The paramedics seemed to carry her for miles on the uncomfortable wooden stretcher, jolting and jarring every inch of her protesting body. Robyn wondered why they had parked their ambulance so far away, and why they didn’t give her a shot of something to ease the excruciating pain pounding behind her eyes. Perhaps they couldn’t medicate her because of the wound to her head. Could you give painkillers to someone who had a concussion? She couldn’t remember.
She turned to William. “Painkillers...” she whispered, hoping against hope. “I need some painkillers...”
William stroked her hand, his touch reassuring, but impersonal. “The pain will not kill you, Arabella. I know it is hard, but try to endure the discomfort for another little while. You are being wonderfully brave.”
She wondered why he kept calling her Arabella, but it was too much effort to ask. The hospital would sort out the mistake eventually. If she kept her eyes closed, the nausea wasn’t quite as bad, so she tried to lie still, relaxing and letting her body move with the sway of the stretcher. The pain in her head became marginally less horrible and she was content to lie passive, not thinking, just savoring the drizzle of rain misting her face. There was no wind, and the rain felt soft and comforting, a touch of coolness against her hot cheeks, anchoring her to reality each time she started to drift away into the dark mist of unconsciousness.
She could hear the doctor and the paramedics murmuring to each other but the individual words were hard to distinguish and she gave up straining to understand the broad English accents. Their voices floated over her, wisps of sound that she felt too exhausted to unravel. She was jolted back into awareness when her entire body convulsed with a sudden excruciating pain.
“Have a care! Do not allow her to fall.” William spoke sharply. Robyn found his accent easier to understand than any of the others, although what he said often seemed to make little sense. Like now. “Dr. Perrick, what say you? Do you think my wife’s birth pangs have begun?”
“I fear so, my lord, I fear so. And I regret it is my solemn duty to warn you that her ladyship is in such a weakened state that I cannot predict a favorable outcome to the labor, either for her or for the babe.”
“Perhaps you are unduly pessimistic. Her other children have been delivered without mishap.”
“That is so, my lord. But on previous occasions, her ladyship entered her travails in a state of robust health and strength. Childbirth is a dangerous enterprise even under the most favorable of circumstances, and her ladyship’s head injury is severe.”
“Bloody, certainly, but the wound seems to me to be relatively superficial.”
“Infection and fever are almost inevitable, my lord.” Dr. Perrick cleared his throat. “If I may make so bold, my lord, I would suggest that you send for the vicar. We may have double need of his services before the night is out.”
“Let the vicar eat his dinner in peace. There will be time enough to fetch him to the Manor later this evening if his presence seems necessary. First we need to get my wife home and safely into her bed. Our most necessary task must be to see that she is made warm and dry and that her wounds are cleaned—and stitched if need be.”
The individual words William spoke were definitely some sort of English, but his conversation made no sense, Robyn decided. Was she being taken to this arrogant William person’s home? Why was he ordering everyone about like some feudal lord of the manor, and why were the doctor and paramedics listening? Robyn felt a spurt of rage. What was wrong with the doctor that he wasn’t insisting she should be driven to a hospital? Good grief, she was in agony, she’d probably lost a ton of blood, and so far nobody had done anything except load her onto a stretcher and jounce her over miles of wet countryside.
“Hospital,” she rasped. “Where’s the hospital?”
William spoke again, his voice soothing, as if addressing an idiot. “The hospital is in the village, my dear. Do you remember that your own father endowed the funds for the building?”
She blinked, trying to focus her eyes, trying to understand. “My father? But he’s never been to England!”
“My lord, her ladyship must be kept quiet—”
William’s hand rested for a moment on her forehead. “Do not trouble yourself with these matters, my dear, we shall soon have you home and in your own bed. Then you will feel quite yourself again.”
“I want to go to the hospital!”
“And you shall, my dear, as soon as you are well enough.”
When she was well enough! The man was totally crazy, Robyn realized with a shudder of fear. Crazy—or deliberately cruel. She remembered in a sudden flash of coherence that she had left New York late at night and flown to England, arriving early in the morning. She had driven to Starke Manor Hotel, where she had been shot by a woman in the parking lot. Perhaps this William person was one of the woman’s fellow conspirators. Perhaps his failure to seek medical care was a deliberate ploy, intended to cause her harm.
