The Summer of You (7 page)

She would say no. It was decided. She had the politely refusing smile set on her face, the posture of the repentant. But then . . .

The breeze came again, a hint of jasmine tea leaves floating in the air. And suddenly, Jane was homesick for something she had forgotten. For a time before she knew how to flirt and before her face and figure set men afire. Back when she was scrawny and awkward and muddy and sticky and freckled and filled with the joy of being young and at widow Lowe’s door, hoping for lemon cakes with her jasmine tea.

She saw him smile as she raised her foot to cross the threshold, watched him start and turn as the kettle he had set on the kitchen fire began to whistle.

Tea. It was hot as blazes, and she was going to sit in the widow Lowe’s parlor and take tea. With, of all the people in all the world, Mr. Byrne Worth.

“My lady!” A voice came from behind her. Turning, Jane saw a young lad—one of the gardener’s assistants, she recognized—tumble out the wooded path, and head for her.

“My lady,” the boy said, after a few quick breaths, “I was sent to fetch you—your father . . . the Marquis said—”

Jane could feel the blood drain from her face. Something must have happened with her father. Another episode? Please, nothing serious. Please.

She glanced over her shoulder, into the house and met his eyes.

He was resting his weight against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed nonchalantly over his chest. He held her gaze, those strange bright blue eyes, razor-sharp in their assessment. But there was something else she saw there, other than intelligence and stone.

He nodded once, simply. And that’s all she needed.

With the young lad in her wake, she sped into the wooded path and back to the Cottage. Back to her life.

And away from him.

Byrne took the whistling water off the heat, placing it to the side, allowing it to cool, allowing the silence to engulf him. He was alone again. As he had designed and desired.

He was not good for people. He had long since recognized that fact, and his self-destructive ways were only worse when allowed full rein in the masses. It was the reason he moved all the way up here from London when he inherited.

That was almost a year ago. Initially, he came up here, intending to allow himself to go to the devil. He knew he couldn’t do it in front of his family, his brothers. They loved him so much it began to hurt. So he would allow himself to fade into his vices, his demons, away from anyone who knew of or about him.

But he hadn’t been able to—not entirely. Some little part of his mind resisted, insisting that he come back to the fore.

That same part of his mind won over his body—but that body still resisted being around people. He didn’t trust himself with them.

But that little part of his mind whispered now, How nice to see a familiar face.

She’s not that familiar, Byrne countered.

But at least she knew you—not like the others in town, who have only the worst opinion of you and stay away.

“They have the worst opinion of me because that’s what I gave them,” Byrne argued, somewhat surprisingly, out loud. “And they stay away because that’s what I wanted.”

Do you still want it?

Byrne looked around his little cottage. Its rooms still pristinely his aunt’s—minus a few ornaments and lace, but her crochet work lined the arms of the sofa, her watercolor paintings hung on the walls. But for a moment, when the red-haired inquisition came, flushed scarlet at his wet figure and still proceeded to follow him to the house, defiant of decorum . . . the still little house had felt alive, woken from its long winter. And it had felt warm.

It was nice to have someone to talk to, other than Dobbs.

And Byrne had to acknowledge that was true. They had talked surprisingly pleasantly. He hadn’t growled or swiped at her. He hadn’t wanted to.

But even if he found it pleasant, even if he was struck more than ever by the stillness of his life, he knew the minute he allowed himself to enter into the world again, the minute he went back to London, the minute he let anyone in, he would only end up destroying whatever little pieces of himself he had managed to rebuild.

He poured out the hot water into the pot of tea. Waited for it to steep. He didn’t even want it now. His body was invigorated by the swim and chilled by the air. His leg throbbed, the dull ache that was now his constant companion. He looked out the window, through the overgrown vines at the window frames, to the water beyond.

It was going to be a lovely day. The kind of day that invited brisk afternoon rides and meeting friends for picnics on the water.

