Chapter Fourteen

C aroline remembered, just in time, to go into the small haberdashery and choose some pretty ribbons to augment the gown she intended to wear to the coming ball. If Mrs. Treloar didn’t change her mind and still allowed her to go. She also bought some to give to Patience in return for her help with dressing in the mornings. Then she and Yves found New Street and the little apothecary’s shop. While Yves gazed around at the jars and bottles in wonder, Caroline bought a large bottle of herb tonic which the apothecary allowed her to sniff first and assured her contained not a drop of opium and was merely intended to improve the health of the person who took it. Perfect.

“What’s that for?” Yves asked as they headed back to the Star to retrieve Blossom and the pony cart.

Caroline glanced round at the people on the street, any of whom might be an acquaintance of Mrs. Treloar or the house servants. “I’ll explain on our way home. Best not to discuss it here.” She stowed the cumbersome bottle in the capacious bag she’d had the foresight to bring.

The boy at the Star harnessed Blossom up for them and received a silver sixpence for his trouble, which went a long way to cheering him up. Probably whatever wages the owner of the Star paid for his services went straight to his father, and he saw none of it. He tipped his jaunty tricorn hat to Caroline as she and Yves climbed back into the little cart, and Yves gave him a cheery wave, one small boy to another.

Once they left the outskirts of Penzance behind and had crossed back over the stony ford, Yves returned to his earlier question, blue eyes brimming with curiosity. “Why didn’t you want to tell me about your medicine when we were on the street?” Not a child to miss a trick.

Caroline clicked to Blossom to hurry her trot a little, mindful that time was getting on, and turned to regard her charge. “Because we might have been overheard.”

He frowned and fell silent for a moment or two, clearly thinking hard. “Who did you fear might overhear us?”

Pursing her lips, Caroline guided Blossom and the cart around a particularly dangerous looking pothole. “Anyone who might know someone at Roskilly.”

Yves shifted in his seat. “Why would that be bad?” But he didn’t sound shocked. Had he picked up on the undercurrent there, or had Miss Hawkins’s fears transmitted to him at some point?

However, Caroline couldn’t risk sharing her thoughts with him. She’d have to be circumspect in her reply. “I don’t want anyone to know I’ve bought this medicine. Although it’s not medicine in truth. It’s just extracts of harmless plants and some sugar water that might or might not make you a little healthier. Although I doubt it very much. But it won’t do you any harm, which is what’s most important.”

He was not going to let this go. “For me? Why don’t you want anyone to know?”

Caroline bit her lip. She’d have to tell him. “You know that medicine Bridget gave you last night?”

“Yes. It was horrible. I didn’t like it. She poured it into a glass, and I had to drink it all down, she said. Or she was going to hold my nose and make me.”

“Well, that was what made you so very sleepy this morning.”

“Was it? I had a horrible headache too, but it’s gone now. Bridget gave it to me before, when Miss Hawkins was still my governess. Then she stopped.”

“I’m not surprised you had a headache.” The road was now running past St Michael’s Mount, where a stony causeway was just being revealed by the falling tide. “I don’t think you need that medicine, do you?”

He frowned. “Don’t I? Bridget said the doctor left it for me because I have nightmares. To help me sleep.”

“Nightmares? I didn’t know. Do you?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Not very often. Hester used to come in and cuddle me when I had one, until I went back to sleep again. Hester was nice. Much nicer than Bridget.” He paused. “Bridget’s horrible.”

Caroline forbore nodding, despite agreeing with him on that one. “Well, I don’t think you should be taking that nasty medicine. For a start, you weren’t awake enough this morning to learn anything in your lessons. So that’s no good. But Bridget won’t stop giving it to you, I’m sure, even if I ask her to. I won’t be able to stop her.” She patted his arm. “So, I’ve bought this new medicine to replace it with, and hopefully Bridget won’t know I’ve done it. She’ll keep on giving you this new medicine and not know the difference.”

A broad smile lit his face. “Yes please. I hope it tastes better than the other one.”

Caroline returned his smile. “I think it will, but you’ll have to pretend it tastes bad to fool Bridget, and complain about having to take it. Do you think you can do that?”

Yves nodded with enthusiasm.

“And perhaps pretend to be sleepy in the mornings when you see her? So she doesn’t get suspicious.”