“Take me to the hospital,” she pleaded, striving with all her might to speak clearly, despite her dry, swollen throat and painfully cracked lips. “Oh, God, why won’t you take me to the hospital?”
William’s hand tightened around hers in a comforting squeeze. “Of course you shall go there if you wish, my dear, you have my word on it. Now lie still, and do not trouble yourself further.”
His voice was so calm and reassuring that Robyn felt herself relax, despite her realization that he was almost certainly lying. She tried to remember why she had come to England, and why she had arranged to meet Zach at Starke Manor. She wished Zach would come. Where was he? The gloomy November afternoon had already given way to dusk, so several hours must have elapsed since her accident. Why hadn’t he come to take care of her? To protect her from these half-crazed locals.
She didn’t understand why the usual sort of emergency medical procedures hadn’t swung into immediate action after her accident. England, after all, was an advanced, civilized country. Was it possible that in this sleepy, rural part of the country people were so unused to guns and violence that they didn’t know how to react medically to a drive-by shooting?
“Drip,” she muttered. “I need an IV drip. A blood transfusion. Saline solution. Something. Take me to the hospital, dammit, and stop screwing around.”
“What be ‘er saying, my lord? ‘Er ladyship be saying ‘er words all jumbled up like. Why does ‘er keep on and on about th’ospital? And did ‘er say blood?”
“I’m not certain, Jake, but I am sure this strange talk is but a temporary condition. Her ladyship will be better once the babe has arrived and when she is recovered, we shall all be able to understand her once again.”
What babe? That was the second or third time these weird people had mentioned the imminent arrival of a baby. Robyn didn’t even want to consider what that extraordinary comment might mean. She tried to turn her head toward the William person, whose arrogant commands seemed to be at the root of all her troubles, but the wave of pain made her feel so sick she quickly abandoned the attempt.
“We’re here!” William’s voice contained unmistakable relief. “Be careful, lads, as you carry her up the stairs.”
A murmuring swell of female voices was added to the male chorus surrounding Robyn. She forced her eyes open, and found herself staring into the worried features of a youngish woman, hair tucked into the strangest nurse’s cap Robyn had ever seen.
“Am I in the hospital?” she asked.
“No, my lady—”
“Yes, indeed, my dear. You have been carried to the hospital.”
William’s voice. She didn’t believe him, but she was too weak to protest. Tears of helpless anger and frustration welled up and poured over her cheeks.
“There, there, my lady, ‘twill all come right in the end,” the woman murmured. “Don’t you fret, we’ll see that your babe is birthed safely.”
“I—am—not—pregnant,” Robyn said between sobs. Her tears vanished in a sudden hysterical urge to giggle. Good Lord, couldn’t these yokels tell the difference between a woman with a gunshot wound and a woman in the early stages of labor? She would have laughed out loud, but her breath was swallowed up in a wave of pain so intense that it seemed to start at her toes and grind excruciatingly through her abdomen, culminating in an explosion of darkness inside her head. The pain left her body limp, her mind blank.
Their awkward, bumpy procession had barely reached the head of the stairs—there seemed to be no elevators in this place, although the building was huge—when the pain came again, grinding through the pit of Robyn’s stomach, peaking in an excruciating knot right below her navel.
“Her pangs are but minutes apart, my lord. I fear she has been thrown straight into hard labor.” Robyn heard the doctor’s voice through a red mist of agony.
“Perhaps that is not an ill thing. It may be better if her strength is not drained by hours and hours of preliminary effort that achieves little save to exhaust her.”
“Let us pray that your optimism is justified, my lord.”
The darkness was washing over her in longer and longer waves. Robyn was distantly aware that she had been carried into a high-ceilinged room, dimly lit, and oppressively airless after the freshness of the rain-swept night. The close, cloying atmosphere left her gasping for oxygen, and when the pain swept over her at the same moment as she tried to draw breath, her gasp emerged as a frightened scream.
“Try to stay calm, Arabella. We shall soon have you out of these wet clothes and then you may rest a little in the comfort of your own bed.”
