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The Earl surfaced from a drugged sleep. The new pills relieved the pain in his chest, but there was a price to pay for the relief. With every pill he took, his mind grew more confused. He had only brief moments of absolute lucidity, and this was one of them. He searched among the pill bottles on his bedside table. He didn’t need more pills, he needed a cigarette. No cigarette case. No cigarettes. Someone had confiscated them.
What was the point? he asked himself as he swung his frail legs out of the bed. Did Sylvia really think that his cancer would just disappear if he stopped smoking? He was not personally convinced that his cancer had even been caused by smoking, but if Sylvia wanted to blame the cigarettes, that was her problem, not his. Everyone agreed he was going to die, and there was nothing to be done about it. If the doctors had been unable to cure the King, they certainly weren’t going to cure a mere earl. It was just a matter of time, and in the time remaining, he intended to smoke as many cigarettes as he damn well wanted.
He slid his feet into worn leather slippers and wrapped a Chinese silk robe around his shoulders. The air in his bedchamber was distinctly chilly. Mrs. Pearson believed that fresh air was the cure for most ills, and so the windows had been flung open first thing in the morning and would remain open come rain or shine until late at night. The small coal fire smoldering in the grate did nothing to alleviate the chill.
He shuffled outside into the corridor, where the air was marginally warmer. The rule about open windows applied only to bedrooms and bathrooms, not to corridors and reception rooms.
He made his way to the top of the stairs. It was more than two weeks since he had been downstairs, and that time, he had been helped down the stairs by old Ruddle the gardener. It was the thought of Ruddle that was now prompting him to set one trembling foot after another as he descended the oak staircase. Old Ruddle was a smoker, and old Ruddle kept his cigarettes in the tool cupboard by the back door. This was a secret shared only by the Earl and his gardener as an alliance against the two women, Nell Pearson and Lady Sylvia. They’d be Woodbines or something even worse, the Earl thought, but they were cigarettes, and the craving was definitely on him.
He arrived at the foot of the stairs and clung to the newel post, desperately suppressing the urge to cough. At last, when the pain in his chest was under control, he shuffled across the wide expanse of hallway in the general direction of the kitchen and tradesman’s entrance.
“Daddy!”
Oh no, she was going to make him go back to bed and take another pill. He would not allow it to happen; not this time.
“Daddy?”
Sylvia, looking heartbreakingly like her mother, in a green woolen dress and pearls, was staring at him from the doorway of the library.
“Hello, dear.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“I believe that is my own business,” said Dennis.
“But—”
“I am feeling better,” Dennis improvised, “and I have come downstairs to see you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“I shall take tea in the library.”
“Mrs. Pearson can bring it up to your room.”
“I shall take tea in the library,” Dennis repeated.
“But we have visitors.”
Good, Dennis thought, maybe one of them will have a cigarette.
“You’re not dressed, Daddy.”
Dennis rewrapped his silk robe and knotted the belt. “Are we entertaining royalty?”
“No, of course not. It’s just Mr. Whitby, the solicitor.”
“Then I am sufficiently dressed,” Dennis declared as he walked ahead of his daughter into the library. He suspected that, despite his best efforts, he was actually tottering like an old man, but he kept his head high and his shoulders square.
A tall bespectacled young man leaped to his feet as the Earl entered. He wore a dark suit, rather ill-fitting and certainly not the product of a quality tailor. His brown hair curled in uncontrolled profusion, with curls actually touching the collar of his white shirt, and his tie was not from any school that the Earl could recognize. But, he thought, the young man had an honest face, and behind the thick spectacles, his eyes brimmed with intelligence.
“Your Lordship.”
“Mr. Whitby,” said the Earl.
He studied the other occupants of the room. Nell Pearson rose rapidly from a chair by the fire. Since when had the housekeeper been allowed to sit by the fire? Sylvia was fond of the woman but surely not that fond. The other occupant of the room was a red-faced woman whose sturdy body occupied most of the sofa. She made some small effort to rise before giving up the challenge and sinking back against the cushions.
“Nurse Tierney,” said Sylvia.
“I don’t need another damned nurse!”
