Page 5 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

The tenants were a man—most would balk at the term gentleman, as he had made his fortune in trade—and his wife and their only child, a daughter of eighteen, who was to enjoy her first London Season, “once the house has been fitted up in the proper style,” the solicitor had added rather sheepishly. Assorted craftsmen were to begin work first thing in the morning.

It was unusual, certainly, to allow a tenant to redecorate. But Alistair saw no reason to doubt the merchant’s wife’s taste; anything would be an improvement on the house’s current state of genteel shabbiness.

Alistair’s only hesitation, and it had been a slight one, was whether he mightn’t be better served by staying in Town himself and courting the girl, who was rumored to have the sort of dowry that washed away a man’s troubles and made him forget whence the money had come.

But in the end, he had decided in favor of Rylemoor Abbey with his sisters. Mrs. Swetley, the housekeeper, had protested the thought of his spending even one night in the house without servants. Alistair, who had craved a rare evening of silence, had countered with a promise to dine at a chophouse, rather than light a fire in the stove himself.

Which made the offer of tea rather difficult to fulfill. Less because of the lack of fire than the lack of tea leaves. If Mrs. Swetley had left any in the house at all, she would have left them under lock and key—and taken the key with her.

But Mrs. Swetley, it seemed, had anticipated some sort of emergency. She’d left the tea service on a table in the kitchen, covered by a linen cloth, with a spirit lamp and sufficient tea for two brewings, if he were frugal. And while Alistair was not in the habit of making his own tea, he certainly understood the necessity of frugality.

By the time he ascended the stairs again, tea tray in hand, more than a quarter of an hour had passed. He returned to a foyer not markedly different from when he had left it, although someone had also uncovered the pier glass so the lady could assess whether her faint had done irreparable damage to either her coiffure or her bonnet. Her maid relieved him of the tea tray, deposited it on the table, and poured a cup for both the physician and her mistress.

He had intended the second cup for her, but no matter.

“I say, sir,” said the lady, in a voice whose haughtiness suggested she had fully recovered from her earlier bout of delicacy, “are you alone in the house?”

“What an unusual question, ma’am.” He glanced around the increasingly crowded foyer; in his absence, they had been joined by the coachman and another burly fellow. So much for his evening of quiet. “I hope a gentleman might be excused for wondering what prompted you to ask it.”

That reply earned him a hard look along the not insubstantial length of the woman’s nose. She reminded him of his aunt Josephine. “For one thing, a gentleman does not fetch his own tea.” She punctuated the sentence with the soft clink of china against china, as she returned her cup squarely to its saucer. “And for another . . .”

The physician, having made quick work of his own cup, was now fastening the clasps of his leather satchel. “It wouldn’t do to leave the girl here unchaperoned.”

“The . . . girl?”

At that moment, the second physician appeared in the doorway of the library, wiping his hands on his handkerchief. “I wasn’t sure what else to do with her, sir. These two”—he nodded toward the driver and the other man—“helped me carry her in.”

“Were you able to rouse her?”

The younger doctor hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “Not to speak of, no. She took quite a knock to the head.” Alistair tried to read the man’s expression. Did he have his doubts she would ever come around? Did he expect her brains would be scrambled if she did?

He handed over a small vial, wrapped in crinkly paper that revealed its contents as surely as any print upon the label could: laudanum. “No bones broken, as best I can tell. But internal injuries are more difficult to assess. At the very least, she’ll be sore when she wakes. And likely . . . confused.”

“How am I to—? Surely, you don’t mean to—?” As he dropped the little bottle into his coat pocket, Alistair glanced around to discover that the coachman and the other fellow had slipped out, and the other physician was hard on their heels.

“It’s here or a hospital, sir,” said the younger doctor, pocketing his dirty handkerchief, his voice matter-of-fact. And a hospital, as anyone of sense knew, was as good as a death sentence for an unidentified and unconnected young woman in her condition.

“Who is to nurse her?” Alistair could not keep the note of bewilderment from his voice as he watched the physician slip his arms into his coat, clearly preparing to depart. Alistair was reminded of his own intention—nay, the necessity—of vacating Haythorne House first thing in the morning.

“If, as I take it, you’re a bachelor gentleman, and there are concerns over propriety,” he said as he tipped his head toward the grande dame, “perhaps that lady, or her maid—”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed that lady, straightening her rather bedraggled bonnet. “The gentleman claims to have a legion of servants hiding belowstairs. I daresay they’ll manage.” She took her maid by the upper arm and all but pushed her toward the door.

“Stay a moment,” Alistair insisted, but to no avail. The lady and her maid swept out, and the young physician slipped past him, too, refusing payment for his services. Another moment and Alistair was alone again.

Or as good as. In his library, the young woman lay perfectly quiet, her eyes closed, her head propped on the arm of the worn velvet settee in lieu of a pillow, her body still mostly covered by his greatcoat. The physician had unbuttoned her pelisse and removed her torn gloves and her muddy ankle boots. Her right wrist was bandaged and there was a plaster on her cheek, but he could see little other change in her condition.

A draft of cold air alerted him to the fact that no one had bothered to close the front door. When he stepped to it, he discovered a boy standing on the uppermost step, his outstretched arms sagging beneath an indistinguishable burden. “She dropped these when she, er, fell,” he said, eager to off-load the battered bundle of what looked to be carpet and kindling. “An’ I found these in the street where she’d been,” he added, adding a broken and twisted bit of metal and glass to the top of the pile once he had deposited it into Alistair’s hands.

Spectacles. She’d been wearing spectacles. That shadow of memory flickered across his mind’s eye once again but disappeared before he could prod it into some recognizable shape.

“Wait a moment,” he told the boy, then turned to place what he’d collected on the nearby chair. He fished in his waistcoat pocket, glancing past the lad into the encroaching twilight. Afternoon was giving way to evening. He dropped three coins onto the child’s mittened palm. “Go to the Barley Mow and fetch round some dinner for me. And—and beef tea for the lady,” he added, though it felt like a futile gesture, to provide nourishment for one who thus far had shown no sign of regaining consciousness.

The boy’s eyes widened at the sum with which he’d been entrusted. “Aye, guv.”

Alistair closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, warily regarding the pile on the chair of what remained of her possessions. With something like a sigh of resignation, he pushed himself upright, carried the items into his library and deposited them in the middle of his otherwise empty desk, then set about lighting candles against the deepening gloom. The woman never stirred.

He started with the mangled spectacles, though what they might tell him he could not imagine. One lens was gone, the other cracked, a spiderweb of fractures branching out from the upper-right corner. The opposite earpiece was bent downward, like the handle of a lorgnette. From the lad’s description, she must have landed atop them when she fell.