“How can I rest?” Robyn asked, succumbing to panic. Tears clogged her throat, choking her, washing out to cascade down her cheeks. “I want Zach to be here,” she sobbed. “Why won’t you take me to him? He’d drive me to the hospital in a minute.”
“My brother Zachary has not been seen since the Battle of Culloden,” William said, removing his hand from hers.
Robyn hadn’t noticed how tightly she’d been holding his hand until that moment, and she felt a renewed surge of panic when she realized he was walking away.
“Don’t go!” she called out. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”
William stopped and turned around. There was weariness in his voice when he spoke again. “You cannot wish me to stay, my lady. Not for the birth of a child. You know how much you dislike me to see you when you are not properly dressed and painted.”
“I’m not having a baby,” she said, unwilling to let the absurd myth that she was in labor continue. “Don’t be ridiculous. How can I have a baby when I’m not even pregnant!”
The room was shadowy, almost dark, but she thought she saw him smile, just for an instant. “It seems, my lady, that one or the other of us is going to be very surprised a few hours from now.”
“It won’t be me,” Robyn said, furious with him, and yet oddly reassured by the glimpse of his smile. “Don’t go,” she repeated, although she had no idea why she wanted his presence. Nothing William had done or said suggested that he was a useful person to have around in a sick room. On the contrary, he seemed unaware of even the fundamentals of first aid.
Before she could say anything more, another pain convulsed her body and Robyn felt herself float away into a twilight half world where she dreamed she was trapped on a football field, and all the players were running over her, pulling her brutally from side to side as they searched for the ball that was hidden under her hips. After a while, she hurt so much that she stopped feeling the individual blows of huge, heavy feet stomping on her stomach in careless search for the football. Her body was so tormented and weakened by the buffets inflicted on it that she knew she was going to die, and she sank deeper into the darkness, mentally digging a little pit in the ground where she was safe from the rush of the footballers’ heavy feet and their mad scramble for possession of the ball.
She would have stayed safely hidden in her cozy little hole except for William’s nagging. She might have guessed that the annoying man wouldn’t leave her alone to die peacefully. She felt a cool, lemon-scented dampness stroke over her forehead and across her cheeks, and the waves of her nightmare receded—receded enough to hear William’s voice speaking softly and urgently in her ear.
“Come, Arabella, gather your courage one last time. Dr. Perrick assures me the babe is nearly here.”
“I’m playing football,” she said crossly. “Leave me alone. I’ve dug a pit and it’s stopped hurting.”
William drew in a short, sharp breath. “Thank God, you have heard me, have you not? Arabella, do not slip away again, I beg. I have so much admired your courage this night.”
Robyn frowned. “I like it better in the pit.” She screamed as her body ripped itself open and she pushed downward in an instinctive effort to force the pain out of her.
“‘Tis another miracle, my lord. God Himself is blessing this labor! Your lady wife has recovered her strength sufficiently to assist in the birth of her own babe.”
“How long?” William asked tersely. “Miracle or no, she cannot endure much more of this agony. Dear God, I had never imagined that the birth of a child could cause such incredible torment.”
“ ‘Tis the curse of Eve, my lord, and women do not feel the pain in the same way as you or I would feel it. Women are resigned to the fate God has assigned them, and accept the pain which is their just punishment for Eve’s sin.”
“Just tell me how much longer my wife must endure her punishment.”
“I can see the babe’s head, my lord. A few minutes more, two or three strong birth pangs, and we shall know if God has blessed you with another son.”
Robyn wanted to interrupt this farrago of nonsense, but the breath was squeezed out of her lungs as she succumbed again to the overwhelming urge to push and bear downward. She only realized that she had drifted into unconsciousness again when William jolted her back into semi-awareness of her surroundings.
“Once more,” he commanded urgently. “One more push, my dear, and your travails will be over.”
She realized then that she must be dreaming. In the bizarre world of dreamland it was probably no more strange to imagine herself giving birth than to imagine herself immobilized on the center of a football field with two opposing teams scrimmaging over her inert body.
She was so tired she wished both nightmares would go away, but William was holding her hand, bathing her forehead with the cool scented towels, and somehow she couldn’t manage to slip away from him into the peaceful blackness of oblivion. Another pain, followed by a sharp, high-pitched cry, and then a grunt of satisfaction from Dr. Perrick.