And, as always, Byrne would spend it here, in this little house. Alone.

Lady Jane arrived back at the Cottage expecting pandemonium. Jason met her at the door, pacing back and forth in a dressing gown and bare feet.

“Jane!” he said, looking deeply relieved to see her and terribly annoyed to have been waiting so long. “I was trying to kick off to sleep, I came down to the library for something to read, and that’s where he is, and I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

“It’s all right,” she said, turning quickly down the corridor that led to the library, Jason at her heels.

“Jane—He didn’t recognize me,” Jason said, his voice breaking like it did when he was a child. He cleared his throat to get it under control.

It was the first time Jason had seen one of her father’s spells—and it seemed to truly shake him. Jane reached out and smoothed the lapels of Jason’s dressing gown. Then she smoothed her own hair and threw open the doors to the library.

She was prepared for the worst but was surprised to find her father sitting comfortably in one of the large velvet chairs by the fire, reading a sheaf of papers, with a pot of tea by his side.

“Ah! My dears, there you are. Did you know we have a half-finished sailing skiff in the carriage house? I commissioned it when you were still a babe, Jase, and only now just found the work order. Apparently, the carpenter I hired died unexpectedly and left us with only the spine of a sailing vessel and the rest of its makings.” He smiled up at them now, his eyes clear and strong. “What do you say, Jason—want to try your hand at woodworking this summer?”

It was as if there was nothing wrong—they had simply come to the lake for a few months of leisure. But for the small pile of jumbled papers next to the library’s great desk, signs of a previous agitation, Jane spied as she sat in the matching velvet chair opposite their father.

“Father,” Jane ventured cautiously. “May I see?” She held her hand out and, with a jovial smile, took the antique work order he handed over. She glanced at the pages and then back at her father. He was beaming at her, looking as if he had not a care in the world.

“Now, my dear,” the Duke reached out and took his daughter’s free hand in his. “You’re looking very lovely today. The northern climate has always agreed with you.”

Jane smiled prettily at the compliment—truth be told, the northern climate had always agreed with her. But it had also very much agreed with her mother. And Jane didn’t know whom her father thought he was speaking to. She chanced a look over to the door, where Jason stood, his mouth a hard line, his pallor unaccountably white.

Their father had just recognized Jason, which boded well. Jane had hope she had been called home for no reason.

“Are you having tea?” she asked, a smile on her face.

“Certainly, my dear, certainly,” her father said. “It is, after all, teatime.”

Jane felt her smile falter; a tiny crack fractured her hope. It was not yet noon.

She sought her brother’s eyes again and found them confused, then embarrassed. He looked down at his shoes, contemplating. The Duke smiled, uncomprehending.

But before Jane could say anything, New Nurse Nancy entered the room, bearing a tray of medicines, a harried footman close on her heels.

“Ah, milady,” Nancy said in her brisk but kind way. “Come to join your father for tea?”

“Yes, Nancy, I think we could both use a spot,” Jane said, her voice steady but cold. “The Duke was alone when I came in?” The question of Nancy’s whereabouts, and why she would have left their father alone during a spell hung in the air.

It was answered when Nancy looked to Jason, surprise apparent on her face.

Ah, Jane thought. She had left their father with Jason while she went to collect her medicines. And Jason had abandoned him to pace the hallway.

But Nancy, true to her professionalism, simply said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. It will not happen again.”

This tension did not go unnoticed by the Duke. He withdrew his hand from Jane’s and began to nervously pick at his wrist, playing with the cuff of his sleeve. A sign of agitation, one Jane had come to know and take heed to.

“What’s going on?” the Duke asked. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, Father!” Jane said, impulsively reaching for him. But he recoiled from her touch. “We should have tea—would you like me to pour?”

A look of confusion crossed his face, childlike, fleeting, but there. His eyes came to rest on the tea tray, and it soothed him. He turned his gaze to Jane, and she could see it was no longer happy, but at least it was calm. That is, until Jason shifted his weight to his other leg, the small flash of movement catching the Duke’s eye.