“No, not for you; Nurse Tierney is here to talk to Mr. Whitby.”
“And why should she want to do that?”
“Daddy, you don’t have to trouble yourself with all of this. Why don’t you let Mrs. Pearson bring a tray to your room?”
“It looks as though Mrs. Pearson is rather too comfortable to be carrying tea trays,” Dennis said acerbically.
He made his way past his daughter and, with a triumphant smile, sat down in the chair formerly occupied by the housekeeper.
“So, what is this about?” he asked. “Why do we have a solicitor, a nurse, and a housekeeper assembled in my library?”
“Nurse Tierney is here to explain to Mr. Whitby about what happened to Celeste.”
“Celeste who?”
Sylvia raised her penciled brows and fixed Dennis with a look of long-suffering patience. “My daughter, your granddaughter, Celeste Harrigan.”
He tried to clear his muddled thoughts. How could he have forgotten about this whole business of a stolen child and a secret marriage? He looked around the room. Whitby was a lawyer. Sylvia would want him to be careful.
“I’m the one,” said Nurse Tierney in a very matter of fact tone.
“The one what?”
“The one that made the mistake.”
“Well,” said Dennis, “everyone seems to be on remarkably good terms, considering this woman stole my granddaughter.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” said Nurse Tierney truculently. “I’m not after coming here to hear myself accused of stealing.”
Irish, thought Dennis, and straight out of the bog.
“Mrs. Tierney was a nurse at the clinic where I gave birth,” said Sylvia. “Really, Daddy, you don’t have to bother yourself with this.”
Yes, I do, Dennis thought. Some twist of fate had placed the future of Southwold in the hands of the stout Irishwoman. If Sylvia had taken the trouble to bring her here, presumably from Ireland, then she must have something important to say. Perhaps everything would be all right after all.
“Let’s hear what she has to say,” Dennis said. “Sit down, Sylvia, and you too, Mr. Whitby.”
He took perverse pleasure in excluding the housekeeper from his invitation to be seated. Mrs. Pearson sniffed and took up a post behind Sylvia’s chair.
The solicitor was flicking through pages in a small notebook as if reminding himself of where they all were when the Earl had interrupted them.
“So, Nurse Tierney,” the solicitor said, “you were not the person who delivered the baby.”
“No.” Nurse Tierney’s lip curled in annoyance. “That was for the nuns, foreign women, French, I think. All they wanted from the Irish girls was cleaning and sweeping and bed pans.”
“But you are a nurse?” asked Whitby.
“No, not exactly. But they were pleased enough to have our help. They didn’t want to do all the skivvying themselves.”
“And was the clinic very busy that night, the night when Lady Sylvia’s baby was born?”
“Sure and I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”
“But—”
“Nurse Tierney,” said Mrs. Pearson, “you told me you were—”
“It was the next night,” Sylvia interrupted. “Celeste was already a day old. The registrar had come and registered the birth. I already told you, Mr. Whitby, that the birth had been registered.”
The solicitor nodded. “Yes, you did.”
Dennis leaned forward. “Mr. Whitby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Daddy!”
“Only Woodbines,” said Whitby, feeling in the pocket of his jacket and retrieving a crumpled package.
“Daddy!” Sylvia exclaimed again.
Dennis removed two cigarettes from the package, placing one in his top pocket and the other between his lips. The solicitor produced a packet of matches and lit the Earl’s cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly.
Nervous, Dennis thought. Not used to this kind of pressure.
“Daddy, you shouldn’t,” Sylvia protested.
“I think I should.” Dennis drew deeply on the cigarette; terrible tobacco, low quality, harsh smoke, but better than nothing. He met his daughter’s troubled gaze. “If I smoke, I don’t talk. You don’t want me pestering the nurse with my questions, do you? You want her to keep the facts straight.”
“It was the next night,” said Nurse Tierney. “That’s when it happened. I’m sure no one can blame me for the mistake. Sure and it was a terrible thing.”
“Flying bombs,” said Sylvia.
The words dropped into the room and created their own sphere of silence. Dennis looked around the room and saw memory written on each face.