“A son, my lord, small but astonishingly healthy. The Lady Arabella has presented you with another son.”
Robyn felt her body relax into a state of utter peacefulness. She was almost glad that the nightmare had carried through to the bitter end and given her the illusion of delivering a baby. For a dream, it had been quite an experience.
A son. She wondered why her subconscious had chosen to reward the arrogant William with a son. In dreams, presumably she could chose whatever sex of offspring she desired. She ought to have given birth to a daughter, just to annoy him. She visualized the son she had supposedly produced: he would have a fuzz of light golden hair, and blue eyes like William’s. Like Zach’s. And he would have cute chubby fists like the baby in the portrait in Zach’s living room.
What portrait in Zach’s living room? The moment she tried to bring her memory of the picture into sharper focus, the whole image faded. Robyn yawned and realized that her head ached abominably. Now that the pains of her imagined labor had stopped, she had energy to spare for feeling the throbbing behind her eyes and the soreness on the ridge of her scalp where the bullet must have grazed her scalp.
“I need some aspirin,” she said. The curtains had been drawn around her bed, presumably to give her some privacy from other patients, and now that she had enough strength to look around, there was nothing to see. Was she in a hospital? Perhaps she had been transferred to one while she was unconscious. The bed curtains certainly suggested a hospital room.
“Where’s the nurse?” she asked sleepily. She felt euphoric and sleepy all at once, an odd but rather pleasant combination.
“The child has been taken to her,” William said, his voice gentle. “You may rest easily, Arabella, for the babe is strong, I promise you, and the nurse has plenty of milk. Her own child died but a week ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said crossly. She didn’t want to think about the nonsense William and the other people kept mouthing. If she thought about what they were saying, she knew she would be terrified.
“Some tincture of opium will help her to sleep,” Dr. Perrick said. “And sleep at this moment is undoubtedly the best medicine for her ladyship.”
“I will give the opium to her,” William said. “Here, let me have the cup.”
Robyn was thirsty and she drank greedily even though the mixture tasted unpleasant, both sweet and pungent at the same time. Almost at once, torpor swept over her, and she listened to the voices around her without making much effort to disentangle the strange accents.
“You should rest, my lord. Your lady wife is in no danger at this moment, you have my word on it.”
“Unless she contracts a fever.”
“As always, my lord, that is in God’s hands. You may be assured, my lord, that you will be summoned if her ladyship succumbs to any sort of infection.”
What a pompous ass the doctor was, Robyn thought drowsily. But everyone in this part of England sounded as if they’d lifted their dialogue from a musical comedy set hundreds of years in the past. Right now, she didn’t even care. The ache in her head was easing blissfully...
She was asleep before she heard William’s reply.
* * *
Her throat hurt. Her muscles ached. Her skin burned. She was so thirsty that her entire body had curled into a desiccated husk, waiting to die.
“Water!” Robyn gasped the word even before she opened her eyes. He was at her side in an instant. William. She remembered his name. Recognized the feel of him, even though she couldn’t have said how he looked, whether he was short or tall, blond or dark.
“Here, drink this. It is barley water, and will help to give you strength.” There was almost no light in the room, so she could barely see him, but his arm felt reassuringly strong as he lifted her up and held the glass to her mouth, helping her drink. Except it wasn’t a glass, it was a metal container, and it tasted tinny. Tasted gross, in fact. The contents weren’t much better—tepid, gritty, and borderline bitter. She drank anyway. Deep, satisfying gulps that eased her parched throat and cooled the fierce heat of her skin. Sweat broke out of her pores in drenching rivulets and her teeth started to chatter. She recognized the symptoms. She was vaguely aware that the same cycle of delirium, thirst, sweat, fading consciousness, and renewed delirium had been repeated over and over again. Her periods of lucidity had been brief—islands of awareness in a misty landscape of bizarre dreams.
Robyn licked her dry, cracked lips and managed to speak. “I have a raging infection,” she said, recognizing the truth and hanging on to it with grim determination. “For God’s sake, why doesn’t somebody give me a shot? I’d be cured in a few hours with the right shot! There must be some antibiotic that would work.”
