Virtue's Reward (24 page)

How was a chap supposed to learn about port and stuff, if he wasn’t to be allowed to try any?

Without thinking any more about it, John jumped up and poured himself a glass. The forbidden liquid shone like a ruby. With a sense of intense excitement, the boy took a sip. It was queer stuff, but he could see how the taste could grow on a fellow. He took another.

“Aren’t you coming, John?” Milly cried. “Williams is coming to clear away the things.”

Instantly, John set down the glass and thrust it back behind the decanter. With the tingle of the port and the accompanying guilty excitement running in his veins, he went out to help build a snowman.

* * *

“Are you all right, sir?” Helena asked.

John looked up at her. They had rolled together several large balls of snow, and the girls were laughing and red-cheeked in the frosty air. John, in contrast, seemed to be the color of the snow. Helena walked up to him and felt his forehead. It was clammy.

“Good heavens, John, you are chilled. Are you ill? Won’t you come in?”

“I’m all right, truly,” John said stoutly.

He grinned at Helena. But as she slipped her arm around his shoulders, he began to retch. She shouted for help and two footmen carried John inside. They laid him on the couch while a maid hovered nearby, her face ashen.

“Have Williams fetch some blankets from Mrs. Hood,” Helena said, holding tight to the boy’s hand. “And warm water.”

What on earth was the matter? John was sweating and his face was now the color of putty. He had already emptied the contents of his stomach, but the retching went on.

“Williams is also taken ill, my lady,” Mrs. Hood said, rushing into the room. “Here now, John, try and take a sip of this, there’s a good chap.”

The kindly housekeeper held out a glass.

“I can’t,” the boy whispered, shaking in Helena’s arms.

“Where is his lordship?” Mrs. Hood asked grimly. “He must know about this right away.”

“I am here,” Richard said from the doorway.

Helena looked up and felt the headache she had been warding off disappear. He was still safe—and Harry was gone.

“What’s going on?” Richard asked.

“Williams brought back the tray from the breakfast table, my lord,” Mrs. Hood said, “then he was taken as sick as a dog in the kitchen. And now I find my poor lad here with the same thing.”

Richard stripped off his coat and strode into the room. His midnight eyes met Helena’s briefly before he calmly took charge. She could not tell what he was looking for there, for he addressed his questions to Mrs. Hood, not to her.

“Did either of them eat or drink anything different from the rest of us?”

“I couldn’t say, my lord. Williams is beyond speech.”

“Then you must tell me, young man,” Richard said, dropping on one knee beside his little brother. “You heard Mrs. Hood. A footman is very ill. Did you help yourself to anything in the kitchen after we had all gone to bed last night?”

In an agony of misery, John shook his head.

“Then this morning? It’s all right. You won’t get a whipping merely for having a good appetite.”

“I drank some of your wine,” John said. “The stuff that Harry brought. I know I wasn’t supposed to have any, but there was some left. I only took a sip. I heard Milly calling, so I left the rest of my glass on the sideboard. I’m terribly sorry, sir. Will you punish me?”

“I think you’re getting punishment enough, don’t you?” Richard said gently, smoothing the lad’s hair back from his forehead. “How does it feel now?”

“Like my head’s in the teeth of a threshing machine and there’s a horrible grinding in my gut.”

“Then it turned out to be rather more powerful port than you had imagined,” Richard said.

Mrs. Hood sat beside the boy and helped him drink some warm water. John was violently sick again.

“There now,” she said. “It’ll make it worse for now, but you’re to get all that poison out.”

“Poison?” Helena breathed. Why hadn’t it occurred to her right away?

“Mrs. Hood merely refers to the demon alcohol,” Richard said quietly so that only Helena could hear him. “But it would appear so, wouldn’t it?”

He stood up and with a last wink at John walked swiftly through to the dining room.

Helena followed.

Richard picked up the decanter and carried it into the kitchen. The maids were hovering around the prostrate figure of Williams, who had been laid on a bench in front of the fire. The footman’s face was the color and consistency of dough.

“He’s right poorly, my lord,” Mr. Hood said. “He’s past talking.”

