Encounter with Venus (13 page)

Livy, drawing in a breath as if to restrain her feelings of anger, shook her head. “You haven’t had your meal yet, Uncle. I can eat after we’ve fixed you a nice, thick oatmeal broth with those bits of lamb you like so much.”

“Nae, nae, Mrs. Nicol can take care o’ me,” her uncle declared, less loudly but just as firmly. “Go along, woman, go along.” And he waved her away.

George followed Livy out of the sickroom, feeling triumphant. He’d behaved like a white knight and rescued the maiden from servitude and starvation. She would surely fall upon him in tearful gratitude the moment that they were alone.

As soon as he closed the door behind him, however, she wheeled on him in fury. “How dared you!” she cried, her voice shaking.

“What?” He could only blink in utter confusion.

“Of all the damnable presumption! How dared you to take it upon yourself to interfere with the running of this household?”

“Interfere?” The accusation made no sense to him. “In what way did I—?”

“After being here less than a day, you cannot know how things are managed here. Yet you barged into my uncle’s room without being asked and proceeded to manipulate matters that you know nothing about.”

George was astounded. “But I only wanted to free you to have your dinner.”

“You think you were being kind, no doubt.”

“Well... yes.”

“Not authoritative and presumptuous?”

“Not at all.”

She put her hands on her hips in a stance of disgusted superiority. “Then let me tell you, my lord, that you’re off the mark. To try to free me from the sickroom was, without a doubt, an act of presumption.”

“I don’t see—”

“Of course you don’t see. The fact is that I
wanted
to be there. I try to be present at my uncle’s bedside as much as possible, for very good reasons.”

“Why?” George asked, trying his best to understand. “The man is obviously not at death’s door. You yourself told me that the doctor could find nothing wrong with him. So why must you hover over him all day?”

“The why of it is not your concern. But in my own defense, I will explain this much: if I left him alone with the servants, he might become so abusive that they would leave his employ. We’ve lost too many already. So I stay there as a buffer against his bile. As long as they’re convinced I’m on their side, they are willing to endure him.”

“Oh.” George, nonplussed, still couldn’t understand. Nor could he feel any sympathy for -her. The situation she’d described seemed to him to be ludicrous in the extreme. A spoiled, hot-tempered, foolish old man was tyrannizing the entire household. How, he wondered, could a strong-minded, sensible woman like Olivia Henshaw permit such a state to continue? But it was not his place to point that out. An uninvited guest had no right to comment on what he was not meant to see. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, not knowing what else to say.

“Saying ‘sorry’ is easy. Mending matters is not.”

“Is there anything I can do to mend them?”

“No. The best you can do is go up to bed.”

“Very well, then, ma’am, I will.” Since he’d been so summarily dismissed, he turned at once to the stairs. “I bid you good night.”

She didn’t need to recognize the stiffness in his posture to know she’d offended him. “My lord?” she called after him, her voice just a bit conciliatory.

Keeping his hand on the banister, he turned only his head. “Yes?”

She looked down at the toe of her shoe that was making nervous little circles on the carpet. “I was rude. I didn’t mean to... it’s just...” She looked up and met his eye. “I know you meant to be kind.”

“Yes, I did.” He ventured a small, wry smile. “I thought I was being a white knight rescuing a maiden in distress.”

But at those seemingly innocent words, she again became furious. “That’s just it!” she exclaimed, clenching her fists and stamping her foot. “That’s exactly what makes me wild.”

“I don’t understand.
What
makes you wild?”

“Your... your... your blasted smug attitude! You treat me as you would a helpless, befuddled old maiden aunt. I am
not
helpless. Dash it, George Frobisher, I don’t want or need your help, your sympathy, your white-knight kindness! I am
not your little old maiden aunt!
”

George was taken aback. “I never ... I don’t...”

“Oh, never mind,” she said, throwing up her hands in disgust. It occurred to him that her disgust was directed as much toward herself as to him. As she stalked off, she ‘added, “Just... just...”

“Yes?”

