Page 40 of A Convenient Fiction

Laura didn’t wait for him to help her, too. She caught her skirts up to one side and leapt down herself. Mr. Archer shot her a dark look. “I’ll run ahead and get one of the servants,” she said.

By the time she ran through the gates and up the path, John Yardley was already at the door. She quickly explained what had happened, and with his assistance, she and Mr. Archer got Aunt Charlotte into the house and up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Laura?” Teddy called out from his room across the hall. “What’s going on?”

“In a moment, my dear,” she called back. “Yardley? Fetch Mrs. Crabtree with my aunt’s tonic.” And then to Mr. Archer: “If you could just help me get her onto the bed?”

“Allow me,” he said. “If I may, Mrs. Bainbridge?”

“I fear I’m too heavy,” Aunt Charlotte protested.

“Nonsense.” Mr. Archer settled Aunt Charlotte effortlessly onto the mattress, pausing to adjust a pile of goose-down pillows behind her back.

In that moment, Laura’s heart swelled with an emotion that was almost painful. It was something more than gratitude. Something more than anything she’d ever felt for a gentleman before.

She turned abruptly away.

“What is it, my dear?” Aunt Charlotte’s voice was tremulous. “You’ve not taken ill, too, have you?”

Laura gave a huff of laughter. “Wouldn’t that be a marvelous end to our day.” She turned back to face her aunt. “I’m fine, you know that. I’m always fine.”

“Miss Laura?” Mrs. Crabtree came to the door, a brown medicine bottle in her hand. She’d been their cook since Laura was a child, and after Papa’s death had taken on the additional role of housekeeper. Any other servant would have left them by now, but Mary Crabtree was loyal to the bone. “I’ve brought Mrs. Bainbridge’s tonic.”

“At last.” Aunt Charlotte extended her hand to Mrs. Crabtree. “You go on now, Laura, and tend to your brother. Mrs. Crabtree is all I need.”

“Tonic first,” Laura said. She waited while Mrs. Crabtree administered it.

Aunt Charlotte swallowed a spoonful and leaned back with a sigh. “My heart is calming already. Don’t send for the doctor, Laura. Let me rest awhile first. The tonic may be all I need.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, yes. Give me an hour and we shall see. No need to have Dr. Taylor ride out for nothing.” Aunt Charlotte smiled weakly at Mr. Archer. “Thank you for coming to my aid, sir. So very kind of you.”

“I’m at your service, ma’am,” Mr. Archer said.

“Laura!” Teddy called out again.

Laura left her aunt’s room, Mr. Archer close behind her. “My brother,” she said. “If you’ll give me a moment.”

“I should like to meet him.”

“Would you?” Laura looked up at him. Her pulse skipped. He was unnervingly close. “I’ll have to ask him. He may not be well enough for visitors today.”

“I’ll wait.”

She rapped once on Teddy’s door before entering. He was at his desk, sitting up straight in his wheeled chair, a pile of half-finished drawings strewn before him.

“What the devil is going on?” he demanded. “Is someone here?”

She told him about Aunt Charlotte—and about Mr. Archer’s assistance. “He’d like to be introduced to you, if you feel equal to it.”

Teddy made an impatient gesture in the direction of the door. “Send him in.”

Alex wandered down the upstairs hall of the cottage while Miss Hayes talked with her brother. It was lined with wood-paneled doors, the floor covered with a worn floral carpet. Not all of the doors were shut. A few hung half-open on their hinges, giving glimpses of what lie within. In one, he saw a heavy four-poster bed with faded blue hangings. It had a needlework quilt spread across the bottom of it, and a walnut table at its side, adorned with an oil lamp and a pewter jug of freshly cut flowers.

Miss Hayes’s room, he’d wager.

There was a faint fragrance to it. Roses and lavender, and freshly starched petticoats. Something sweet and clean and unmistakably her.