Frederica Read online

  Not only had Harry accepted this stricture meekly: he had furnished Jessamy with the money to pay for his journey; charged him with a reassuring message for Frederica; joked Charis out of the dismals; and had even promised to take care of Lufra. ‘And he didn’t call Luff that misbegotten mongrel, either!’ said Jessamy.

  ‘That was indeed kind of him,’ responded Alverstoke gravely.

  ‘Yes. Well, he is kind! I mean, he never tries to bullock one, or comes the ugly if one provokes him, which I daresay most elder brothers would.’ He sighed, and added wistfully: ‘I wish I might have brought Luff here, but they wouldn’t have permitted me to do so, on the stage, would they?’

  The Marquis, mentally rendering thanks to Providence for having refrained from adding the task of preserving Farmer Judbrook’s herd from Lufra’s onslaughts to his other duties, said, with as much sympathy as he could infuse into his voice: ‘No, I am afraid they wouldn’t. But you have the comfort of knowing that he will be well cared for while you are away.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Jessamy naïvely. ‘Owen has promised me that he will feed him, and exercise him.’

  If Frederica was not wholly pleased to know that her aunt had washed her hands of her young relations, she received the news philosophically, telling Alverstoke that perhaps it was just as well that she had retired to Harley Street. ‘For it is not at all helpful to be scolding all the time, just as if any of this were poor Charis’s fault! She doesn’t mean everything she says, and I don’t doubt she will keep her eyes on things, even if she has taken up residence with my Aunt Amelia. Charis will be much happier with Harry, and I know he will take good care of her. The only thing is –’

  She broke off, a worried frown in her eyes; and, after a moment, Alverstoke said: ‘What is the only thing, Frederica? My blockish young cousin?’

  A tiny smile acknowledged that he had scored a hit, but she replied: ‘Whatever it is there’s nothing I can do about it, so it would be stupid to tease myself.’

  He said no more, knowing that her thoughts were concentrated on Felix. Charis’s future was a matter of indifference to him, except as it affected her sister, so he was content to let the matter drop. He was much inclined to think that Endymion was indulging a fit of gallantry that would be as fleeting as it was violent; if the affair proved to be more serious than he supposed, and Frederica was troubled by it, he would intervene, and without compunction. His lordship, in fact, previously ruthless on his own behalf, was now prepared to sacrifice the entire human race to spare his Frederica one moment’s pain. Except, perhaps, the two youngest members of the family she loved so much: Jessamy, concealing his chagrin at being allowed so little share of the nursing, and humbly holding himself in readiness to fetch, carry, run errands, or to perform any task which was required of him; and Felix – little devil that he was! – who was depending on his strength, and could be quietened by his voice. No: he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice Jessamy or Felix: he had become attached to the infernal brats – though he was damned if he knew why.

  During the next two days he had no leisure, much less inclination, to consider this problem. Fulfilling the doctor’s prophecy, Felix’s fever mounted; and although Alverstoke maintained his imperturbable demeanour he entertained the gravest fears. That Frederica shared them he knew, though she never spoke of them, or showed a sign of agitation. She was invincibly cheerful, and apparently tireless; but when he saw how strained her eyes were, and how drawn her face, he wondered how long it would be before she collapsed.

  But in the early hours of the third day, when he entered the sickroom, he found it strangely quiet. So critical did he feel Felix’s condition to be that he had not left the farm that evening. He checked now upon the threshold, filled with foreboding. Felix was lying still, neither muttering, nor twitching; and Frederica was standing by the bed. She turned her head at the sound of the opening door; and Alverstoke, seeing that tears were rolling down her face, went quickly forward, saying involuntarily: ‘Oh, my poor girl – !’

  Then he saw that she was smiling through her tears. She said simply: ‘He is asleep. The fever broke. Suddenly I saw that he was sweating, and I knew! Cousin, we’ve done the thing!’

  Twenty-four

  With Felix out of danger, and slowly winning back to strength, life at Monk’s Farm underwent several changes. It was no longer necessary to keep a constant watch over him; and although Frederica, sleeping on the truckle-bed in his room, might be obliged to get up three or four times during the night to attend to him, she no longer needed either relief or assistance; nor, during the day, was it imperative for her to remain always within call. He slept a great deal, and was docile when awake, too weak to display any of his customary recalcitrance: a circumstance which made Jessamy, permitted at last to share the task of nursing him, so uneasy that he sought counsel of the Marquis. ‘For I don’t wish to alarm Frederica, sir,’ he explained. ‘Only it does seem to me very unlike him! I don’t mean because he does what you or Frederica bid him, because he would, of course. But he does what I say he must, and doesn’t even argue! You don’t think, do you, sir, that his brain is affected?’

  Preserving his countenance, the Marquis reassured him; but he was not wholly satisfied until the day when Felix had to be coaxed to swallow his medicine, and apostrophised him as the greatest beast in nature. ‘So now I know all’s right!’ he told the Marquis radiantly. ‘I daresay he will soon be throwing the glass at me!’

  ‘Well, if it will afford you pleasure I hope he may,’ said his lordship. ‘Warn him not to throw it at me!’

  Another change was provided by Knapp. After a struggle with his pride, he allowed the boredom he was suffering at the Sun, and his jealousy of Curry, who spent his days at the farm, in attendance on the Marquis, to overcome his reluctance to demean himself, and offered his services.

  So Felix, quite unimpressed, was waited on by a valet of rare quality; the kitchen quarters were dignified by the presence of a refined personage of great condescension, in whom Miss Judbrook recognised a gentleman’s gentleman of the first stare; and Frederica, as she told the Marquis, found herself with nothing to do.

  It might have been expected that his lordship would now have returned to London, but this was a change which had not taken place. He continued to put up at the Sun, under conditions to which he was in no way accustomed, and to spend his days at Monk’s Farm. As soon as Frederica felt it safe to leave Felix in his brother’s charge for an hour or two, he persuaded her to take the air in his phaeton; and, later, when she had recovered from her exhaustion, to go with him for strolling walks. She was very ready to do so; she talked to him with the ease of long-standing friendship; she consulted him on any problem that arose; but her entire lack of consciousness showed him that it had not entered her head to regard him in the light of a suitor. He could not help wondering if she treated him as she might an elder brother, or even (a lowering thought!) an uncle.

  His own doubts were at an end. The more he saw of her the more he loved her, and as he had never loved any woman before. Not the most beautiful of his mistresses had inspired him with a desire to shield her from every adverse wind; he had never pictured the most amusing of his well-born flirts presiding over his several establishments; and far less had he contemplated a permanent relationship with any of these ladies. But after knowing her for little more than two months Frederica had so seriously disturbed the pattern of his life that he had been cast into a state of indecision: a novel experience which had not been at all agreeable. When he was pitchforked into her little brother’s fantastic adventure he had still been in a state of uncertainty; since then he had spent more than a week in close companionship with her, and under conditions as unromantic as they were uncomfortable, and all his doubts were resolved: he wished to spend the rest of his life with her, because she was the perfect woman he had never expected to encounter.

  His lordship, in fact, had fallen deeply in love. He was also undergoing yet another new experience: Frederica s