“Her ladyship be raving again,” said a dour female voice. “Why does ‘er keep asking to be shot?”
“I daresay she is suffering a great deal of pain. Anyway, I am not entirely sure what she is trying to say. Her words are so slurred it is almost impossible to be certain of her meaning.”
“Mayhap her ladyship is speaking French, or some other foreign gibble-gabble.”
“No, I am fairly sure that she is speaking English. Or trying to, at least. Just now, when she asked for water, the sound was perfectly plain.”
Robyn started to say that of course she was speaking English, that these yokels were the people with the thick accents, not her, but when William ran his hand calmingly over her forehead, pushing away a hank of hair that had fallen over her eyes, she forgot all about answering him. She realized that her hair was matted with sweat and that her body smelled stale and dirty.
“I would really like to take a shower,” she said, getting the request into words before it slipped away from her. “Please let me take a shower. It might help to bring down my temperature.”
“A shower? Yes, you are quite right, my dear. There was a shower of rain when we found you after your accident. We feared you might contract a pleurisy of the lungs, but fortunately you have escaped with no more than a bout of birthing fever.”
“Not that sort of shower. A bath. Wash my hair.”
“Certainly we shall summon the hairdresser as soon as you are better. Take heart, Arabella, I do believe the fever has almost broken. This is the longest period you have been able to talk to us since your accident.”
Robyn felt the inside of her head expanding. She stared dazedly at the blond, blue-eyed man seated beside her bed.
“What accident?” she demanded. “Who are you? And where am I?”‘
She closed her eyes again, not really interested in the man’s answers. Her body floated upward, carried away on a hot current of air. She heard a voice speaking, calling her urgently, but it was too much trouble to respond.
“She’s off again. Lookee, my lord, you’ve bin watching over her ladyship for more than two days. ‘Tis time for you to rest and eat a good supper and us’ll take care of her for a while.”
“Very well. But remember that I want to be called the minute the fever finally breaks.”
“Yes, m’ lord. Us’ll call your lordship as soon as her ladyship comes back to her senses.”
* * *
The curtains around her bed had been partially drawn back and Robyn could see the sun and the bare branches of a giant oak tree through the pair of casement windows opposite the foot of her bed. She drew in a deep breath and moved cautiously. She felt weak as a rag doll, and ached in more places than she cared to enumerate, but she could remember occasions when she’d felt worse. Or at least almost as bad.
She was thirsty. Not with the raging thirst that had marked her nightmarish bouts of fever, but with the kind of thirst that could be pleasantly cured by a chilled glass of orange juice and a freshly brewed cup of steaming coffee. Robyn realized that she was hungry—starving hungry. That seemed another reassuringly healthy sign.
Levering herself upright in the bed, she looked around for a bell to summon a nurse. The simple movement brought her up short, heart pounding and pulses racing. Good grief, where the heck was she? Surely to goodness this was no hospital bed. She swallowed hard, fighting back a surge of panic as she absorbed the strangeness of her surroundings. She had never in her entire life seen a hospital like this—or even a private bedroom. The furnishings looked like expensive exhibits in a major museum.
Between the two windows, a Hepplewhite armoire flanked a chair, silk-upholstered and with the carved legs and clawed feet typical of mid-eighteenth-century furniture. A gilt-framed mirror, probably from the same period, stood next to a dressing stand cluttered with silver-backed brushes and pottery in the style of early Wedgwood. The windows were draped with the sort of stiff, fringed damask that had once been popular in English manor houses, and the pegged wooden floor was covered by carpets that appeared to be embroidered like tapestries rather than woven or dye-stamped like modem rugs.
And the bed she was lying on fitted perfectly into the overall impression of an eighteenth-century bedchamber, Robyn realized, right down to the fact that she was sunken deep into a feather mattress, reclining against a pile of lace-edged, linen-covered pillows.
Robyn tugged at the curtains obscuring her view of the full room. In the bright light of morning, with eyes not clouded by fever, she couldn’t imagine how she had confused these richly embroidered silk hangings with the sort of green polyester curtains that typified hospital privacy screens. She must have been far gone in delirium not to have realized the antique oddity of her surroundings.