“Who is that man?” the Duke asked, fear in his voice. “Who are you, sir?”

Jason looked shocked, unable to answer. He and Jane could only watch as the Duke rose out of his seat and backed away from Jason, as if confronted by an attacker. “What’s going on? What’s happening? Who is that man?”

“Now, sir, calm down, if you please,” Nancy began, moving to him in slow, easy steps. “We’ll take a little drink, and you’ll feel much better.” But the Duke must have felt that the world was closing in on him, because he began to back away from Nancy, too. Nancy, whom he had laughed with and told old stories to during the long days in the carriage up to the lake. He could see none but his own fear. And that’s when he broke into a run.

He didn’t get very far, only turning and taking a few steps. He was stopped by the great crash and thunder of overturning the tea tray, the piping hot tea spilling out over his hands, which were out to brace his fall.

THE afternoon was a blur. Nancy scooped up the Duke, helping him to the settee, as he cried like a child in pain. She managed to calm him down enough to take a sip of water, laced kindly with laudanum. The skin on his hands was angry and raw, but the laudanum took away some of the pain and his agitation, as Jane sent their fastest groom out to Reston to bring back Dr. Lawford.

Jane then took the immobile Jason out of the room, leaving their father to Nancy’s ministrations. They sat in the drawing room, where that morning Jane had been writing letters, when she saw carriages begin to pull up the drive and decided to go out. A small tray of cards was on a table, evidence of their butler’s tact in telling all who tried to call that morning that the family was unavailable. She would have to return those calls, Jane thought vaguely.

They waited now, together, for Dr. Lawford to arrive. Jason had quickly changed into a clean set of clothes, but his face still bore the exhaustion of his misspent evening. However, he was wide awake.

“This is what he’s like now?” Jason asked, breaking the silence, his voice drawn.

“This is what it’s like now,” Jane confirmed, her tone even.

Jason was quiet again, his gaze constant on the window.

“How many doctors did he see in London?” Jason asked.

“All of them.” Jane sighed. “They said there’s nothing they can do.”

“We’ll see what Dr. Lawford has to say,” Jason said resolutely, his chin once again stubborn, his posture once again young and defiant.

Jane didn’t hold much hope that a country doctor would have anything more to say than dozens of London’s finest, but she let Jason hold on to hope. She had been through every thought and feeling he was having right now, and she merely had to wait for him to catch up.

But surprisingly, it was not Dr. Lawford who would be proffering his newest opinion—it was an alarmingly young man named Dr. Andrew Berridge.

Dr. Berridge, for all his youth, presented himself as entirely knowledgeable. He salved and bound the Duke’s hands and then took a good hour examining him head to toe, Nancy hovering the whole while, seeing that the Duke remained calm and comfortable during the examination.

It was all Jane could do to sit still in the drawing room, waiting for the tall, kind-looking doctor to come and speak with them—and all she could do to get Jason to stay put, and not run out of the house, as she could see he was itching to do.

Finally, a footman admitted Dr. Berridge to the drawing room, and Jane rang for tea. She doubted any of them would drink it, but she rang all the same.

“Your father—apart from his hands,” Dr. Berridge began, as soon as the maid who brought the tea stepped away, “is fit, in terms of his body. His muscles are strong and his eyesight clear.”

As both Jane and Jason remained silent at this news, Dr. Berridge took it as his cue to continue. “But it is not the body that concerns you.”

Jane nodded, and Jason began pacing, framed against the windows in the bright afternoon sun. The doctor’s eyes followed her brother’s movements but then returned to her steady gaze.

Jane cleared her throat and related to the young doctor the whole of the story. How their father’s memory had become faulty, but not alarmingly so—easily attributed to age and a life well lived. But then after their mother’s death, it became, to her eyes, much worse.

