he had come to
their bed each night and held her when he thought she was
asleep.

But that was
before she failed him, of course, before she had a girl instead of
the son he needed.

The maid was
speaking again, asking something. She worked back through her
memory of the sounds. The baby. Did Lady Overton want to see the
baby? “No. No, thank you. I think I will just sleep.”

Hugh brought
the baby to her later, the reminder of her failure. She turned her
head away to hide her tears, but she couldn’t stop her shoulders
from shaking with sobs, and he left. But not for long. He took the
baby away and came again to sit with her.

He was kind,
always so kind. She couldn’t bear to face him. Poor Hugh. How much
disappointment must lurk in his eyes, stuck in this marriage to a
harlot and not even a son to show for it! After a while, the
feigned sleep became real, and when she woke again, he was
gone.

Two of the
maids were talking as they cleaned out the fireplace and re-laid
the fire.

“Poor master.
Losing this one, too, happen.”

“The mistress?
Mendin’, an’t she?”

“Same as
t’other, the first Lady Overton. Had the bairn and was
mendin’.”

A bairn?
Becky’s mind was slow and dull. Surely Hugh had said nothing about
a baby?

“But er
wouldna’ look at un. Not once. Cried ever so, if we brung un.
Another little girl, it was.”

“Jus’ like this
one!” said the listening maid, thrilling to the drama.

“Then,” the
story-telling maid slowed and deepened her voice, “one day ’er sent
for t’bairn. And walked out of t’house and into the lake.”

“No!”

“True as I
stand here. Both of ‘em drowned dead, and the master near
demented.”

“But why? Why
did er do it?”

Yes. Why? Becky
wanted to know, too. She was holding the fog back by main force,
reaching for the words the maid dripped so slowly. If she had the
energy for it, she would hate that other wife, the one who had told
Hugh he was ugly, who had abandoned him and taken his child. But
something was wrong. Hugh had told her he could not have a
child.

“Feart,” the
gossiping maid said. Afraid, Becky wondered? Afraid of what.

“Nobbut a bit
to do now, Mary. Just tha wipe the tiles while I set the fire
alight. Yes, feart, I reckon. The whole house knew t’ bairn wasna’
the master’s, and er thought he’d set her aside, happen.”

Ah. Poor Hugh.
History repeats. Becky listened to the retreating maids and wept
for her husband’s losses until she cried herself to sleep.

Becky improved
so slowly that Hugh had to compare one Sunday with the next, but
bit by bit, she improved. Physically, at least. When he and Mrs
Goodfellow held a belated Twelfth Night party for the girls, she
was not well enough to attend, though she roused sufficiently to
admire the new clothes Mrs Goodfellow had sewn for their dolls, and
the little wooden boxes Hugh had crafted, with the help of the
estate carpenter, to hold them.

A few moments
were all she could manage, and when he asked if she wanted to give
the girls the shawls she had been embroidering, she shook her head.
“You,” she said, so he found them in the drawer of her chest. Four.
She must have made an extra one in secret, after she knew Mrs
Goodfellow had a child. He was not sure which colour she intended
for which child, but she didn’t answer when he asked, so he and Mrs
Goodfellow decided, before the governess took the children back to
the nursery floor.

He called the
doctor back the next day. The man diagnosed an imbalance of the
humours, and prescribed bleeding, which left Becky so close to
death’s door that when the doctor visited again, Hugh sent him away
and told him not to return.

It took more
than a week before she was as well as she had been for the Twelfth
Night party.

A few days
later, Becky sat up for half an hour, while the children made their
daily visit after tea. She smiled and asked what they had been
doing, and Hugh rejoiced, but the bleakness settled over her again,
as soon as they left.

A fortnight
passed, and she was able to move to her couch, and then a week
later, come down to his study, where she could recline on cushions
and read or write letters. Though she didn’t. He glanced up
frequently from his work. She watched the fire, or lay with her
eyes closed.

She would make
an effort for the girls, so he had Mrs Goodfellow bring them to her
several times a day, for short visits, sending them away again
before she outran her small store of strength.

He left her
only when estate business took him outside, or to spend time with
their daughters, especially Sarah. She was frightened, and
reassuring her broke his heart a little more every day.

Becky wouldn’t
look at the baby, wouldn’t choose a name or comment on the names
Hugh suggested. Little Isabelle Eleanor Hope Rebecca Antonia
Overton was baptised in the presence of her father, three of the
servants standing in as proxy godparents, since Aldridge, his
mother, and the Countess of Chirbury could not be expected to brave
the bitter winter weather to make their way so far north.

