Chapter Six

T he 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."

At the stricken expression on her brother's face, Ysella laid a nervous hand on his arm. "You weren't to know. I didn't know this." Morvoren would have done though, only she'd been too sick to protest.

Kit shook her hand off. "I'll send for Busick." He hurried from the room.

Mama's gaze slid to Ysella. "You had better leave us, as well. The sick room is no place for a girl your age. I shall remain to help Loveday with Morvoren."

Ysella slid out of the room behind Kit, but the corridor was already empty with not even the echo of his footsteps. Relief that she wasn't expected to stay flooded over her, side-by-side with guilt that she hadn't protested and begged to stay. That was her dearest friend lying there. Something she was having trouble assimilating. The last time she'd seen Morvoren, more than two months before, she'd been so full of joy at the thought of her coming child. And now its birth had reduced her to this.

A cold hand clawed at Ysella's insides. If she and Oliver were to marry, and of course, she'd considered doing just that if he were to ask for her hand, then might this very thing happen to her if she were to give him a child? Did she want to marry at all, in that case? Would it not be just too frightening and risky? But Mama had given birth to four children and was still living. Only, there were those mysterious other children Derwa had hinted at to account for. They had not lived, even if Mama had, so Mama had been lying when she'd claimed all her children had lived thanks to Doctor Busick.

Ysella, intent on something to take her mind off her dearest friend's predicament, descended on determined feet to the library. None of the servants were about, so she hastened to the shelf where the family Bible was kept. A huge tome, it took both hands to lift it down and place it on Kit's desk. A sluggish fire burned in the wide hearth, doing nothing to alleviate the chill. The whole house, bar Morvoren's room, felt icy cold, as though it were as ill as its mistress. A shiver ran down Ysella's spine.

She opened the front page of the book, where their family tree was drawn. It was something she'd always known existed but had never thought to consult before. Spidery handwriting from yesteryear crawled across the page, faded and difficult to decipher. Ah, there was Papa's name, beside those of his two brothers. Uncle Robert, Papa's twin but the younger by just minutes, the father of Cousin Marianne and Fitz. And the mysterious Uncle William who'd gone off years ago to America or somewhere like that and never come back. Beside the year 1790 for his death, someone had penciled in a question mark, as though this was in dispute.

Mama's name, Elestren Tremaine, had been written in beside Papa's with the year 1780 for their marriage, and, beneath this, lines ran off for their children. There was Derwa, now Lady Monckton, and her children, little Thomas and Amelia. Beside her was Meliora, the most irritating of Ysella's siblings, now Mrs. Reginald Griffiths, and their baby Leonora born last year. And Kit and Morvoren, with a space beneath them for where their baby's name would go.

Then there was a big gap to Ysella's name—for she was nine years younger than Kit. And in that gap, someone had written a string of names in pencil, pale and difficult to read, as though the owners of those names had not been quite important enough for ink. Five names. Five children younger than Kit but older than herself, all of whom she'd never known existed. Children who hadn't survived. Five in a row. No hint as to how long they'd lived, but all had been given names—Corentyn, Gryffyn, Elowen, Melyonen, Peran. Good Cornish names as befitted a Carlyon. She might have had sisters nearer to her in age than Derwa and Meliora. Sisters to play with. But none of these children had lived.

Mama hadn't died with them though. She'd gone on and produced a healthy baby in Ysella only a year after Peran's birth—and maybe his death. Or had he been there to admire a baby sister he'd never seen grow up? She tried to picture these lost children, but failed.

A small resolve emerged in Ysella's heart to one day ask her mother about these children. But only if Morvoren's fever broke. She made a little promise to herself, and perhaps to God. If you spare Morvoren, I'll bring my lost brothers and sisters back to life by speaking their names to Mama and finding out what happened to them . Perhaps most of all little Peran who would have been only a year older than her. A lost playmate.

She closed the family Bible and hefted it back into its place on the shelf. Better go upstairs and see if Martha had unpacked her clothes. She needed to change out of her traveling gown and boots into something more suitable for evening wear.

She emerged from the library into the rather grand hall, where family portraits and crossed weapons covered the walls. The huge fire burning in the massive stone fireplace shed no more heat into the room than the one in the library had.

At that same moment Sam Beauchamp walked into the hall, his coat over one arm and his hat in his hand. He stopped on the threshold, staring at her.

