Page 56 of The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady
“Lucy! Is she…?” James called when he saw the man approach.
“She still lives, Your Grace.”
The man clucked over the state of horse, clearly disliking how exhausted the animal appeared. James patted the stallion once more, ordering the man to make that the horse was given a hot mash and a warm blanket for the night. The horse had surely done his duty and deserved whatever kindness and rest he could get.
James, though, could not take time for his own needs though he knew he needed warm clothes and a bath as much as the horse required tending. That would come later, after he had time to see Lucy and assure himself that all of this was utter nonsense, an overreaction of the staff. Lucy would undoubtedly be well, the queen of the bedchamber, ordering the servants to her needs like she always did.
But the chamber to which he was shown was small and dark; a single candle flickered, the only light against the darkness. The inhabitant tossed restlessly in the bed, her hands clutching at the sheets, bunching the linen in white-knuckled fists.
“What is she doing here?” James asked in panic, seeing Lucy so old and frail, her skin nearly translucent in the dim light. “There are better chambers than this. She needs a warmer place, better suited for nursing!”
The servants might have protested. This was Lucy’s room after all, a fact he should have been aware of, but he was not. This surely was the smallest space in the entire house, a room so humble it would not have occurred to him that his vibrant Lucy lived there.
Instead the housekeeper made no comment but gathered several maids together to transport Lucy to the chamber next to James’s own. In moments, a warm fire was lit in the fireplace, chasing away the chill, as they piled extra blankets upon the bed to keep Lucy warm.
“Has the doctor been sent for?” James asked, though the very absence of that personage told him the answer well. The night was too difficult. The man would never make it through the storm.
James paced the room, staring periodically at the cook’s assistant, a dull-witted girl named Jane, whose job seemed to entail very little other than placing a fresh damp cloth upon the patient’s forehead, in a vain attempt to bring Lucy’s fever down. Finally, James made the girl leave while ordering out the rest of the servants, so that he might tend to his old governess himself.
Those in his employ must have thought him crazy. A Duke does not wait upon a servant. Should word get out, James would be considered a madman and beneath the contempt of all he would meet.
At the same time, there wasn’t a servant in his household that didn’t understand the importance of Lucy to all of them. To his surprise, there were half a dozen servants waiting in the hallway, most of them carrying their own special items — a soft blanket or warm broth — to offer to her.
The Duke took each offering, smiling thankfully for each. His butler brought him the items he needed most: a change of clothing, warm and dry. Someone else brought a bite to eat though James barely glanced at the tray when they placed it on the table next to him.
No, James was too preoccupied with sitting at Lucy’s bedside, holding her cold hand in his, as though he could somehow pray her back from the gates of death.
The servant who came in with an extra load of wood for the fire was able to give him the details of the fall. Lucy had been found unconscious and restless since. “She’s naught right in the head,” the man pronounced wisely, though he had not been the one to find her.
After the man left, James explored the back of Lucy’s head with his fingers, finding a lump there, and sinking back in his chair with a moan. An injury to the head was a near mystical thing. A mind wandering was not always wont to come back home again, and the very fact that she was fevered and unresponsive was not a good sign.
James did not need to be a doctor to know that.
He groaned and buried his own head in his hands, fighting his own sobs, not ready to let go of this woman who had raised him since he was an infant. He had not gotten along well with his mother, and so Lucy had become to him everything that his father’s wife had not been. Lucy had bought warmth, acceptance and love to a lonely child that had understood little of why he was so unwanted by his own flesh and blood.
James had time to think about that now. He remembered the longing he had always felt, the desire for his mother to love him. But while his own mother had been cold, he had never doubted Lucy’s affection. He had known from the time he was small that she cared. And so, it was, he had somehow managed to grow up being safe, in a home where it would have been easy for him to become cold and bitter.
It was not just James, though, that was so affected by the magic of Lucy. She always saw the best in everyone. Didn’t he know full well that the only reason more of his staff hadn’t left him in this financial disaster was because of her influence? It was her they were loyal to, not him.
“Lucy, you cannot leave us. We need you so much.Ineed you so much…” he murmured as he trapped her restless hand in his own.
The head upon the pillow turned at the sound of his voice, eyes opening to stare blearily first at him, and then to take in the room.
“Am I so near death then, that you feel the need to put me in a room that is not my own?”
James tried to smile, though the action caused the frostbite on his cheeks to sting, and the forced expression could not have looked anything like he’d intended. So, instead, he grimaced, raising a smile from her careworn face.
“I thought so,” she said softly, moving her head upon the pillow, wincing a little as she did so.
“I hardly think you shall die from a bump on the head,” James said, for indeed now that she was awake, he was heartened somewhat despite how grey her face seemed.
Her eyes, so bright, so terribly blue, fastened upon his face. “I have been ill for some time, Your Grace. When I went out in the storm to talk to that woman, I knew I had a limited amount of time left to me.”
James started, both amazed that she still had the presence of mind to twit him with his title, and at the words that followed. “No, you have been your usual self. Why at breakfast the other day you quite clearly were well enough to devour my entire meal!”
One hand waved weakly at him, her other hand restless against the coverlet. “It has always been my heart. Some days I am well, but others…I feel the pains and know. When I fell, the weakness was there. My mother and father both died this way. I wish you could have known them. I think they would have loved you, but you were always a good boy.”
Her parents?“I…I do not understand…”