She didn’t bother to look back. “Just.. .
go to bed!
”

NINETEEN

The bed with its velvet hangings was comfortable enough, but George found it difficult to fall asleep. He tossed about for what seemed like hours. Livy’s angry accusation kept nagging at him. What had she meant when she’d said that he treated her like a maiden aunt? He didn’t understand exactly what she was accusing him of.
How does one behave toward a maiden aunt?
he asked himself. After all, he’d never had one. He suspected that one would be polite and respectful toward a maiden aunt. If that was how he’d been treating Livy—and he certainly hoped he had!—was there something wrong with that? Shouldn’t all ladies be treated courteously and respectfully? Unless he’d overdone it. Was Livy finding him too polite? Too formal? Too... too... ?

A sudden noise startled him awake. He sat up abruptly and rubbed his eyes, surprised to realize that he’d managed to fall asleep after all. But what was the dreadful sound that had awakened him?

It took him a moment to shake off the cobwebs of sleep before he remembered where he was. He had no idea of the time, but it was certainly not morning. The room was shrouded in darkness and no evidence of morning light seeped in from the many windows. Yet he could hear the sounds of querulous voices and running feet. Curious, he got out of bed and went to the door. As he opened it, he heard a woman cry, quite distinctly, “Get me some bandages, quick!”

The words were alarming. Something terrible must have happened. He had to go and offer help, although he suspected that Livy might not wish for his presence at whatever crisis was now occurring. She would undoubtedly find him presumptuous and interfering. She always seemed to find him so. He wondered, as he lit a candle, why she always found fault with him. He’d often been told by friends and acquaintances that he was a good sort of fellow. Why did she dislike him so?

Nevertheless, the sounds of urgent voices and running feet made him decide to act at once. Barefoot, and in his nightshirt, he ran out of the room and made his way downstairs. In the hallway of the floor below his, a dim ray of candlelight led him to the head of the main stairway in front of Sir Andrew’s bedroom. There he discovered the source of the light. It had come from a candelabra that had been placed on the floor, lighting two figures seated on the top step. As George came closer, he recognized Livy and Mrs. Nicol. They were both in their nightclothes, Livy bent over, with her head lowered onto her knees, and Mrs. Nicol holding her about the shoulders. George came up behind them. “Is something amiss?” he asked.

They both turned. At his first glance, George drew in a gasping breath. What he saw made him speechless. Livy had been hurt. Her long hair, unbound and falling wildly about her face and shoulders, was restricted at the top by a wide bandage that was wound about her head like a tilted hat, dipping low on her forehead just above her left eye. A smear of blood was already seeping through the bandage, marking with frightening accuracy the place on her forehead where she’d evidently been wounded. “Good God!” he muttered when his voice returned. “What happened?”

“Sir Andrew is what happened,” came McTavish’s voice from just behind him. The butler came round to the seated women and handed Livy a cup of steaming tea. “He threw a lamp at her.”

“He threw a lamp, but not at me,” Livy said in a quiet voice. “It was an accident.”

“Hummph,” grunted the butler.

George sat down beside her. “Are you in pain?”

“A bit,” she said, “but I’ll be all right.”

“You’ll have a black eye and a scar,” Mrs. Nicol declared sourly.

“Both of which will go away in time.” Livy lifted her head. “Don’t raise a dust over this, Mrs. Nicol,” she said, trying to sound firm despite a noticeable tremor in her voice. “Thank you for tending to me. Now, please, go off to bed, all of you.”

“And what about you, miss?” the butler wanted to know. “You ain’t going back in there to see yer uncle again, are ye?”

“No. The dose of laudanum Peters gave him should keep him sleeping ‘til tomorrow. I’ll just finish my tea, and then I’ll go to bed, too.”

Mrs. Nicol got to her feet, and the two servants each took a candle from the candelabra and reluctantly started down the hall toward the back stairs. George followed them until they were out of Livy’s hearing. Then he caught their arms to hold them back. “What brought on this latest burst of temper?” he demanded to know. “Did the old fellow smell leeks in his gruel again?”

