The Governess Was Wicked (5 page)

Crane backed out of the room as quickly as his stumbling feet would take him, shutting the door sharply behind him.

“What do you think they’ll do?” asked Dr. Fellows.

“Who?” she asked, distracted by the task ahead of her. It would fall to her to nurse Juliana and Cassandra. She must stay awake and fight the exhaustion threatening her.

“Mr. and Mrs. Norton.”

“They’ll retreat to the home of Mrs. Norton’s relatives. Once their heir is out of danger, I imagine it’ll be something of a holiday for them.”

She turned her attention back to the doctor, only to find him studying her with curious eyes. “You don’t approve of your employers.”

It wasn’t prudent to say anything—not while she was in their house—and yet something about the sympathy in his expression made her want to divulge everything to him. Her disapproval of the Nortons. Her disappointment in not having a life of her own. Her anger with her father for dying and leaving her with nothing more than a sharp mind, a genteel upbringing, and one month of a season to rely upon. Her own inability to show this man how fast her heart beat every time she saw him.

“I don’t believe the Nortons care for their daughters. They never will until they’re of age to be married. That’s when they will be valuable.” She could hear the bitterness in her voice, and dipped her head to try to hide any trace of it that might have played out over her face. She didn’t want to be this person—resentful and unhappy—but sometimes the Nortons made it difficult to be anything else.

Slowly, Dr. Fellows tilted her chin up until their eyes met. It was the first time he’d touched her so intimately, save their kiss in the kitchen, and she couldn’t help the shiver of desire that raced through her. Her lips opened just a fraction, her body inviting him in with hardly a thought to the consequences.

“You care for these girls very much, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes searching hers as though he could read every secret in the universe in them.

“I do,” she whispered. “And it frightens me that they might be in any sort of danger.”

His fingers splayed out now so that he cupped her cheek. “They could not have a fiercer protector than you. They’re in the very best hands.”

For just one harmless moment, she closed her eyes and leaned into the comfort he offered. His palm was rough, as were the joints of his knuckles. She wondered as she always did how he got those calluses. There was so little she knew about this man, and yet somehow she felt as though she knew everything she needed to about him. About his character.

“Thank you, Dr. Fellows.”

A smile played across his lips. “Perhaps, just this one time, you might call me Edward.”

His thumb stroked her cheek, sending desire pooling between her legs despite the thick cloak of worry she wore around her.

“Thank you, Edward.”

His hand fell away, and the connection between them broke, but not before Elizabeth spotted the same yearning in his eyes that she felt every time she saw him.

“I’ll go tell Mrs. Norton the news,” she said, hoping the long walk down to the second floor and across to the opposite side of the house would cool her ardor.

Dr. Fellows nodded and put a hand on the bedroom doorknob. “I’ll mix up a tonic for the young ladies.”

“Will you be here when I return?” she asked, unable to hold back the question that slipped from her lips.

He nodded. “I won’t leave your side.”

As she let herself out of the nursery, Elizabeth couldn’t help but wish his words meant more.

Elizabeth cast her shoulders back and steeled herself before knocking on Mrs. Norton’s bedroom door. She waited, hoping to hear a rustling inside. Nothing.

She knocked again, harder this time, and put her ear to the door. There it was, the sound of bedsheets moving about. Then came a thin voice. “What is it?”

Elizabeth turned the knob and let herself into the darkened room. The last embers of a fire gave off enough of a glow that she could make out the outline of Mrs. Norton’s massive gold bed with its elaborate scrollwork. Gauzy fabric spilled down over the four corners from a high canopy. In the middle of all that luxury, propped up on one elbow among a sea of down pillows, was her employer.

“Who’s there?” called the normally sharp voice dulled by sleep.

“It’s Miss Porter, ma’am.”

Mrs. Norton let out a huff. “Are you aware what time it is, Miss Porter?”

