Frederica Read online

  ‘Not, I hope, as bad as he looks. Do you think your sister could send me up some cold meat, or something of that nature?’

  ‘Indeed, my lord, she’ll do no such thing, nor wouldn’t think of it! She bid me tell you your dinner will be laid out for you in the parlour in half-an-hour, and begs you will excuse it not being what your lordship’s used to, her having had no time to dress a joint, or a chicken. We have our own dinner midday,’ he explained apologetically, ‘but Polly knows fine how to manage for gentlemen, being as she was housekeeper to a gentleman in London for fifteen years. Which I sometimes wish she was still, because she don’t like living in the country, and never did, which is what makes her so maggoty! Still, she thought it was her duty, when my missis died, and she’s right enough at heart, my lord, for all her crotchets. It was me bringing the young gentleman in without a word to her which set her on end, her being one as likes to act contrary. Though how I was to ask her leave, when I was in my Three-acre field, which was where it happened, my lord, and all of a quarter-of-a-mile from here, I don’t know, nor she neither! But, there!’ A slow smile crept over his face, and he said, with more truth than he knew: ‘Your lordship knows what females are!’

  ‘None better,’ agreed his lordship. ‘I trust I shall be able to come to terms with Miss Judbrook, however – which is a matter I wish to discuss with you. As for my dinner, pray tell her not to put herself to any trouble over it! Cold meat and cheese will do very well. But bring it to me here, if you please!’

  ‘I was thinking that I could stay with the young gentleman while your lordship was in the parlour?’

  Alverstoke shook his head. ‘No. Very obliging of you, but if the boy were to wake, and see only a strange face, it might alarm him,’ he said tactfully.

  ‘Just as you say, my lord. There’s just one other thing, which – Well, I’m fairly put about to know what to offer your lordship to drink!’ Judbrook disclosed. ‘Barring the cowslip-wine Polly makes – and she says it ain’t fitting – we don’t have any wine in the house. I could send one of my lads down to the alehouse, but I doubt – ’

  ‘On no account! Unless you have no beer in the house either? That’s all I want – and I do want that!’

  ‘Oh, if that’s so, my lord – !’ said Judbrook, his mind relieved of care. ‘I’ll bring you up a mug straight!’

  He also brought up a second tray, loaded with the mute witnesses to his sister’s mettle; and by the time the Marquis had disposed of a meal which began with a bowl of excellent soup, and included a dish of hasty mutton, and two pigeons roasted on a spit, the long summer’s day had begun to close in, and he had had the satisfaction of seeing his charge stir a little, slightly altering his position, and turning his head on the pillow. He then entered into lengthy negotiations with the farmer, whose reluctance to accept any payment for his hospitality would, under different circumstances, have bored him intolerably; and sent for Miss Judbrook, to compliment her on her culinary skill, in the hope that a little flattery now would, later, benefit Frederica. She gave him no reason to congratulate himself on this manoeuvre, for although she was civil, her countenance remained forbidding, and never more so than when he told her that she would shortly be relieved of all responsibility by the arrival of Miss Merriville at Monk’s Farm. Judbrook then showed him where his own bedchamber was situated, adjured him to rouse him at need, supplied him with a number of candles, and left him to while away the night-hours as best he might, only reappearing (in his bedgown, for which he blushfully begged pardon) to give his lordship a bottle containing the saline draught brought by the doctor’s man.

  The Marquis resigned himself to hours of tedium; but he had not many of them to endure. Long before even the earliest farm-worker was awake, he would readily have compounded with fate for a week of tedium in exchange for the anxiety which beset him as soon as the effects of laudanum began to wear off.

  At first only restless, muttering unintelligibly, but sinking back into a slumber, Felix grew steadily harder to quieten, passing from a state of semi-consciousness to a confused realisation of his aches and pains, and of his strange surroundings. He uttered his sister’s name, from a parched throat, and struggled to free his arms from the blankets, hurting his sprained wrist, and giving a sharp cry; but when Alverstoke took his other hand in a firm clasp, and spoke to him, he seemed to recognise him. His fingers clung like claws; he stared up into Alverstoke’s face, and panted: ‘Don’t let me fall! don’t let me fall!’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Alverstoke said, stretching out his hand for Dr Elcot’s saline draught, which he had poured out at the first sign of agitation. ‘You are perfectly safe now.’ He disengaged himself and raised Felix, setting the glass to his lips, and saying: ‘Here’s a drink for you! Open your mouth!’

  ‘I want Frederica!’ Felix said, fretfully turning his head away.

  He responded, however, to the note of command in Alverstoke’s voice when he said again: ‘Open your mouth, Felix! Come! do as you’re bid!’ and Alverstoke, whose small experience of medicines included none that were not extremely nasty, gave him no chance to recoil from the dose, but tilted it ruthlessly down his throat.

  Felix choked over it, but after his first slightly tearful indignation, he seemed to grow more rational. Alverstoke lowered him on to his pillow, and withdrew his arm. ‘That’s better!’ he said.

  ‘I want Frederica!’ reiterated Felix.

  ‘You shall have her directly,’ promised Alverstoke.

  ‘I want her now!’ stated Felix. ‘Tell her!’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  A short silence fell. Alverstoke hoped that Felix was sliding back into sleep, but just as he was about to move away from the bed he found that Felix was looking at him, as though trying to bring his face into focus. Apparently he succeeded, for he murmured, with a sigh of relief: ‘Oh, it’s you! Don’t leave me!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m so thirsty!’

  Alverstoke raised him again, and he gulped down the barley-water thankfully; and, this time, when lowered on to his pillow, dropped asleep.

  It was an uneasy sleep, however, and of short duration. He woke with a start, and a jumble of words on his lips. He was evidently in the grip of a nightmare, and it was not for several moments that Alverstoke’s voice penetrated it. He said then, vaguely: ‘Cousin Alverstoke,’ but an instant later moaned that he was cold. The Marquis began to look a little grim, for the hand which clutched his was hot and dry. He spoke soothingly, and with good effect: Felix lay quiet for a while, but he did not shut his blurred eyes. Suddenly he said, in a troubled voice: ‘This isn’t my room! Why am I in this room? I don’t like it! I don’t know where I am!’

  The Marquis answered matter-of-factly: ‘You are with me, Felix.’

  He spoke instinctively, uttering the first words that came into his head, and thinking, an instant later, that they were singularly foolish. But, after blinking at him, Felix smiled, and said: ‘Oh, yes! I forgot! You won’t go away, will you?’

  ‘Of course not. Shut your eyes! You are quite safe, I promise.’

  ‘Yes, of course, as long as you’re here, because then I shan’t fall,’ murmured Felix hazily. ‘I know that!’

  Alverstoke said nothing, and presently had the satisfaction of knowing that Felix was asleep. Carefully withdrawing his hand from the slackened hold on it, he moved away, to alter the position of the candle, so that its flickering light should not fall on Felix’s face. It seemed to him that the boy had dropped into a more natural sleep; but his hope that this would endure was speedily dashed, and he did not again indulge it. For the rest of the night Felix, even to his inexperienced eyes, grew steadily worse, his face more flushed, and his pulse alarmingly rapid. There were intervals when he dozed, but they were never of long duration; and when he woke it was always in a state of feverish excitement bordering on delirium. He seemed to be suffering considerable pain; in one of his lucid moments he complained that he ‘ached all over,’ but when Alverstok