Chapter Eleven

A s it turned out, Mrs. Treloar must have been forced by politeness into saying Caroline could attend the ball as Hetty’s companion. A note was delivered to the schoolroom by young Dickon the footman.

Caroline unfolded it while sitting at the teacher’s desk, watched surreptitiously by Yves, who should have been writing out an example of a first conjugation Latin verb in his best handwriting.

She read: Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp have particularly asked for your attendance at their ball next week. I have decided you may go as Hetty’s companion. But there are conditions to this. Firstly, you will wear a suitably plain gown so that no one there will be mistaken in your duties. Secondly, you will not put yourself forward to dance with any young gentlemen. Thirdly, you will carefully supervise all young gentlemen who approach Hetty for a dance and accompany her at all times. Mrs. Treloar.

What a draconian list of conditions, but at least the writer of this letter could spell a lot better than Ysella. Caroline reread her instructions. A suitably plain gown. Did her employer mean she wanted her to wear one of her drab everyday dresses? She hadn’t been to a ball since last year, but she still had the dress she’d worn to that hanging in her wardrobe right now. It was of the palest mauve, a color that suited her complexion well. Might she get away with that?

Yves coughed.

She returned her attention to her small charge. He’d seemed particularly sleepy this morning, as though not properly awake, and was propping his head up on his hand with his elbow on his desk and his eyes only half open.

She smiled at him. “Have you finished your work?”

He glanced down at his ink blotchy page. “Um, not quite.”

She gave him a stern look. “Well, best get on with it then. It’s nearly midday and you don’t want to be still writing Latin verbs out this afternoon.”

He rubbed his eyes. “It’s so stuffy in here. I can’t seem to think.”

True. Maybe she should open the window.

With a sigh, Caroline got up and came to peer over his shoulder. “I see you’ve done amo and ambulo .” She scanned his writing. “And I’m pleased to say both are correct. At least I think they are, given your quite terrible use of blots. Do you know? I think we’ll leave it at that for today. No sense in trying to cram learning into your head when you’re this sleepy.” She shook her head. “Did you not sleep well last night?”

Yves blew to dry the ink on the last word in his list— ambulant—they walk, they are walking, they do walk . “I think I must’ve slept a bit too well. Usually, I go down for my breakfast with Mrs. Teague, but today I overslept and didn’t have time.” He rubbed his stomach. “And I’m starving right now.”

Caroline’s thoughts went to the meager platters they’d be getting for their dinner in an hour’s time. “Perhaps you’d like to go down to see Mrs. Teague now, in that case, and see what she’s been cooking. She’ll probably have something nice for you to eat.”

He jumped up, suddenly lively. “Thank you, Caroline. I can call you that, now lessons are over. I’ll collect Dash from down there too. Shall I bring you something to eat as well?”

Why not? “Thank you, Yves. I’ve some work to do here preparing for tomorrow’s lessons. But that would be lovely.”

Like a gangly puppy, Yves galloped out of the schoolroom on his errand of mercy.

Caroline settled down to sort through the work she was planning for the next morning, not noticing how the time ticked past.

The door opening disturbed her. She looked up, half expecting it to be Yves back with a slab of thick-cut bread slathered with butter, but it wasn’t. Instead, Patience the nursery maid came sidling in carrying a mop and bucket.

“Ooh, Miss,” she said as she saw Caroline. “I didn’t think as you’d still be here. Shall I come back later?”

Caroline closed the book on her desk and shook her head. “Good afternoon, Patience. I’ve finished what I was doing, so I’ll leave you to your chores.” She stood up, and the girl set the bucket down. Caroline moved to the door, her hand on the knob, but hesitated, her forehead furrowing in a puzzled frown.

“Patience?”

“Yes’m?”

“Master Yves was very sleepy this morning, as though he’d had difficulty waking up.” She sucked her lips in trying to decide how to word this. “He missed going down to breakfast with Mrs. Teague because he wasn’t up in time. Was there anything… different… about yesterday evening? You are there when he’s put to bed, aren’t you?”

