Page 14 of The Cornish Bride

Chapter Six

The dowager’s carriage arrived at Ormonde Abbey late on the following afternoon, having broken the journey in Reading at the commodious and well-renowned George inn. As they rattled up the graveled drive, Ysella peered out of the carriage window at the watery vista of Ormonde’s parklands, the cedars of Lebanon dark and forbidding. Much as she loved Ormonde, she couldn’t help the feeling of depression that had lodged in her heart as though never wanting to leave.

The coachman swung the carriage around in the wide forecourt so its doors faced the steps up to the double oak front door. One half of this door opened, and two liveried footmen hurried out. A moment later, Kit emerged, his cravat missing, hair awry and at least a day’s growth of stubble on his chin. He almost ran up to the carriage doors and flung them open without waiting for the footmen to do so.

Ysella tumbled out into his arms, forgetting her own misfortune for a moment. “Kitto, dear Kitto. Tell me she is better. Please.”

Kit disentangled himself from her embrace and handed his mother down.

She gripped his hand and stared into his eyes. “Is she any better?”

Somber-eyed, Kit shook his head. “The fever still rages.”

Ysella bit her lip. She’d never seen her brother like this. Beneath his eyes, dark shadows betrayed the fact that he had probably had little or no sleep since his wife fell ill, and the whites were bloodshot. The cuffs of his shirt were stained. Had he not even changed his linen? She would have to take him in hand. Morvoren should not see him like this on her recovery.

Mama tucked her arm into Kit’s in a comforting manner. “Take me to her straightaway. I need to see her condition for myself. Which doctor have you had for her?”

Ysella followed them into the house as her mother swept past the waiting servants and up the stairs to their private bedchambers. A frightening quiet she’d never noticed before clung to the house. A quiet that made Ysella’s blood run cold.

They reached the corridor that ran down the west side of the house. The wooden shutters remained closed on some of the long windows bestowing a dreadful gloom on the corridor, but that was the custom when someone was ill. The same thing had happened six years ago, when Ysella’s father, the old viscount, had fallen ill. And that had not ended well.

Opposite the windows, solid oak doors marked the family’s bedrooms, but Kit’s and Morvoren’s rooms were at the far end, being the biggest and most stately of them all. Was that the sound of a baby crying, somewhere far off in the house? The little heir, or the child whose milk he was sharing? Was Morvoren aware of her baby crying for her?

Kit pushed open his bedroom door, the door to the splendid rooms that until recently had belonged to Mama. She’d insisted on giving them up to Kit once he and Morvoren had married, waving away his protests. “Nonsense. These are the rooms of the master and mistress of Ormonde. I am no longer the mistress, Morvoren is.”

The bedroom, like the corridor, lay in gloomy darkness. A fire burned with sluggish lack of conviction in the grate, and an almost suffocating warmth filled the air. The unmistakable tang of sickness caught in Ysella’s throat.

Morvoren lay propped on her pillows, her beautiful blonde hair spread out around her, made lank and dull by her illness. Her haggard, pale face glistened with sweat, and her breathing in the silence of the room seemed shallow. Ysella caught her breath. The only sick person she’d ever seen had been Papa, and that only briefly.

Loveday, Morvoren’s Cornish maid, sat on a stool beside the bed, a damp cloth in her hand, dabbing at her mistress’s hot brow. She looked up as they entered.

Ysella hung back, something about this scene laid out before her too frightening to face. She’d thought Morvoren would be just a little bit ill, not like this. Not looking so nearly dead. She swallowed in fear, her hands clenching by her sides into fists, fighting to control the impulse to turn and run.

She had so little experience herself of illness. She’d been only thirteen when Papa died, and remembered little of it bar the shuttered windows. She’d been allowed in only once to see him and had wiped that disturbing memory from her mind. Now, it came rushing back. From what she recalled of that glimpse of Papa, Morvoren’s countenance closely resembled his for pallor. Apart from the red spots of heat that burned on her cheeks.

Might this be the last time she saw Morvoren alive?

Mama went to the bed and Loveday rose to her feet to give up the stool, stepping back respectfully, her normally cheery countenance pale with worry. Mama sank down into the vacated seat and took Morvoren’s limp hand in hers. “My dear, I am here. You will be better soon, I promise.”

Morvoren, her eyelids like two bruises and her lashes dark against her pale skin, didn’t stir.

Mama looked over her shoulder at the stricken face of Kit. “When will the doctor be here?”

Kit didn’t move from his position by the door. His hands, like Ysella’s, had bunched into fists, perhaps in an effort to hold his tears at bay. “Doctor Nash has other patients to visit. He said he would be back by this evening.”

Ysella suppressed an urge to take him in her arms and hug away his fears, as he’d done for her when she’d been a little girl.

Mama inhaled deeply, her chest rising and her eyes flashing. “Doctor Nash? You called him? And he’s too busy to stay by her side? That’s not good enough. Send for Doctor Busick at once. A second opinion is required here. Has Nash been bleeding her?”

Kit nodded.

“What nonsense,” Mama spat, into full flow now. “The girl needs her blood to fight this infection.”

“He said her blood was stagnating and needed reducing.”

Mama shook her head with vehemence. “All he’s done is weaken her. I am a proponent of William Harvey’s declaration that bloodletting is not useful in fevers, as is Doctor Busick. If you don’t send for him, Kit, then I will. He attended you children in all your childhood ailments and never once bled any of you. You all survived. I don’t know why you’ve let Nash with his old-fashioned ideas anywhere near her.”

Kit’s expression darkened at her words, as though, perhaps, he felt the accusation was aimed at him. “Nash was the only one available when she fell ill. Busick was away from home at a distant farm. We had to take what we could get.”