“And you, my lord?” Dr. Berridge asked, stopping Jason in his pacing. “After your mother’s passing, did you notice this degeneration?”

Jason crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the window, his movements as careful and cold as his words. “I agree with my sister’s evaluation.”

The young doctor held Jason’s gaze for a moment, seeming to assess him. But the moment passed, and he returned his attention to the matter at hand. “I took the opportunity to confer with your nurse. She is remarkably knowledgeable. She attributed this latest lapse to perhaps the stress of travel having caught up with your father finally. Would you say that his—”

“Spells,” Jane supplied.

“—spells are brought on by situations of increased anxiety?”

“Sometimes,” Jane replied. “But it seems he can have a spell when he is calm as well.”

“This is all bloody well and good, sir,” Jason interjected, “but is there anything you can actually do for the man?”

Jane blushed at her brother’s harsh words but couldn’t bring herself to admonish him. She had once felt that frustration. She often still did.

Dr. Berridge obviously had some experience with a family’s anxiety. His voice softened away from the clinical. “I am sorry. I have little experience with these matters.” He paused briefly, considering his words. “I do have a school friend who now works in a sanitarium in Manchester . . .”

“My father does not belong in a sanitarium,” Jason interrupted, and Jane shook her head vehemently. More than one doctor in London had made that suggestion, and Jane had quit their service immediately.

“I did not intend to suggest such a thing.” Dr. Berridge held up his hands, peacemaking. “My colleague has told me of patients with memory problems that have had improvements with the implementation of routines and patterns.” He ventured all this kindly, but Jason spat out a bark of laughter.

“Routines? Patterns?” He rubbed his temples. “My father is a world-class poet, scientist. His mind sharper than your scalpel. Wordsworth himself once praised my father’s descriptions of Merrymere’s peaks and shores. And you think he can gain his mind through . . . repetition?” He sent his sister a smirk of superiority. “Jane, have you ever heard the like?”

“No, I haven’t,” Jane replied quietly. “And that’s something at least, isn’t it?” She eyed her brother, who swung his look of disgust from her to the doctor. “My father will be fine,” he said, conviction in his voice if not his heart. “Without your patterns.”

And he let the slam of the door echo behind him.

“I’m sorry about my brother,” Jane said smoothly, with her best charmingly exasperated smile. It failed to reach her eyes.

Dr. Berridge waved it aside. “He’s young. Younger than the village led me to believe.”

“He’s four and twenty,” Jane supplied absently, earning a surprised glance from her guest. “Could you . . .” She hesitated. “Could you write your friend in Manchester about his methods?”

“Certainly, my lady,” Dr. Berridge replied. “I’m very curious about their effects as well.”

“You have to understand, the other doctors I’ve spoken with—they either write my father’s condition down to his age, or they want to keep him bedridden with laudanum—or they want to prod his skull with needles, drain the fire from his head. And I couldn’t—”

Dr. Berridge nodded. “Your father is of an age where memory fades—even if his own difficulties outpace what is considered normal. But this is a time of great learning—you were right to cast off the medieval.”

When Jane inquired about his medical training and learned the man came from hospitals in Cambridge and then London, she could not help but ask, “How did a man of your liberal mind end up in Reston?”

This earned a quick smile from the young doctor. “It is a bit of an adjustment, I must admit. But when working at those large hospitals, I discovered a desire to know my patients—not just as bodies but as people. When Dr. Lawford offered the position, I accepted.”

Jane rose, and Dr. Berridge followed suit. She walked with him to the door of the drawing room, pausing with her hand on the knob. “I do ask—that is, I would greatly appreciate—if you, in your letter to your friend in Manchester, kept your patient anonymous?” She looked up at him hopefully, and he gave a quick bow in response. “Of course, my lady. A doctor cannot practice without keeping his patient’s confidence. And that includes,” he added, before she could think of it, “keeping said confidence from the village as well.”