Patience bit her lip. “I’m there in the nursery, Miss, but ’tisn’t me what puts him to bed. ’Tis Bridget. I’m doing the tidying.”

Caroline nodded. “And was there anything different last night?”

Patience’s smooth brow wrinkled. “I b’lieve Doctor Rescorla had left some powders or such like for Master Yves to take. Like he had before. Might’ve been a bottle. I didn’t see it, so I don’t rightly know. Bridget give it to him, I think. He didn’t like it, but she made him take it.”

Oh. Caroline nodded. “Thank you, Patience.” She half opened the door. “And where is Bridget now?”

“Downstairs in the kitchens eating her dinner.”

Caroline took a step, and turned to look back at Patience over her shoulder. “Perhaps don’t mention I asked you about this. To Bridget, I mean. She might think I’m being interfering, and I don’t want to offend her.”

Patience was already dipping her mop into the bucket. “I won’t, Miss.”

Caroline closed the door behind her and headed for the nursery. Empty, as she’d expected. She went inside and closed the door behind herself, standing with her back pressed up against it. What was she doing? Doctor Rescorla had probably prescribed something perfectly innocent for Yves’s health. And yet… a child shouldn’t be this sleepy in the morning, not when he normally was so robust and lively. She needed to find out what he was being given for herself.

She scanned the room. Where would Bridget keep any medicines? You were supposed to keep things like that out of the reach of children, so surely whatever it was must be stored up high somewhere?

Nowhere presented itself. This was a room laid out for children to play and sleep in, not for the storing of possibly dangerous medications. Caroline’s roving gaze settled on a door in the far corner. Aha.

On hurried feet she crossed the floor and put a hand on the doorknob. This might well be where Bridget slept, so as to be on hand if required overnight, and to keep a watchful eye on her charge. She opened the door.

The bedroom was smaller than her own, with a simple, narrow bed and a shabby armoire with drawers at the bottom and hanging space above. It had to be Bridget’s room. Caroline glanced around, searching for where Bridget might have decided to keep Yves’s new medication. A washstand stood in one corner, with a china pitcher and bowl on it. Above, set into the angle where the walls met, a corner cupboard had been fixed to the wall on eye level for an adult, but out of Yves’s reach. Aha.

With a nasty itching feeling between her shoulder blades, and one ear cocked for the sound of Bridget’s heavy returning footsteps, Caroline turned the handle on the cupboard. Locked, damn it. Where would Bridget keep the key? Hopefully not on her person. She scanned the room. If it were anywhere but in her pocket, it would be in here.

She opened the drawers in the armoire to find they contained Bridget’s clean linen. Careful not to disturb their neatly folded precision, Caroline searched both drawers to no avail. Nothing.

What about under the bed? She got down on her hands and knees but the only things under there were some bits of fluff and an empty hat box. Did Bridget wear hats that came in smart hat boxes or had someone given her the box? Where else was there? Leaning on the bed, she rose to her feet.

The bed. There was only one thin pillow. Caroline lifted it and was rewarded by the sight of a small brass key lying on the smooth sheet. She pounced. It had to be the one.

With fingers that trembled for more than one reason, Caroline tried the key in the cabinet’s lock and turned it. With a click the lock slid back into place and she opened the door. There was only one thing within. A large brown bottle, the level slightly down as though one dose had already been administered. Caroline picked up the bottle and read the embossed name.

Dalby’s Carminative.

Whatever was that?

She lifted the bottle down, pulled the cork and gave it a suspicious sniff. A bit minty but it also had traces of a not-so-attractive bitterness. Best to taste it. With considerable reluctance, she dipped her finger in the neck of the bottle, withdrew it and licked the tip. Eww. Not a medicine she’d have liked to have taken as a child. But what was it for? Yves didn’t appear to have anything wrong with him, so why did he need medication?