Another delighted nod. “Of course I can do that. It’ll be fun.” His eyes sparkled with mischief at the idea of gulling Bridget. “She deserves to be tricked.”

*

At Roskilly, supper was just arriving in the schoolroom, on a tray carried by Patience, as they arrived, a bit flushed and breathless from their rush up from the stableyard. But it was only a single boiled egg and bread and butter—enough for just one person.

Patience bobbed a curtsey to Caroline, eyes wide with awe. “If you please, Miss Fairfield, but Mrs. Treloar sent up word that you was to come down to dinner with the family. She says at six o’clock.”

“Unlucky you,” Yves said, sitting down at the table in front of his supper.

What? Why on earth had Mrs. Treloar suddenly decided on this? All sorts of thoughts jostled through Caroline’s head but she couldn’t come up with a viable reason. “Goodness. That’s short notice. I’ll need to change into a gown suitable for dinner. Can you come and help me, Patience?” As the clock in the schoolroom declared the time to be five and twenty minutes to six, she didn’t have long to prepare for this new ordeal.

Leaving Yves tucking into his boiled egg, Caroline and Patience retired to Caroline’s room.

Caroline threw open her wardrobe. What a good thing she’d packed as many of her gowns as possible, the heavy weight of her valises now fully justified. She plucked out a demure, pale-blue gown with short, puffed sleeves for which she had matching gloves, and a lace fichu to disguise a decolletage that would be unseemly in a governess.

“Oooh, that’s very pretty, Miss.” Patience’s work-reddened hands smoothed the elegant silk of the skirt. “I wish I had a dress like this one.”

With Patience’s over-enthusiastic assistance, Caroline took off her plain daygown and stepped into the fresh evening one. But her hair needed something done with it, and this was where Patience’s skills came to an end. Her hairdressing talents seemed to be confined to the single plait that hung down her back. Caroline would have to manage by herself.

She made an effort that at best might have been deemed barely satisfactory by her old lady’s maid, but at least her hair was now tidy after getting windblown on their journey back from Penzance. She tucked her customary spare hairpin into her bodice, pulled on her long gloves and rose to her feet, smoothing down her skirts much as Patience had done. “Will I do?”

Patience nodded with proprietorial vigor. “You look a right picture, Miss.” She leaned in close to sniff the perfume Caroline had dabbed on. “And you smell like a flower garden.”

Not quite, but she could produce nothing better in the short time allotted to her.

Patience took a step back the better to admire what she plainly considered her own handiwork. “A lot nicer than Mrs. Treloar ever do look. Even when she’s preening herself for that Mr. Trefusis.”

Caroline, choosing to pretend she hadn’t heard Patience’s disrespectful remark, stepped out onto the corridor… and remembered she hadn’t swapped the two medicine bottles over. Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t leave the bottle still holding what might prove to be a fatal dose for a small boy. Bridget might just be sloshing it into a glass, careless of how much she administered. Suddenly, she felt like Daniel going into the lion’s den in the Bible, which, despite its danger, had always been one of her favorite stories. Only she was living in the lion’s den. Now she knew how he’d felt.

“Where is Bridget?”

Patience was tidying up Caroline’s discarded gown and ankle boots. “Downstairs a-having her supper.”

She had to do it now while she had the opportunity. Her bag was still in the schoolroom. If she went now, Bridget wouldn’t know. “You go down and get your own supper, quickly,” she said to Patience. “Yves will be fine on his own for a short while. I’ll just go in and tell him to play with his soldiers. Off you go.” Did she sound as stilted and tense as she felt? Maybe Patience would think it because she was afraid of taking dinner with the family, which she was, in a way.

Patience fetched Yves’s supper tray, only the well-scraped-out eggshell remaining, and departed along the corridor.

Caroline bolted first into the schoolroom to retrieve her bag, then hurried into the nursery, where Yves was lying on the floor drawing.

She didn’t have time to waste. “Quick. Go to the door and watch through a crack for Bridget coming back while I swap the medicines over.”

Yves jumped straight into the swing of this adventure, all unaware that it might be saving his life, and ran to the door. Opening it a crack, he peered outside. “All clear.”

Caroline fished the bottle of tonic out of her bag and hurried to Bridget’s door.

Yves glanced back at her. “I’ll hoot like an owl if I see anyone coming.”

Possibly not his best idea. Caroline hastened to the bed and lifted Bridget’s pillow.