“Where are the glasses from the dining room?”

“Here, my lord,” one of the kitchen girls said, curtsying. “We’ve not washed anything yet, what with Williams having such a turn and all.”

“John said he left his glass without finishing it,” Helena said. “All of these are empty.”

Richard squatted on his heels beside the ill footman. He took the limp hand in his own.

“Now, Williams,” he said. “You’ve worked for this family a long time and I’ll not begrudge you a little port at Christmas, particularly when it’s otherwise going to waste. Did you drink up a partly filled glass left on the sideboard? If so, squeeze my hand as hard as you can.”

The man groaned, but his fingers clenched on Richard’s palm.

“Take the rest of that wine and give it to one of the pigs,” Richard said. “And send to the village for the doctor.”

A footman was sent hurrying to obey. He came back a moment later, his face a strange shade of green.

“The pig drank it like a lord, begging your pardon, my lord, but he’s dead now. Rolled over and convulsed, like, and died.”

“That was from the bottles Harry gave you for Christmas?” Helena asked.

Her heart had not stopped its wild dance since she had realized that someone must have deliberately adulterated the wine—and that no one else in the house but Richard would have been expected to drink it, now that Harry had gone off to London. Had John and Williams not shared a small glass between them, Richard might have taken two that night after dinner and not been discovered until morning. The probable consequences were only too obvious. And it was Harry’s gift to his brother.

“Yes.” Richard gave a grim laugh. “The work of a particularly unpleasant mind, don’t you think?”

Helena could say nothing more in front of the servants, so she stayed silent as Richard himself saw as much as he could to the footman’s comfort. Williams seemed to gather courage just from his master’s presence.

“You’ll be all right, young man. I guarantee you did not take as much wine as that pig, and are far better looking into the bargain.” Williams grinned feebly. “You must have a purge, that’s all. Hood will see to it, and I must escort my wife out of your sick room, don’t you think?”

The footman nodded and released Richard’s hand, and so allowed his master and mistress to go back together into the corridor.

“Richard!” Helena put her hand on his arm. He turned to her.

“Yes?” His face was shadowed in the cold light seeping into the hallway from the snow-clad garden outside. He seemed now only unutterably tired, as if he had not slept for days.

“You cannot ignore this.”

His black eyes searched her face. “I don’t intend to.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“As soon as John and, I hope, poor Williams are out of danger, I am going to Cornwall, sweet Helena.”

“Cornwall? But Harry gave you the port.”

“And drank some with me last night. No, the poison was added this morning, before my brother or Garthwood left, I imagine. Anyone in the household could have done it. Yet none of the attempts against me have been made with any thought as to who else might get hurt. Do you think that Harry would have risked what just happened to John?”

“But my cousin and Harry are friends. Did you know that? Garthwood told me himself. What makes you choose between them?”

Richard gave her a smile of great sweetness.

“It was exquisite port and Harry knew it. What on earth is the point of developing an educated palate, if you can’t tell when your wine has been tampered with? Don’t you think I would have noticed a change in the taste? John and poor Williams probably thought it was how port wine is supposed to be, but if Harry were trying to poison me, he would choose something very different.”

She could never make him see reason. If he died, Harry would have everything. Garthwood gained nothing by Richard’s death.

“But both my cousin and your brother have gone to London, Richard. For God’s sake, what would take you to Cornwall?”

“Trethaerin, my dear, your old home. I think it’s time we paid it a visit.”

“We?” Helena’s heart leaped like a deer. “Why should we go to Trethaerin?”

Richard raised one of her hands and kissed her fingers.

“You had better come with me,” he said. “Otherwise, how will you know if our conspirators succeed? Besides, I will need you to show me around.”

“But Garthwood has no possible reason to harm you, Richard. What on earth do you expect to find there?”

“I don’t know, which is why I am going. But it’s not Harry who’s my enemy, Helena. It’s your cousin. If John or Williams suffers any permanent harm, I shall come back and take Nigel Garthwood’s life.”

He did not express the obvious thought that hung between them, that if Helena had not insisted that Garthwood stay the night, it would have been much harder for him to get to the wine—unless, of course, it had been Harry, after all.