Did she dare to ask Bridget?

The thought of Bridget made her heart thump. She’d better put it back as she’d found it and make herself scarce before Bridget came back from the kitchen and caught her rifling through her room. She locked the cupboard with a shaking hand and restored the key to under Bridget’s pillow, then let herself back into the nursery. Patience must already have cleaned in here, because everything was spick and span: toys tidied away, bed made, no clothes lying discarded on chairs. And the wooden floorboards still possessed a dampness indicative of Patience and her mop and bucket’s attentions.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Determined, heavy footsteps. Before Caroline could move, the door swung open to reveal Bridget, stout and sour faced, on the threshold. A Bridget whose rather piggy eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Caroline in the nursery.

Her overly thick brows met in a frown as she stepped into the room, almost, it might have been construed, with an air of threat about her. “What can I do for you… Miss Fairfield?” A hint of unmistakable disrespect colored her words, as though she saw the nursery as her domain and Caroline as an intruder.

Caroline fixed a smile onto her face. “Nothing, thank you, Bridget. I was just looking to see if Master Yves had left one of his books in here. He didn’t have it in the schoolroom this morning.”

Bridget’s ample and well-muscled form took another step closer to Caroline. “There’s none of his books in here, that I’ll vouch for.” She glanced around. “And if there were, Patience would’ve found them when she cleaned.”

Why on earth was she feeling so unnerved by this woman’s proximity? Caroline chided herself for being a coward and forcefully straightened her spine, drawing herself up as tall as she could, a good five inches above the short and squat Bridget. “I am inclined to agree with you, Bridget, but it was worth my while taking a look.” She narrowed her eyes. “After all, you never know what I might find.”

Bridget bustled across the room toward her own bedroom door, where she paused to hurl a parting shot. “Master Yves were down in the kitchens begging food again. Mrs. Treloar said as how he wasn’t allowed to. I daresay she’ll have something to say to you for letting him do that.”

“He was hungry. He overslept this morning and had no breakfast.”

Bridget scowled over her shoulder, defensive. “Then he needs to get up a bit earlier. It’s not my fault if he can’t get out of bed in the mornings.”

Accusing Bridget of administering something to make him sleep at nights lurked on the tip of Caroline’s tongue, but she hesitated. Best not to reveal her hand too soon. Best to find out who exactly had decreed Yves should take this medicine which she felt sure accounted for his sleepy demeanor this morning. Surely no doctor had prescribed it, no matter what Patience had said.

Leaving Bridget in the nursery, Caroline returned to the schoolroom to find Patience had delivered her and Yves’s meager midday meal and a pot of tea. At least with Yves down in the kitchens being fed, she could eat it all herself. She was almost as starving as he must have been, and she wasn’t a growing boy.

However, she had other things on her mind now, nagging her and refusing to go away. She sat down at her desk but didn’t touch the food. Who could she ask about the medicine she’d found? Who would know? And who if they knew would dare to divulge to her what they knew? No one here at Roskilly, that was certain, not if they valued their jobs. Perhaps a trip into Penzance was called for. She absentmindedly picked at her food, wondering how Mrs. Teague could have produced this. Surely it was yesterday’s leftovers.

Seized with determination, she rang the bell and, after a few minutes, Patience returned. She executed a respectful curtsey.

Caroline smiled at her. “I’ve finished eating now, thank you. But I also wanted to ask you something, Patience. Tell me, is there a pony cart I might use to make a visit to Penzance? I’d like to visit a haberdasher’s or dressmaker’s to buy myself some ribbons and suchlike to decorate my gown for the ball I’m to accompany Miss Henrietta to.”

Patience gathered up the tray. “There is that, Miss. Shall I get Young Pascoe to harness up the pony for you?”

Caroline set her empty teacup on the tray. “Yes, that would be very kind of you, Patience. I shall be taking Master Yves in with me, I think. It’s not raining today and the fresh air will do him good.”