The key wasn’t there.

For a dreadful moment, the world seemed to stand still around Caroline, the air thick and difficult to breathe. Had Bridget realized her room had been searched and hidden the key elsewhere, or worse still, secreted it about her person? She heaved in a steadying breath and tried to gather her thoughts. It must still be here somewhere, surely? Bridget hadn’t taken it with her before.

As fast as she could, she repeated her earlier search. Nothing. A glance back at the door showed Yves still peering out of it. Any minute now, Bridget would be returning, and, on top of that, if she delayed any longer, she’d be late for dinner with the family and be thought rude and ungrateful.

She scanned the room again, but no inspiration came to her. Could Bridget have decided to keep the key on her person? On a string around her neck, maybe?

Something small caught her eye, almost underneath the spartan bed. Three strides took her to it, and, bending down, she rose with the key in her hand. It must have fallen out from under the pillow somehow.

She threw a glance at Yves, still standing guard, as she ran to the corner cupboard and with shaking fingers opened it. The bottle stood there, the name Dalby’s embossed in large letters down the front, with underneath that, in much smaller lettering, Carminative. Where to empty it?

The sash window didn’t want to open. So much for letting fresh air into the nursery. She heaved at it with all her strength, and at last, just when she was about to give up, it slid up a scant three inches. Enough to slide the offending bottle through and tip the contents onto the flowerbed below.

“Someone’s coming,” Yves called. “I heard the door from the gallery open.”

Her fingers shook so much she nearly couldn’t do it. A quick rinse out with some of the contents of her new bottle, a second emptying, and she was filling the bottle as Yves disappeared through the door out onto the corridor.

Stopper back in the old bottle, new bottle into her bag, old bottle back into the cupboard, and key turned in the lock. Close the window. It stuck, but superhuman strength came to her. If her heart beat any more violently, it was going to come bouncing out of her mouth.

She returned the key to the floor by the bed and hurried into the nursery. Outside in the corridor, she heard Yves’s voice raised in complaint. “But I’d like to go outside and play for a while with Dash. He gets lonely down in the kitchens at night. I need to give him his supper.”

Bridget’s strident tones rose above his. “You know you ain’t allowed downstairs after you’ve et your supper, Master Yves. And that dog ain’t allowed up here, neither. Not at nights.”

What to do with the bag and the empty bottle?

“Miss Hawkins and Hester used to let him sleep on my bed.”

“And look where that got them. I need my job, and I’m not lettin’ you bring that smelly dog upstairs. That’s final.”

In his toy chest. She lifted the lid, moved some of his soldiers to one side, and slid the bag and bottle under them.

“Grandfather would let me have him up here.” The sound of a stamped foot. “One day this is all going to be mine, Bridget, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“That’s what you think,” Bridget snapped at him. “Now, get out of my way. I’ve all the work up here to do because that lazy girl, Patience, is downstairs eating her supper.”

Caroline, eyes widening at Bridget’s first remark, lowered the lid and drew in another deep breath in an effort to compose herself. She stepped out onto the corridor. “Yves, come back in here to play. I have to go down to dinner now. Bridget will look after you.”

Yves, who’d been standing halfway along the corridor facing Bridget down, gave an eloquent shrug of his shoulders and a deep sigh, the little dramatist he was. “All right. But tomorrow can I have Dash in the schoolroom with me?”

Caroline stalked past Bridget, who was giving her a suspicious stare. “We shall see. But right now, no arguing. Off you go with Bridget. Good night.”

*

Downstairs in the drawing room, Nat’s mother was tapping her foot with impatience, something that irritated him no end.

Aunt Agnes, dressed as she might have done as a middle-aged woman forty years ago, perched in a stiffly upholstered chair beside the hearth. With her cheeks alarmingly rouged and permanently surprised eyebrows penciled in, she had an amused twinkle in the eyes she had fixed on her late nephew’s wife.

But the person who was most annoying Nat right now stood by the fireplace, one arm resting negligently on the mantelpiece, a confident smile on his face that made him look as though he owned the room. No, as though he thought he owned the room. Jan Trefusis, the land agent, who plainly felt as though his position was a sight higher than it actually was.

