Page 41 of Becoming Lady Dalton
“What’re you doing?” Samuel demanded when the fit passed.
“Taking you away from here.”
He tried to laugh, but it brought on another bloody fit.
“We’ll knock on her ladyship’s door and curtsey and ask for crumpets with a dish of tea, eh?” Samuel wheezed.
“No. I’m taking you somewhere no one will find you. I may not have been much of a wife to you, Sam, but I’ll be as good a wife as I’m able for the time we have remaining together.”
“I want to see Matthew.”
Viola froze. Rough fabric scraped her palms, more fit for her coarse hands than the slip of fine silk.
“I won’t risk his health,” she responded over her shoulder. “He thinks you’re dead.”
“You told him I was dead?” Samuel echoed.
“I did. I had no way of knowing otherwise. I did ask about your whereabouts. I tried to pay the lease on the farmstead, thinking you would come back to us.”
“Even though you didn’t want me,” he asked in a chagrin-laced whisper.
“It was never about what I wanted, Sam. I made a promise. I was hardly more than a child when I made it, but I have kept that vow, and I shall continue to do so.” She inhaled sharply before remembering the air of the room was permeated with contagion. Somehow, she’d forgotten about the smell. “But for Matthew, I don’t want to upset him. He’s going to school in a few weeks.”
There was a long silence.
“I know you think I’m unfeeling,” Sam rasped. “I have been, at times, Viola. I understand you want to protect him. But I’m his father.”
She swallowed and said nothing as she closed the bag.
“You’re a good woman. A better wife than I ever deserved.”
Viola hefted the case and set it on the broken wood chair next to the door. It wobbled but held. “Had I known all I needed to do to turn your tongue silver was to purchase you a few bottles of laudanum, I’d have done it years ago. Up you get. On three.”
Samuel stank of rot, the kind that wouldn’t wash off in a shower bath. Weakly, he sat up, threw one arm around her shoulders, and clung as Viola hoisted him out of the bed and onto his feet.
“Hold onto the wall if you need to.”
She wedged his feet into his boots and wrapped his ragged greatcoat around his wasted shoulders. Between the bag and the man, she struggled to support the weight. A perfect metaphor for her life. At least, for a few months, she had slept on fine linen, listened to beautiful music, read books for the pleasure of their secrets, and danced.
Oh, the dancing.Memories of Piers’ hands at her waist and twirling her lightly on the balls of her feet gave her strength.
“The stairs are wet. Watch your step.”
“Barmaids slop beer carrying it up to the rooms,” Sam commented. Mercifully, he didn’t hack until they made it into the noisy, heated taproom. Samuel’s painful wheeze made the patrons part like the Red Sea. They knew what that cough meant. It killed thousands of men and women in London’s slums. It was the sound of slow death, of being consumed from the inside out.
On the street outside, Viola summoned a cab. When the ragged horse pulled up she had to push Samuel inside. He collapsed on the floor, face-down, his ribs heaving beneath the dirty coat.
“Up,” Viola urged. “Get up, Samuel.”
The slum of St. Giles was full of human silhouettes who scurried like rats along the streets. Viola jumped at every imagined threat. To be here after dark, in her fine afternoon dress now sadly marked with mud ... there hadn’t been a choice. She’d had a small window of opportunity to get Sam settled at the empty townhouse before her grandmother came home from the musical performance this afternoon. Besides, after nearly losing her composure in the middle of the drawing room, there had been no reason to stay. Piers had chosen the absolute worst possible time to ask her to come home with him.
Viola glanced warily over her shoulder as she tossed the bag in after him and clambered over her husband’s prone form. With effort, she slipped her arms beneath his and hauled him onto the cracked leather seat.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she ordered. Samuel’s outraged glare almost made her laugh. Despite the awfulness of her predicament, there was an element of absurdity to it as well. Moments of black humor had gotten Viola through every difficulty of her life thus far. Even more than she longed to touch Piers the way she stroked silk in dressmakers’ shops, she needed to release her fear and laugh at the ridiculousness of life at moments like this, no matter how inappropriate.
Cold air blasted her cheeks, restoring reason. Viola gave the driver her destination and clambered back into the cab. A shadow stretched long across the opposite wall as she reached for the door. Her impulse to laugh gave way to terror. Was it him? Reed? But how would he have known to follow her here, of all places?
“Latch the door, and let’s get on, lassie,” the driver called out.