“Isabelle for
your mother,” Hugh told Becky. He’d had to consult his copy of the
marriage licence to find the name, because Becky didn’t answer when
he asked her, just shook her head and looked bewildered, as if his
words made no sense.

He gave up
trying to persuade Becky to take the baby in her arms, afraid she
would cry herself into another illness.

Belle, they
called her, and beautiful she was, a dear, quiet little thing who
only cried when she was hungry, and who would happily lie for hours
sleeping or gazing up into the faces of her sisters, the wet nurse,
the governess, or any of the nursery staff who could persuade her
father to surrender her.

Holding Belle
comforted Hugh, and he sat rocking her against his shoulder for an
hour or more at a time, while Becky sat or lay nearby with her eyes
closed, ignoring them both.

Becky ate very
little, spoke even less, and only smiled when the girls came to
tell her about their day. And each day her smiles grew rarer and
more distant, and the bleak emptiness in her eyes spread.

He was losing
her. Each day, she faded more, even as he chivvied the cook to
invent some new delicacy to tempt her appetite, or rode through the
snow to the village for the post in hopes of a letter to amuse her,
or read aloud to the little girls with one eye on her still form.
And each day he realised anew how much he had come to love her.

Then, one day
in early February, he was called away to the stables where heavy
snow had collapsed the roof of a lean-to. He returned to find her
standing at the window, looking out at the garden. Filled with joy
that she had stood and walked to the window on her own, he hurried
to her side.

“Hugh.” Her
voice, as always nowadays, was a calm and distant monotone, all
emotion leached away. She glanced sideways at him, then turned her
attention to the lake, covered in thick ice on which the four
children were skating, with various levels of success.

“Would you like
to go out and watch, Becky? Shall I tell the maid to fetch a
coat?”

Would that be
enough to keep her warm? He couldn’t risk her catching a chill.
“And a shawl?”

She
misinterpreted his frown. “Don’t be cross, Hugh. I would never take
the baby. I have seen you with her. I know how you love her.” She
smiled, a smile so sad, it dragged at his gut. “You are such a good
man, Hugh. Polyphemia should have left her little daughter. She
would have been safe with you.” She turned back to the window. “It
is no use. The ice is too thick. I will have to wait.” And she made
her slow and careful way back to the
chaise longue
by the
fire.

Chapter Twenty-One

That day, Hugh wrote to
Aldridge. “Come immediately. Any way you can. As fast as you can.
Becky is threatening to kill herself and I can’t...” He crossed out
the last eight words, and replaced them so the last sentence read,
“Becky needs you.”

He wrote
several copies and addressed them to all the luxurious places the
Marquis of Aldridge might be holed up for the winter, with a
notation on the front saying they were urgent and should be sent
on. Then, Hugh settled in to watch Becky even more closely, until
her rescuer arrived to save her again.

Aldridge must
have been closer than Hugh expected. Three days after he sent his
letters, a train of elegant sleighs coasted up the drive.
Carriages, really, but with skids rather than wheels, each pulled
by a pair of sturdy horses. The children, taking advantage of a
break in the weather to play in the snow, stopped in their tracks
and watched.

From the study
window, Hugh could see three of the ornately carved and painted
sleighs turn away towards the stable yard, and the remaining two
continue to the front steps. He was not surprised all five sported
the Haverford crest.

He excused
himself to Becky, who didn’t look up from the fire she was
examining so intently, and sent a maid to sit with her while he
went down to greet his guest. He pasted on a smile. Hugh had sent
for the arrogant, self-centred, wife-stealing son-of-a-bitch. And
if Becky wanted to go with him, then that was the price Hugh would
pay for Becky to be well again. Even if it meant losing Belle.

Smile. He
needed to smile.

One carriage
was disgorging an enormous number of retainers. How had they all
fit? Sitting on one another’s knees? Aldridge stood at the door of
the other, handing down a lady. Surely even Aldridge wouldn’t bring
one of his paramours here!

Then the lady
lifted her head. The face under the bonnet brought his smile out in
truth.

He hurried down
the steps to greet her. “Your Grace. I am so glad you have
come.”

Then Aldridge
was there, right in his face. “Overton, you scum-sucking louse!
What have you done to Becky? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll...”