A heavy-set man of about forty, he had thick dark hair with only a hint of gray and a dark shadow of beard on his square jaw. He filled out every inch of his well-cut tailcoat and breeches in a way that might one day soon lead to fat. And his face matched this, being wide and coarse featured, with fleshy lips and heavy brows. He had a glass of whisky in his hand and had been holding forth, a tad ironically, on the merits of allowing governesses to eat with the family.

Which was one of the reasons Nat was having to fight to suppress a strong inclination to draw his cork. Planting him a facer and then throwing him out, perhaps without bothering to open the window first, seemed more attractive by the second.

Trefusis shut up at last, and Mrs. Treloar bestowed a forbidding glare on Hetty. “I don’t know why I allowed you and Nat to persuade me to invite Yves’s governess, of all people, to dine with us. She clearly has no manners whatsoever. If dinner is at six, I expect those who are to dine to be here by five minutes before the hour, at least. This is not good enough.”

Nat, standing by the window, remained silent, despite having earlier joined Hetty in her plan to invite Caroline to join them for dinner. He glanced sideways at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece whose minute hand was only just past the twelve.

Hetty must have also noticed. “It’s only one minute after six, Mama. And she was given very little time to dress, having been out all afternoon. Would you have wanted her to present herself all windblown and untidy in a day dress?”

Mrs. Treloar raised a sharp eyebrow, homing in with her usual acuity on the nub of what Hetty had just said. “Out?” Her voice rose. “Where has she been out to ? And who was looking after the boy while she was out?”

Hetty had the grace to look guilty. Maybe Miss Fairfield had asked her not to say what she’d been up to. “Er, Yves went with her, Mama.”

Nat had been used to his mother’s rages from boyhood, but he’d forgotten about them, or time had diminished them for him. He was about to be treated to a reminder. “She took the boy out with her? How? Where to? What for?” Mrs. Treloar’s voice continued to rise with every utterance. Nat resisted the impulse to cover his ears. Trefusis watched the scene with a curl of satisfaction on his thick lips.

Aunt Agnes chuckled, sounding more than ever like an old witch.

Hetty shrank. “She wanted to go into Penzance to buy ribbons for the dress she’s to wear to the ball at Carlyon Court.” By contrast, her voice, usually so buoyant, diminished and trailed off at the end of the sentence. She studied her gloved hands as though they were the most interesting thing in the room.

Their mother swelled like a bullfrog about to sing. “And who gave her permission to take my nephew into Penzance?”

It was at this moment that Caroline entered the room. Nat made a smart bow to her, noticing that Trefusis did as well, his insolent gaze running over the curves of Caroline’s body and renewing Nat’s itch to plant him one on the nose. At least she looked a sight less dowdy than when he’d first seen her, dressed now in a presentable plain blue gown with a demure lace fichu concealing her neckline. Nothing remotely special about her, and yet an air of calm competence hung about her that was undeniably attractive. No. Wait. What was he thinking? Had he been away from women so long that he was harboring feelings for the hired help? Nat turned away to stare out of the window in the direction of the out-of-sight sea.

His mother kept going, unabashed by any pretense at manners, nor by the irony of having accused Miss Fairfield of lacking them. “Tell me, Miss Fairfield.” Her icy tones sliced through the air. “Who gave you leave to take my nephew into Penzance today?”

This was ridiculous. Why shouldn’t the woman take the boy out with her if she wanted to? Neither of them were prisoners here. He’d gone out enough as a boy, not that she’d known about many of his excursions. Well, very few of them, in truth.

“I did,” Nat said, without turning around. “I thought the boy should get some fresh air and a trip out would interest him.”

A stunned silence met this declaration, apart from another maniacal chuckle from Aunt Agnes. No doubt Miss Fairfield was wondering why he’d lied to his mother. God alone knew what his mother was thinking.

She turned her wrath on him with an ease born of years of getting her own way. “You should have consulted me first, Nathaniel. Supposing there’d been an accident? What then? Supposing there was disease in Penzance and the boy caught it and brought it back here?” That last was most probably more due to the worry that if Yves did bring back sickness he might share it about.

“The boy needs to take a few chances,” Nat said, smiling inwardly at his mother’s uncharacteristic concern for the child. Anyone would think she didn’t want anyone outside of Roskilly to set eyes on him. “If he’s to be made a man of, that is. And a trip in a pony cart to Penzance hardly constitutes a danger to man nor beast.” He turned around. “Now, shall we go into dinner?”