Having greatly relieved her mind, Jane led the doctor to the front door, when she offered her hand.

“I do not wish to offer false hope, my lady. Your father is ill and will likely become more so,” he said, his hand releasing hers.

She simply smiled at him as he took his leave. Once the door closed, Jane took a moment to herself, leaning her back up against the wall and closing her eyes, letting air into her lungs.

“Mooning over him already, are you?” Jason called from the top of the great staircase.

He sat there like a child exiled, Jane thought, even as her eyes narrowed at his spiteful words.

“You always did like a pretty face,” he continued blithely, “even better if it’s a bit below your station. What was it—the music tutor, correct? When you were fourteen?”

“What is it that annoys you, Jase? The fact that he’s a man of good looks, or one of talent and training?” If he was going to poke at her, she would twist the knife in his vulnerable spots—and Jason always regretted his lack of accomplishment.

“No matter,” he retorted. “You shall have to commit his talents to memory. We’re going back to London.”

“You want to move Father. Again?” Jane sighed. “Didn’t you hear what the doctor said? About the difficulties of travel contributing to his confusion?” She mounted the stairs and slowly climbed, measuring her words with every step. “Repeating the journey would be far from helpful.”

“I don’t care,” Jason grunted, petulant.

“Well, I know you care about the gossip having us reappear back in Town would stir up.”

“I thought you wanted to go back to Town. I thought you hated it here,” Jason replied. “I thought you wanted Father near to better doctors and you nearer your friends, dancing the night away.”

Jane thought for a moment about London. About all the medically minded men who had sat with their wigs and their instruments and frustrated her to the point of crying. She thought about the people she had left behind, not friends, really, save a few, but people that she would have to smile at and flatter, laugh and dance with, flounce about and be vivacious, sharpened, catty, daring, witty Lady Jane Cummings for.

Then she thought about all the people who called on her yesterday, all of them recalling her escapades at age five, all of them hoping she would return those calls, long, tedious hours spent in long, tedious but ultimately kind company. Then she thought about the doctor—his practice provincial, but his mind not. And then, unaccountably, her mind flashed to that morning, to the oddest of conversations had with a half-dressed man by a lake, and for a few rare moments, she was herself, her carefree, younger self.

And all of it, all of who she was expected to be, drained her.

She dropped herself to the stairs next to her brother. And sat there.

“When Mother died, and you headed off for adventure,” she said in a whisper, “I thought the worst of it was being left by myself. But then Father began to . . . deteriorate, and I discovered I was wrong. The most frightening thing was realizing I was the one in charge.”

Jason regarded her queerly. “What do you mean?”

“I’m exhausted, Jason,” she said.

“God, so am I,” he replied. “I still haven’t slept yet.”

“I’m exhausted by being alone. By shouldering the weight of this family alone.” She looked him dead in the eye, forced him to meet her gaze. “If we go back to London, you would disappear into your pack of friends altogether. But you don’t get to avoid this anymore.”

“Avoid what?” Jason asked, and Jane could feel her heart break a little, as she walked past him on her way to lie down. He simply had no idea.

Your life, she thought silently, leaving her bewildered and angry brother behind.

In her room, which had not been redecorated since her childish love of sunny yellow had waned, Jane went to her bed and sat. She felt the unconventional day drip down her spine like syrup from a tree. Jane had almost fallen asleep sitting upright when a soft knock sounded at her door.

“Yes?” she responded, admitting a young maid to the room.

“Pardon me, milady,” the girl spoke in the sharp regional tones and looked to be about fifteen. “This just came for you.” She hefted a small paper-wrapped box, placed it on the bed next to Jane, and excused herself.

Jane’s curiosity won out over her tiredness, and she slowly picked open the wrappings, revealing a large tin.

Of tea.

Widow Lowe’s tea—and Jane’s favorite. She pulled open the tin, releasing the vibrant smells of earthy jasmine leaves, and spicy sweetness, and finding inside a small note.