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“Sir?” Sarah called out.
Mr. Selwood did not respond.
Nettles or not, Rose needed extraction. Sarah’s frock was long, and her stockings underneath were probably thick enough to protect her legs. And in truth, a few stings from the nettles would not matter.
She plowed through the greenery and lifted Rose into her arms. Mr. Selwood’s face had lost all color as he watched them, his feet still frozen to the ground. Perhaps he had some sort of unexplained fear of nettles from a past experience. Like the time Sarah had eaten Brussels sprouts and vomited all night long. Now she couldn’t bear even the mention of them.
She hitched the crying Rose on one hip and with a little prayer in her heart that Mrs. Walker was not watching from the kitchen window, Sarah took Mr. Selwood’s hand.
“Come along, then.” She pulled him with her as she trod out of the underbrush. A little sting bit her on her left leg, but it was nothing. “If you were so afraid of nettles, you should have let me go in in the first place. They don’t bother me at all.”
Once free, Sarah released his hand so she could hold Rose with both of hers. “We’ll get that sting washed off and you’ll be good as new, yeh?”
Rose gave her a teary nod. Mr. Selwood said nothing. She left him out on the lawn and carried Rose inside. Rather than give him further embarrassment by asking questions, she let it be.
Unlike the last time she’d taken Rose into the servant’s dining hall, today it was full of people. The other two housemaids were there, helping Mrs. Walker polish silver. One of the footmen sat leaning his chair back with his feet on the table reading a newspaper. Rude Man sat at the other end of the table with a cup of tea and a plate of bread and cheese.
“I heard Mr. Selwood fire the groom with me own ears. He was terribly vexed about the cockfighting incident t’other day,” Mary was saying as Sarah crossed to the table.
They all looked up at her carrying a whimpering child. “A bowl of warm water and some soap, please, Mary,” she said.
Mary did not move. She worked her cloth across the silver tines without giving Sarah another glance. None of the staff besides Mrs. Walker had given her a single word since she’d been promoted to governess. She couldn’t blame them. It was highly unusual for a maid to shift station so drastically.
“Mary,” warned Mrs. Walker.
The girl dropped the fork to the table with a ting, then scooted off the bench and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned shortly with a bowl and a bar of inexpensive soap.
“’Ere you are, miss.” Mary sloshed the bowl onto the table in front of them and then curtsied.
“Thank you,” said Sarah.
Mrs. Walker scowled at Mary but said no more. Sarah turned her mind to the task at hand: cleaning the sting off of Rose’s arms.
Sarah rubbed the soap under the water then dipped a rag in. The redness on Rose’s arms indicated where the nettles had stung, and Sarah wiped the cloth along those spots gently but thoroughly. Unless it was washed off completely, the sting would linger longer. Rose moaned but bore it well.
“What happened to the groom?” Sarah asked Bessie as she worked. Mary would not answer out of spite. Bessie, on the other hand, shared gossip the way dogs shared fleas.
“’E were caught runnin’ a cockfight during work hours. On the day the child arrived, as a matter o’ fact.” Bessie’s eyes were all aglow. “Mr. Selwood give ’im the sack that very day.”
“Too bad it weren’t Rude Man,” Mary whispered softly, giving a little nod in Ruddiman’s direction. “I heard ’e were there but slipped away afore Mr. Walker found ’em.”
That explained the absence of all male staff that day. And Mr. Walker’s unsavory mood. At least she wasn’t the only servant struggling with propriety. In truth, the groom’s blatant infraction made Sarah’s blunders look like nothing.
When she was satisfied she’d cleaned away all traces of nettle sting, she returned the bowl herself to the kitchen.
On their way back to the Stewart room, they passed Mr. Selwood on the stairs.
Sarah paused and curtsied, ready to answer his questions about how Rose was doing after the nettles encounter, but no questions came. In fact, he did not even look at them. He lowered his head and continued down the stairs as if he’d not even seen them. His face was back to the old Mr. Selwood again.
As the day passed, Sarah had to continually remind Rose not to scratch her stings. It was odd that they were still bothering her so much. But some folks were more sensitive than others. Mr. Selwood, perhaps, was one of them. Sarah glanced at Rose playing with her doll on the braided carpet.
Was such a sensitivity a family trait? If the child’s father also had a weakness to nettles . . .
No. Mr. Selwood had claimed the child was not his, and she would believe him. It’s just that she’d been lied to by a man before. And there was the handkerchief with the Selwood crest that still needed explaining.
“Don’t scratch it. It will not get better if you do,” she reminded Rose again.
Rose seemed tired from her ordeal. Sarah put her to bed early. The stings were still very red. Perhaps she’d not cleaned them as well as she’d thought. If they weren’t better by morning, she’d ask Mrs. Walker for some salve.
#
Sarah woke in the middle of the night to the sound of Rose gasping for air. She lit the candle beside the bed. The poor girl’s face had turned bright red. Her lips were strangely swollen, and every breath seemed to come with great effort.
Sarah had never seen anything like this. Was it scarlet fever? How could it come on so suddenly? Sarah threw the covers off to cool Rose down. She ran to the washbasin and dipped a cloth in the water, then placed it on Rose’s head. But as she touched the child’s brow, it did not feel especially hot. Sarah opened the window for cool air anyway. But that might be too cold, so she closed it again.