She wasn’t sure yet if she could trust her legs to support her, but she managed to pull the curtains back without getting out of bed. The brass curtain rings clacked against the wooden rods, to reveal a young woman seated by a screened, wood-burning fire. The woman glanced up from her sewing.
“My lady, you are awake! How are you feeling?” She sprang to her feet and crossed to Robyn’s side, dropping into a bobbing curtsy before hurrying back to a small table by the fire. Picking up a silver jug, she poured an almost colorless liquid into a matching beaker, then rushed back to the bedside.
“Here you be, my lady. Fresh lemonade. The master ordered it special.” She wiped her hand on a snow-white apron that covered her from shoulder to ankles. She was also wearing a frilly mobcap, set low on her forehead, which looked distinctly uncomfortable.
The woman appeared both foolish and ill at ease. No wonder, Robyn thought. Anyone would look ill at ease walking around dressed up like an escapee from the Boston Tea Party.
“Who are you?” Robyn asked. “And why are you wearing a fancy dress costume?”
“ ‘Tis Monday morning, my lady. The housekeeper and I both has a clean pinafore every Monday.” When Robyn didn’t say anything, the woman continued. “I be Mary, my lady. Your ladyship’s maid.”
Enlightenment finally dawned on Robyn. She’d ended up in one of those olde worlde hotels that were so popular with tourists, and the maid’s costume was supposed to be one of the authentic touches.
“Is this Starke Manor Hotel?” she asked. “In Dorset?” The maid looked at her oddly.
“Yes, my lady. This be Starke Manor.”
That was one mystery solved, Robyn decided, although it raised a whole series of other questions. Why in the world had she been kept in a hotel, for Pete’s sake? It was incredible to think that neither the doctor nor anyone in hotel management had insisted on transferring her to a proper hospital. England might not be as lawsuit happy as the United States, but surely even English hotels tried to avoid having guests die of medical neglect on their premises.
“Doesn’t anyone around here worry about getting sued?” she asked the maid.
The maid curtsied and held out the silver goblet once again. “I be Mary, my lady, not Sue. Sue married Tom Footman a year last Michaelmas and you said I could be your maid. Here, my lady, drink this. ‘Tis the nice fresh lemonade that you like so much, sweetened with plenty of honey.”
Robyn was too thirsty to argue. She took the drink eagerly, then stopped with the silver goblet poised right at her lips. Mary was nervous, Robyn realized, and babbling utter nonsense. Why? What was there in the simple action of offering lemonade to make the woman’s eyes twitch and her hands tremble? It occurred to Robyn that the drink could be drugged or even poisoned. The idea ought to have seemed insane, but she couldn’t dismiss it. From the moment she got out of her car in the Starke Manor parking lot, people and events in her life had become so bizarre that she couldn’t afford to take chances. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more drugs seemed to be the most likely explanation for what had been happening to her. If someone had been force-feeding her hallucinogens, it would explain why she had this confused sensation that dreams, fever, delirium, and reality were all melded into a single nightmarish whole.
Robyn thrust the beaker back into the maid’s hands. “You know what, Mary? Why don’t you take a sip first. Then I’ll drink some.”
The maid seemed to find nothing strange in Robyn’s request. “I already tasted it, my lady. ‘Tis plenty sweet enough, I swear. You will like it, my lady.”
“Humor me. Taste it anyway.”
Mary obligingly held the beaker to her mouth and swallowed. “‘Tis very good, my lady. Just to your taste, I vow.” She wiped the rim of the cup with the edge of her apron and handed the drink back to Robyn.
“Here, my lady, drink it down and I will send word to the master that you are awake.”
“The master?”
Mary blanched and her hands visibly trembled. Robyn had the oddest impression that the women expected to get the beaker thrown at her head at any moment. “His lordship made me promise, my lady, to send for him the instant you regained your wits, but I will have you looking your best in a trice, never fear. We shall have time to put on your new lace peignoir before his lordship arrives.”
“I’d prefer some help in getting to the shower. Right now, I’d rather be clean than elegant. I’m dying to shampoo my hair.”
“Yes, my lady,” the maid said, looking worried. She cleared her throat. “I don’ know about your hair, my lady. Truth to tell, you will not be able to wear your wig—”
“My wig!” Robyn spluttered into the lemonade, which was indeed delicious. She flopped back against the pillows, feeling totally exhausted. She drew in a couple of deep breaths and decided she had recovered just enough energy to let off some well-deserved steam.