Richard dropped her fingers and strode away, leaving her standing, pulse pounding, in the hallway. His last comment was made over his shoulder.

“And what a damnable waste of an innocent pig!”

* * *

Much to Helena’s relief, John made a remarkable recovery. The combination of a youthful constitution and the limited amount of wine he had consumed let him get out of bed the next day. Yet the remainder of the holiday was subdued, and Richard’s siblings showed all the concern Helena could wish toward the ill footman. The day after New Year’s, they all went back to school.

It took several days of dedicated nursing before Williams could be declared out of danger. Richard and Helena both visited him every day, while Richard personally oversaw his care. It was almost their only contact. Richard did not visit her room at night, nor discuss much beyond household matters.

Her husband seemed locked in a prison of his own making. Helena knew she could not reach him. Yet watching Richard with the footman only confirmed her belief in his essential kindness and strength. What woman would not fall in love with such a man? So she hid her fear and despair and concentrated only on saving poor Williams.

The doctor cupped him and made him swallow several evil concoctions.

Finally, the footman was able to sit up and apologize to Richard for so forgetting himself as to drink an abandoned glass of port.

“I thought as how it had a flat taste, my lord,” he said. “But then I remembered it had sat out in the air all night. It was only that it seemed to be going to waste. I never would have took any otherwise.”

“You may have a bottle, dear Williams. Just get well.”

“If it’s all the same to you, my lord,” Williams said with a grimace. “I think I’m off port wine for now.”

* * *

It was the coldest January in living memory. The result was fast traveling on the deserted roads, since the surfaces were frozen harder than stone. They stopped nowhere for a room. Horses were changed and meals taken in the best posting houses, but the chaise went on through the night by moonlight or the flame of their torches, warmed only by the hot bricks provided at each inn.

Richard slept sitting upright in his corner, while Helena tried to curl up on the opposite seat, wrapped in a fur rug.

During the day he still talked courteously of nothing but commonplaces, and she followed his lead. Even if Richard could never come to terms with the possibility that his brother was trying to kill him, she would try to have the grace to allow him to handle it in his own way. Yet the price for her forbearance was very high. Helena felt that she might as well be traveling with a stranger.

It was excessively foolish of you, my girl,
she said to herself,
to start caring about him to begin with. For heaven’s sake, allow him his freedom now!

Yet it hurt. Very much.

At least no one knew they had left for Trethaerin. Perhaps as long as they sped farther and farther from Acton Mead, Richard was safe—and it was worth almost anything for that.

She would much rather he despise her and return forever to Marie than die at the hands of his brother and Garthwood.

Helena would have lost all her hard-won equanimity if she had known that the very day of their departure, Harry returned to his grandmother’s house and once again climbed the ivy. Without compunction he went into Richard’s room.

In two minutes he had what he had come for. Mounted on a swift horse, he followed his brother and sister-in-law down to Cornwall.

They took a room at the Anchor in Blacksands.

“You were here last autumn, weren’t you, Captain?” the landlord asked.

“You have a good memory for a face.” Richard smiled. “I’m sure you remember my wife?”

“As was Miss Trethaerin? Well, bless my soul!”

“And have you the same chamber, sir? And the same kind-hearted little girl to make up the fire?”

“Why, our Penny’s gone to Paris to be a lady’s maid. It’s a step up in the world for her, all right.”

Richard turned on the landlord as if he would strike him to the ground. The man flinched.

“When was this?”

“It’s been these two months, Captain. We’ve had no word. She’s too busy, most like.”

Why should her husband seem so concerned about the good fortune of a chambermaid at the inn? His face was set like granite, yet his momentary anger disappeared beneath an instant self-control.

“No doubt she is very fine now,” Richard said kindly, and they were shown to a bedchamber.

* * *

Helena looked at the narrow bed in silence. Richard seemed drawn and tense, the vertical line deep between his brows. Were they to share a bed tonight? Was it always to be at his choice and his bidding? She would trade a great deal for the right to touch him without permission and know she would be welcome.