Rose’s little chest heaved. She was suffocating.
Sarah needed help.
Mr. Selwood was the closest. He would know what to do.
She ran into the hall and around the corner. She threw open his door. He was in bed, asleep. Sarah grabbed his shoulder and began shaking.
“Mr. Selwood. Sir.” She put one hand on each shoulder and shook again. “Sir. Sir!”
His eyes opened. Now that her face was less than a foot from his, it occurred she might have knocked first. And put on a cover. And probably tidied her hair, as much had come loose from her braid and now hung against Mr. Selwood’s cheek.
“Something is very wrong with Rose,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. Will you come and see?”
He sat up. “Wouldn’t Mrs. Walker be the better choice?”
Sarah paced to the door and back. “I don’t know where Mrs. Walker is. I mean, I know where her room is, but yours is so much closer. Please, will you come. She looks very unwell.”
He nodded and tossed the covers off. Sarah turned her back while he climbed out of bed. When she turned around, he was tying the rope of a dressing gown around his waist.
She hurried behind him as he strode into the corridor. “I lived many years at Harleigh’s School for Girls and saw lots of girls get sick, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Her face is all red. And she can’t breathe.”
He opened the door, and Sarah ran to the bedside. Even in the few minutes she had been gone, Rose had gotten worse. Or perhaps it was that she had forgotten how bad off she had been when she’d left. Either way, that gnawing pain was back in her heart, and she felt her stomach fold like kneaded bread.
“What do you think?” she asked Mr. Selwood as she dipped the cloth in the water basin and reapplied it to Rose’s forehead.
Mr. Selwood stood several feet away. “I think she needs a doctor. I’ll send for one.” He turned to leave, but Sarah caught his arm.
“You will come back?”
“I’m not sure what I can do.” He pulled his arms free and glanced back at Rose. “I’m not . . . good with children.”
“Nonsense. She likes you very much. And sir,” she looked up at him, “I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ll send Mrs. Walker.” He left the room.
Sarah pressed the damp cloth to Rose’s forehead, but the girl’s breathing did not ease. She moved the pillow away to open Rose’s throat, and that seemed to help a little. In her nine years at Harleigh’s School for Girls, Sarah had only known one girl who had died. And that had been during the holiday break when the girl caught a fever and died at home. Many illnesses had come and gone, and now Sarah would give her left leg to have paid more attention to the treatments those girls received.
At last the door opened. It was not the doctor. That would have been too fast, anyway. Nor was it Mrs. Walker. It was Mr. Selwood.
Sarah jumped up from her seat on the side of the bed. “You came back?”
He smiled at her. A smile that dimpled his cheeks and lifted the corners of his eyes.
“If I’d known it would make you so happy, I might have hurried a bit more.” Then he seemed to regret his words. His face went stern, and he cleared his throat. “The doctor has been sent for, and in the meantime, Mrs. Walker is on her way with some remedies of her own.”
In the dim room, his eyes shimmered a deep iridescent blue like the hard shell of a darkling beetle. His hair was mussed, and a shadow grew where his beard and moustache would be.
After the disgraceful Charlie Crump incident, she had sworn she’d never fall for a man again. Men were deceivers ever, as Shakespeare had said. One foot in sea and one on shore. She tended to agree with most things Shakespeare said, but especially this. Had she a moment of leisure time, she would have stitched it onto a cushion or a banner or something.
Yet the way Mr. Selwood’s eyes stayed on hers gave her a sensation she’d never experienced before. Unlike the sun, whose heat started on the outside and worked its way in, his gaze created a slow burn that started somewhere in her chest and slowly spread outwards.
He still did not approach Rose. But he stood behind Sarah as she did what little she could to ease Rose’s suffering. He did not seem at all comfortable with being in the sick room, but he did not leave. In less than a quarter hour, the door opened again and Mrs. Walker came in.
She had a pungent-smelling concoction that she dumped into the water basin along with a kettle full of steaming water. “Put this on her chest to help her lungs.” She gave Sarah a new cloth saturated with the herbal water.
“What is it?” She should pay attention to the treatment in case this ever happened again. Or she might be fired. Yet again she’d shown her incompetence at the tasks given her.
“Mint, yarrow, and a touch of comfrey,” said Mrs. Walker.
Sarah unbuttoned Rose’s nightdress to apply the cloth. Then she gasped. It was covered in a red rash. “Look at this,” she said.
Mrs. Walker leaned over her one shoulder, and Mr. Selwood peered over the other.
“Great merciful heavens,” said Mrs. Walker, her voice vacant of any hope.
“What? Is this very bad?” Sarah placed the damp cloth on Rose’s tiny chest. “She will be all right, won’t she Mr. Selwood?”
For some reason, it was him, even with his pale face and eyes like a frightened animal, whom she needed comfort from. He was the master of the house, and if he said Rose would be fine, Rose would be fine.
But he looked ready to faint.
“Mr. Selwood?” asked Mrs. Walker. “Are you well?” A look passed between them. “You need not stay here. Sarah and I can attend the child.”
His eyes went to Sarah’s, then back to Mrs. Walker. “I’m fine.”
“But if this is too hard—”
“I’m fine,” he repeated.