Mrs. Nicol snorted. “So you heard that, did you? Well, this time, it was a stomach spasm.”

“He woke up in some pain,” the butler said, “an’ he rang for Peters—”

“—not caring a bit that it wasn’t quite four in the morning,” the housekeeper put in.

“Peters came running,” the butler continued, “an’ found him standing up, bent over and yowling like he had a knife in his innards. Poor Peters was scared out of ‘is wits.”

“So he ran for me,” Mrs. Nicol went on. “Miss Henshaw’s room is right down the hall, and she heard the commotion. So did Bridie, of course. They both came running into Sir Andrew’s room, and the three of us got him into bed. Whatever it was that bothered him seemed to have eased, but Miss Henshaw asked Peters to hold the lamp over him so she could see his face properly.”

“To see if ‘e looked like ‘e had the apoplexy, ye know,” McTavish explained.

“When Peters held up the lamp,” the housekeeper went on, “a bit of hot oil must have dripped on his face. You’d think a little bit of a burn wouldn’t cause such a foofaraw, but Sir Andrew let out a yowl you could hear all the way to Edinburgh.”

“That’s probably what woke me,” George said.

“It woke me, that’s fer certain,” the butler said. “I came runnin’ in my nightshirt, just like you.”

“Anyway,” Mrs. Nicol went on, “His High and Mighty grabbed the lamp from Peters’s hand and flung it away, not looking to see where. It hit Miss Henshaw right on the head. The poor lady dropped down like a stone.”

“That’s when I come in,” the butler continued. “It was a feery-fary, it was! On one side, Peters was tryin’ to quiet Sir Andrew. On the other, Mrs. Nicol was cradlin’ Miss Henshaw’s head an’ cryin’, an’ Bridie was havin’ hysterics. So, first I ordered Bridie off to bed. Then Mrs. Nicol an’ I picked up Miss Olivia an’ brought ‘er round. When she came to, she insisted that she was fine, but we saw her forehead trickling blood, so, while Peters gave the old man a dose of laudanum, I ran for the bandages. The rest ye know.”

“Yes,” George said with a troubled frown. “Well, thank you both.”

He bid them good night and returned to where Livy was sitting, drinking her tea. When he sat down beside her, she put down the cup and looked at him. “I’m sorry your sleep was disturbed, George. Please don’t worry about this. I’ll be fine. Do go back to bed.”

“I will, when you do. Meanwhile, with your permission, I’d like to tighten your bandage. The blood seems to be seeping down into your eye.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning her face up to him. “That is kind of you.”

“Kind? Not presumptuous?”

She smiled weakly. “Not this time.”

With the skill he’d learned in Spain in dealing with wounds, he undid the bandage, and studied the cut on her forehead. Relieved to see it was not as extensive as he feared, he mopped up the blood with the sleeve of his nightshirt, smoothed out her hair, and began the process of rewinding. “Does this sort of accident happen often?” he asked as he worked.

“No, of course not,” she said. “My uncle is really... that is, he is usually... very k—”

“You were not going to say ‘kind,’ were you?” he asked with a scornful laugh.

She tried to laugh with him, but her shoulders began to shake, and the laugh became a hiccough, and the hiccough became a sob. “He is n-not well, you see. N-not at all w-w—” Suddenly she was overcome with chest-heaving sobs.

Instinctively, he put his arms about her. “That’s all right,” he said, patting her shoulder. “You don’t have to make excuses for him. Not to me.”

“You d-don’t understand,” she said, weeping into his shoulder. “He t-t-took m-me in when I was s-s-small and n-n-nobody else w-w-wanted me.”

“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “Don’t cry.”

But she kept on sobbing. It was as if a wellspring of tears, which she’d held back for a very long time, suddenly burst forth. And in the midst of the wracking sobs, some almost-incoherent words came bubbling out of her. She seemed compelled to explain to George her uncle’s part in her life. George managed to grasp that her mother had died at her birth, that her father had contracted diphtheria and died when she was eight, that her uncle had taken her in but had never been capable of showing her much affection. It was indeed a pathetic story.