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“Roz, if we want to save Anthony we have to get him into a warm bed. He’s unconscious, near frozen to death. Come Roz, we have to give our full attention to the survivor. Fate has given us one, but not both. If we don’t hurry, Anthony, too, may be lost to us.”
Like one whose heart was being torn in half, Rosalind knew she must do the practical thing. With one last desperate look out to the insatiable sea, she sobbed, then groaned, then followed Mr. Burke as he carried his dripping, precious burden back to Lamb Hall. Halfway there he sank down to his knees to rest and catch his breath. Roz bent down to brush the sodden black hair back from the boy’s brow. When they had him safe and dry and warm, he would tell them where Antonia was.
The servants stood about with eyes like saucers, the maids wrung their hands helplessly as Roz threw out her orders. “Build a fire in Anthony’s chamber. He’s half drowned and near frozen! Heat some soup quickly! Fetch brandy! Get dry towels from the warming cupboard! Never mind, I’ll do it myself!” Then she thought of something else. “Get Bradshaw immediately. Tell him to drive over to Major Blount’s with a message that Anthony is safe, but to keep searching for Antonia and theSeagull”
Mr. Burke carried on up the staircase. He would not lay down his burden until he had young Lord Lamb in his own bedchamber. He left a pool of water upon every stair and drenched the carpet along the upper hallway, but they had a lifetime to mop up seawater. He concentrated only upon stripping the heavy, sodden garments from Anthony’s frozen body. He tore off the bulky oilskin.
“Oh, Grandma—”
Roz couldn’t believe her ears. “My God, it’s Antonia!”
Mr. Burke stepped back in surprise and allowed Roz to complete the undressing. Off came the canvas breeches and the knitted shirt, then she wrapped her in a huge warm towel and thrust her beneath the bedcovers.
A maid came in carrying a tureen of soup. “Will Lord Lamb live, ma’am?” the young girl asked in a strangled voice.
Roz stared at her for half a minute. Dear God, the girl was right. Pneumonia was almost a certainty. “Yes, yes, out with you now, my grandchild needs rest around the clock. Keep everyone away from this chamber, there’s a good girl. I want Tony to have absolute quiet. I’ll do the necessary nursing myself.”
When the door closed Mr. Burke and Lady Randolph exchanged worried glances. Mr. Burke laid the fire himself while Rosalind patiently spooned warm soup into Antonia’s mouth. Now that she was warmed at last, it was plain to see she was suffering from exhaustion.
Her grandmother tucked the covers snugly about her and soothed, “Sleep now, darling. Tomorrow will be soon enough to tell us what happened.”
Antonia’s eyes were already closed and as the warmth and safety of home enfolded her, her mouth curved into a sweet smile of gratitude just before Morpheus claimed her.
Chapter 10
Adam Savage paced the deck of theRed Dragon. Aweek of indolence aboardship had made him feel like a caged leopard. He had anticipated the long, lazy days in the hot sun, thinking he’d catch up on his reading, and indeed he’d devoured Homer and Vergil and moved on to Fielding’s contemporary novels. Now he realized they had occupied his mind, but his body cried out for action. His unbounded energy screamed for an outlet.
In desperation he stripped and shoveled out the hold that held the pair of Arabian horses he was taking to England. Finally he went to his captain and told him to assign him duties as a member of the crew. He also took the midnight watch on a permanent basis. These were the hours when he allowed his mind to roam free. The black velvet sky, hung with a million diamonds, not only gave him the opportunity to study the constellations, but the freedom to wing across the heavens from England to Ceylon or from past to future.
On the midnight-to-dawn watch between sea and sky, between Heaven and Earth, everything fell into perspective. This journey was symbolic. He was closing a door on the past and opening another into the future. He had done this twice before. The first time, when he had left England for the Indies, he hadn’t known he was closing a door on his past.
His father had been a cabinetmaker. They lived across the River Thames in Southwark, above the shop. It was no more than a hovel really. They had to store their wood upstairs, for when the Thames overflowed, it ruined whatever lay in its path. His father loved what he did. He was a master craftsman who had been apprenticed to Thomas Chippendale in St. Martin’s Lane.
Adam Savage had not inherited his father’s artistic hands, so he did the wood buying. When fine wood for furniture became scarce in England, and had to be imported, the cost became prohibitive. Young Savage had seen the mahogany and satinwood being unloaded from the East Indiamen at the wharves and experienced bitter anger because they could not afford it. When he talked to the sailors and learned it could be purchased for pennies in the Indies, he made up his mind to work his passage on a merchant ship and acquire firsthand what his father needed.
Savage quashed the feeling of guilt that arose up in him. How was he to know that his father would die of influenza in the damp hovel while Adam enjoyed the hot sun of Bombay? The thought that he would never be able to provide his father a comfortable living had driven him a little mad. As a result Savage had ruthlessly set about making himself rich. When he came to his senses and realized he was destroying lives for profit, along with his own soul, he again closed a door and opened another.
Savage then channeled his ruthless drive into acquiring untainted wealth and it had paid off a thousandfold. The magnificent house he was going to was another symbol. It was a reward for his hard labor, but it was also where he would bring up his children. They would have the advantages he had never known. He would also give them the benefit of his experience and see they received the finest education available so they would be capable of running their country.
If he married Evelyn Lamb, her children would become his. His mind winged back to Ceylon when he and Eve had said their good-byes. For once Eve had had no guests from the dozens of thriving plantations that stretched all the way to the coast. After dinner she reached across the table to take his hand. “I visited the chaplain today. I hadn’t been inside the chapel since Russell’s funeral. I prayed that you would have a safe voyage.”
Savage was a cynic. He wondered what she had really prayed for.
“Stay with me tonight?” It was more than an invitation, it was an appeal, a whispered supplication.
His blue eyes pierced her until she shivered and lowered her lashes.
He knew she was willing to play the whore rather than lose him, but Savage had too much pride to make love to a woman who wasn’t mad to have him. Her sexual coldness was a challenge, but he needed time to overcome her frigidity. He decided not to consummate their union on this last night, but to wait until he returned for her. He knew she was beginning to thaw toward him, knew he sometimes aroused her, though she repressed it, but decided to leave her wanting more.
Savage picked her up and carried her to her bedroom. “I won’t make love to you in Russell’s bed,” he said bluntly. He bit her earlobe. “The things I’d want to do would desecrate if,” he teased.
An involuntary shudder ran through her body at his outrageously intimate words. She knew he said such provocative things purposely, damn him, damn him.
He laid her on her bed. “You are always so tense.” He slipped off her shoes and began to massage her feet. “I want you to relax. I want you to sleep and I want you to dream of me tonight and every night until I come back for my answer.”
As he stroked her pale skin, soothing her, his eyes stared into the darkness. Eve hadn’t been exactly as he expected. He had initially been attracted because she was older than he with the experience of being a wife and mother. He had expected her to be a voluptuary, a consummate earth mother. Instead, he found her sexually repressed. It would be a challenge to shape her, mold her to fill his needs once she was his wife. And if she did not quite fill all his needs, he would be discreet in his liaisons.
Before he left for what would probably be the best part of a year, he slipped a ring upon her finger. It was a magnificent, blazing, ten-carat diamond. It was not an engagement ring, but a symbol that he would return for an answer.