“I am, ma’am.” She hated that she was forced to answer every one of this woman’s demands and barbs with deference. It grated on her that Mrs. Norton had all of this—hideous as the overwrought bed was—simply because the woman had a family to ferry her through a season or two and ensure that she made a good match.

But none of that mattered at the moment. She shoved her dislike of this woman aside in favor of the little girls who were in very grave danger.

“Miss Norton and Miss Cassandra are unwell,” she said, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. Nothing would happen to the girls. Edward—Dr. Fellows—was with them. He would make sure nothing happened to them while she was gone.

“Handle the problem, Miss Porter,” said Mrs. Norton, pulling at the covers as though she was preparing to roll over and fall asleep again. “This is what you’re paid, and generously given room and board, to do.”

Setting her chin a little higher, Elizabeth tried again. “Dr. Fellows is here. He’s certain that it’s scarlet fever.”

Mrs. Norton shot straight up in bed. “What?”

“I sent for him when I saw Miss Norton had the rash. By the time he arrived, we discovered that Miss Cassandra also was beginning to show signs of the illness.”

“Turn up that lamp!” Mrs. Norton shouted. “Oh my Lord, scarlet fever. We must move quickly!”

Elizabeth was taken aback in the best way by her employer’s insistence. Mrs. Norton wasn’t known for being a logical, practical woman, but that was exactly what they had to do. The baby must be moved, and the girls must be made comfortable. They were all in for a long stretch by the sickbed.

She reached for the nearest gas lamp and turned up the flame. The room flooded with light as Mrs. Norton leaped out of bed, shoving her arms into her pale-pink quilted silk dressing gown. “Ring for my maid,” the woman ordered. “Ring for everyone. We’ll have to pack for my sister’s as quickly as we can. George can’t catch the fever from his sisters.”

Elizabeth’s newly found faith in her employer dissolved. Just as she’d predicted, the family would decamp to the Braithwaites’ elegant Berkeley Square home and leave the girls in quarantine.

“You’ll stay with Juliana and Cassandra,” Mrs. Norton ordered.

She pursed her lips. Naturally, it didn’t even occur to Mrs. Norton she might stay to care for her sick daughters.

“Of course,” she said with as much deference as she could muster. “I’ll wake Nurse.”

“Yes, do that,” Mrs. Norton said, rather distracted as she threw open her dressing room door.

“Would you like to see the girls before you leave?” Elizabeth asked.

Mrs. Norton stopped and turned around, a curious look on her face. “Why would I want to do that?”

Her cheeks heated at the woman’s words, and her ire began to rise. Mrs. Norton—beautiful and elegant—was a rarefied figure placed on a pedestal. Juliana and Cassandra saw her for fifteen minutes in the late afternoon once all of Mrs. Norton’s calls were done and the drawing room was clear. They adored her precisely because their mother kept them firmly in the nursery at an arm’s length. It wasn’t an uncommon practice for women of her social standing, but that didn’t mean Elizabeth didn’t secretly hate it.

“I’m sure they would take great comfort in seeing their mother,” Elizabeth said, trying not to clench her teeth. “They’re both scared.”

Nothing about the woman’s stony expression changed, and she realized that she hated Mrs. Norton even more in that moment than she’d thought possible. For a woman to abandon her children just because they happened to be girls who couldn’t inherit the family fortune was unthinkable to her.

“I would endanger George if I was around them,” said Mrs. Norton. “They have you and that’s enough.”

It would never be enough. Juliana in particular sought the woman’s approval in everything, mirroring her behavior on what little she’d observed from her mother. They would be frightened and sick and wanting to know where she was, and Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to tell them the truth. Instead, she’d have to do what she could to be a substitute—albeit a poor one.

When she left Mrs. Norton’s room, the household was already a whirl of action. Footmen were dispatched to drag trunks down from the attic, and Jeremy was sent off to the Braithwaites’ to inform the household that Lady Braithwaite’s sister and the healthy part of her family would descend before dawn.