“Look, I’m sorry to sound off at you, but this ridiculous performance has gone on long enough. I’m not in the mood for any more scenes from Country Life in Ye Olde Englande. I want to speak to the doctor in charge of my case. And maybe I’d better speak to the manager of this hotel, too. Quite frankly, I think he has some explaining to do. I should never have been kept here when I obviously had a raging fever. Clearly I should have been take to the hospital. In fact, the way I feel right now, it might be smart to transfer over to the hospital and get a quick checkup.”
The maid shifted her gaze uneasily frown to side. She sank into another curtsy. “Beg pardon, my lady, but I must send for his lordship. Beggin’ your pardon, my lady, but he left strict orders. As soon as you was awake, he must come. He says he can understand what your ladyship says, my lady.”
“William!” The name came back to Robyn, surfacing from the bewildering maelstrom of her dreams. “Are you talking about a tall blond man who calls himself William? Is he the manager here?”
The maid wrung her hands nervously. “Yes, my lady. His lordship. The master. Your ladyship’s husband.”
“I—do—not—have—a—husband.” Robyn pronounced the words slowly and carefully. “Good Lord, what is it with you people? I am not married!”
“Yes, my lady. I mean no, my lady. I must summon the master, my lady. With your permission, my lady.” Bobbing up and down like a yo-yo, the maid finally plucked up courage to lean across the bed and tug at the bellpull, a crimson silk ribbon embroidered with flowers that Robyn hadn’t noticed before among the folds of the bed hangings. As the maid lifted her arm, an odor of stale sweat and unwashed flesh wafted over Robyn, strong enough to make her gag. She turned quickly aside. Good Lord, didn’t this woman watch TV? Hadn’t she ever seen an advertisement for deodorants? Or even for plain, old-fashioned soap and water?
The bell was answered almost immediately by a girl who didn’t look a day over twelve. She came into the room almost at a run, and curtsied both to the maid and then—far more deeply—in the direction of Robyn’s bed. She was wearing virtually the same fancy-dress uniform as the older maid, with a pinafore covering a frock fashioned from rough-woven brown woolen cloth, and shoes that were exact replicas of eighteenth-century servants’ footwear. Robyn was surprised that the hotel had gone to so much trouble to maintain the illusion of authenticity, particularly since the slippery, square-toed leather shoes must have been real deterrents to employee safety. From what she had seen of the place so far, Robyn was amazed the hotel could get enough insurance coverage to operate.
“You are to fetch the master,” Mary said to the young maid. “Tell his lordship that his lady wife is wide awake and... talking like before.”
The young girl sneaked a sideways glance at Robyn. “You mean ‘er wits do be gone beggin’—”
“Shh!” Mary’s hiss was furious, and she cuffed the child soundly around the ear.
“Mary! Stop that!” Robyn exclaimed, utterly appalled.
“Sorry for the disturbance, my lady.” Mary turned back to the little maid. “Get out,” she ordered. “Hurry up and fetch his lordship.”
“Yuss’m.” The child ducked into a curtsy and darted from the bedroom.
“We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to make you pretty for the master,” Mary said, smiling at Robyn and apparently feeling no need whatever to comment on her extraordinary treatment of a fellow employee. She opened a door that led into an oversize closet and returned carrying a lace-trimmed robe of a pale blue silk over her arm.
“There we are. Blue. Your ladyship’s favorite color. Now, my lady, we must be quick. The master will be here any minute.” With an air of complete familiarity, the maid walked over to the bed and started to unbutton the white cotton gown Robyn was wearing. Startled by the unexpected intimacy, Robyn jerked away.
“Sorry, my lady. I forgot. Your breasts will be sore with the milk coming in, and all. I’ll be more careful, my lady.” The maid unfastened some more buttons and began to ease the nightgown from Robyn’s shoulders.
Robyn went cold with fear. Oddly enough, she realized suddenly that her breasts did feel hard and hot, although of course that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her dream of giving birth to a baby son. If her breasts felt sore, it was a perfectly logical aftermath to the infection that had ravaged her system. She pushed the maid away, closing the buttons again, and wrapping her arms around her waist in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.