Dear Sam. What a delight it was to see his familiar face, his reassuring solidity, soft sandy hair and gentle gray eyes. How comforting his normality seemed. "Sam," she exclaimed, and ran the few steps that separated them, taking his free hand in hers.

His face, that had been rosy-cheeked before, seemed to bloom with color. He must have just come in from the cold.

"Miss Ysella," his voice came out a little hoarse, but he managed a welcoming smile.

He too must be as concerned about Morvoren as the rest of them were. Here was someone, though, who could fill her in on everything that had been happening without getting too upset. She couldn't possibly have asked Kit, nor even Loveday, even if either of them had the time to talk. But Sam—he would have time to tell her everything he knew. "Might we go to your office?"

"Um," Sam said, sounding flustered, presumably at this disruption to his evening routine. "Of-of course we can."

Ysella slid her hand around his arm and set off with determination in her stride towards the rear of the house, conscious of his hurried footsteps beside hers. He must have been on his way home when she caught him. Poor Sam, here she was about to interrogate him and all he probably wanted was his dinner. Well, Mrs. Higgins would have to wait.

At the office door, he fumbled in his pockets until he found his keys, failed the first time to get the right key in the lock, but at last swung the door open to allow Ysella entrance.

She swept into the room and sat down in the chair opposite his desk.

Sam took his customary chair behind his desk, a look of what might have been relief on his face.

He was such a stickler for etiquette. Once, nearly a year ago, he'd allowed etiquette to evaporate, when they'd raced across the southwest of England with Morvoren on a mission to save Kit. He'd called her Ysella then, and held her hand more than a few times in comfort and encouragement. Now they were back to being the daughter of the house and her brother's employee, Ysella couldn't help but feel a little sadness. After all, Sam was a close friend of Kit's, on first name terms with him, and had been the boy used as a partner to teach both of Ysella's older sisters and herself how to dance. Which had made him an accomplished dancer himself. However, the barrier that had risen between them since that hell-for-leather ride seemed higher now than it had ever been.

"What can I do for you, Miss Ysella?" Sam asked, steepling his fingers as he leaned on his desk, as though she were a business associate of some kind.

"Tell me everything," Ysella replied, leaning forward to match. "I can't ask Kit. He's in no condition to talk. You must know the details."

Sam sucked in his lips as though he thought such details were not fit for Ysella's delicate ears. "I'm not sure I should."

Ysella favored him with a heavy scowl. " I think you should, if you want to remain in my esteem." She pursed her lips. "You have no need to worry you might offend me. I have a good working knowledge of childbirth thanks to Morvoren."

Sam's eyes widened. A ‘good working knowledge of childbirth' was not something other girls possessed, and Ysella knew this. Having Morvoren as a sister-in-law came in very handy as she was like a walking encyclopedia. Not that Ysella herself would ever have stooped to consult one, even if she hadn't had Morvoren to ask questions of. Far too much trouble. She stopped scowling and gave Sam her sweetest smile. "Tell me."

Sam, who clearly did not possess the same working knowledge as Ysella, recounted the story with obvious reluctance and embarrassment concerning his subject. Morvoren had slipped on the stairs a week ago, fallen, and within a few hours had declared the child was about to arrive.

Poor Sam. He did not want to be telling such feminine secrets to a girl. If Ysella had not been so worried, she might have chuckled at his discomfiture.

However, he soldiered on. The child had been born with the attendance of Doctor Nash, and Morvoren had seemed to recover quite well. Until the third day, when a fever had come upon her. Sam stopped here, chewing his bottom lip. "They say it is the puerperal fever."

Ysella had not heard of this, but from the look on Sam's face, she divined it to be most dangerous.

She was right.

"It took my own mother a week after I was born," Sam said.

Oh. How was it she'd never known Sam's mother had died like this? She'd known him all her life, and yet she had no idea of his family life, and now it appeared he might not have had one. But the worry of this happening to Morvoren reared its ugly head, shoving aside her concerns for Sam. "Is it possible to survive it?"

This was a blunt question and Sam's expression told her, without him having to say so, that he didn't know. "I believe it is dangerous, even now."

Ysella sucked in her lips and frowned. "Mama has sent for Doctor Busick who she declares is better than Doctor Nash. Let us hope he will be of use."

Sam nodded. "All we can do is pray, I fear."