For her part, Elizabeth retreated to the quiet nursery, a little disappointed that Dr. Fellows wasn’t there. He was a busy man, she reminded herself as she spotted two empty glasses that no doubt had held the girls’ medicine. He couldn’t stay by the sickbed of every patient.

Elizabeth busied herself moving Cassandra back to the sickroom and applying cold cloths to burning foreheads. It was an hour and a half before a maid fetched her. Mrs. Norton wanted to see her in the entryway. Smoothing her hands over her dress, she straightened her shoulders and went to seek out the woman. She found her employer flitting from trunk to trunk in the entryway, a worried swirl of silk and fur, her hair expertly coiffed and a hint of powder that no one was supposed to notice dabbed on her nose.

“Don’t come to Lady Braithwaite’s home,” Mrs. Norton ordered as soon as she saw Elizabeth. “Who knows what disease might cling to you.”

The lady held a handkerchief to her nose as though the perfumed cloth would somehow ward away the scarlet fever that hung about the house. Behind her, Nurse carried George bundled up tightly against the January night. The last of the cases and trunks that had been haphazardly thrown together stood in the hallway, lined up and waiting to be deposited on the family carriage.

“I shall send word when the children are better,” said Elizabeth, trying to hold the judgment from her voice.

“I hope this won’t interfere with our plans this evening,” Mrs. Norton fretted through her handkerchief. “Mr. Norton and I should regret it so much if we were to miss the Countess of Madehurst’s ball, especially since the countess herself wrote out a postscript on the invitation begging me to attend so that she might show me the new Titian she bought when she was last in Rome. The woman has no natural taste, and she relies so much on my opinion when it comes to these things.”

Elizabeth’s nails bit against the soft skin of her palms as she struggled to maintain her composure amid all the chaos. It wasn’t until the last trunk had been hauled up onto the carriage and the squalling heir to the Norton’s soap fortune swept out of the house that she let herself exhale.

The three-story climb to the nursery was a long one, for dawn had already begun to break. Weary as she might be, she knew there’d be no hope of seeing her own bed again for hours.

Pushing her limp hair back from her brow, she rounded the corner on the long hall to the nursery only to stop short. Carefully closing the nursery door behind him was Dr. Fellows. He glanced up as he heard her approach, his hand freezing on the doorknob.

“I thought you’d gone,” she blurted out.

“The head housemaid persuaded me to take a cup of tea in the kitchen after I’d finished administering to the young ladies.”

“You shouldn’t have had to sit in the kitchen.”

“I quite liked it actually. It has good memories.”

She blushed fiercely, for she knew which memories he must be thinking of. Perhaps if she were a dishonest woman she could blame the rashness on her upbringing. Her father always said that an army camp was hardly the place to raise a daughter, even though her home had never been a true camp but rather a house near the barracks.

The problem was, she couldn’t very well lie to herself. She’d kissed the doctor because she
wanted
to kiss him. And even worse, she’d enjoyed it and told him as much.

This must stop. Two children were in danger. Children who were her responsibility. Children she loved. She hated to think of them in pain or discomfort, and she refused to entertain the idea that they might not survive this. She would nurse them back to health through sheer willpower if that was all she had.

“How are they?” she asked, trying not to let her fear show through.

With a sigh, he scrubbed a hand over his chin. “You caught the sickness early, so with any luck we will be able to bring down the fever quickly. I’ve given them each a tonic of mitre and acetate of ammonia and made sure they are wrapped up against their chills.”

“I’ve asked the maids to keep bringing cold cloths for them.”

He checked the watch that hung on a chain from his black waistcoat. “Those should be changed every hour. Make sure that whoever cares for them keeps them as comfortable as possible.”

“I’ll care for them.” Her words sounded fiercer than intended.

“Surely there’s someone who can help you,” said Dr. Fellows with some concern. “You must sleep yourself.”