“Get away from me,” she ordered, her voice low and cold. “This is no longer a joke. Get out of this room and find me some clothes to put on. I’m checking out of here.”
“Oh, my lady, don’t be angry, but I cannot understand what you are asking me!”
“I want to leave. Is that clear enough for you? I’m going to find the bathroom and take a shower. And I want some clothes waiting for me when I get back. Otherwise I’m calling a cab and walking out of here in the gown I’m wearing. This place is giving me a first-class attack of the creeps.”
Robyn pushed aside the bedclothes and had managed to swing her legs over the side of the high bed, when a man entered the room. She recognized him instantly as the man who had called himself William. The man whose orders everyone seemed to obey without question.
He took one look at Robyn and strode immediately to the bedside. He lifted her legs back onto the mattress and smoothed the covers over her before retreating to the center of the room.
“Well, this is a welcome sight! I had not expected to find you sitting up and talking to your maid.” William smiled with cool courtesy. He swept a low bow, his hand resting gracefully on his heart, flowing lace cuffs tumbling in rich folds about his wrists. “My lady, it is indeed a pleasure to find you thus well recovered. My felicitations.”
He should have appeared ridiculous, but he didn’t. For some reason, he appeared consummately elegant and commanding. He had tied his long fair hair at the nape of his neck with a black velvet ribbon, a style that showed the strong line of his jaw to advantage. He wore silk stockings and gray brocade knee breeches, topped by a full-skirted coat of plum velvet. His shoes were high-heeled black leather, decorated with gleaming silver buckles, and the lace ruffles of his shirt were adorned with two large diamond stickpins. Looking at him, registering his perfect imitation of an eighteenth-century nobleman, Robyn found herself teetering somewhere between panic and anger. Panic because his choice of clothing seemed so senseless. Anger because she was sure she was deliberately being made to feel a fool.
Anger won out. “What are you trying to do?” she demanded. “Why are you wearing those farcical clothes? For heaven’s sake, there’s a time and a place for everything, and this isn’t the time for fancy dress.”
William made a slight, almost imperceptible gesture with his hand and Mary scurried from the room. Then he walked unhurriedly toward the bed, his pleasant smile still firmly in place. How odd, Robyn thought, that she should gain the distinct impression that her sharp words had hurt his feelings. He paused when he was still two feet or so from her side.
“I chose these clothes because I know how much you dislike me to come into your bedroom straight from the stables. I am sorry if you find them too formal for this early hour of the morning.”
This man did not sound in the least like a hotel manager. This man sounded totally crazy. Robyn pressed her hand to her eyes, trying to ease the pounding of her headache. She could no longer delude herself that things were even halfway normal. She was weak as a kitten and surrounded by lunatics. Not an ideal situation, even for somebody like her, blessed with a notoriously optimistic nature.
“Your head is aching,” William said softly. “Allow me to help you, my lady.” He put on a darn good show of looking worried, Robyn had to grant him that. He guided her gently into a more restful position against the bed pillows before drawing up a chair and sitting beside her.
“You need to eat, my dear, to regain your strength. A junket or some bread and milk would both be easy to digest. Which do you prefer?”
What the devil was junket? Robyn didn’t remember hearing the word during her previous stay in England.
“I’d like some bread and milk. And some coffee.” She didn’t say please. She didn’t attempt to sound pleasant. The best she could say of these lunatics was that—so far—they didn’t seem to have any plans to starve her to death. Maybe that wasn’t such good news. Maybe they had some other, more horrible fate in store?
William opened the bedroom door and spoke quietly to someone who was stationed in the corridor outside. A guard? Either that, or this hotel had seriously uneconomic staffing policies.
“Your breakfast will be here shortly,” William said, closing the door. “Mary has gone down to the kitchens to fetch it.”
“Thank you.” Robyn wondered why he hadn’t simply called room service, although when she looked around the room, she couldn’t see any trace of a phone. Presumably all the gadgets of twentieth-century living were hidden inside the Hepplewhite armoire. If the service personnel had to hobble around in fake Georgian shoes, the hotel management presumably didn’t want to destroy the antique ambience with TV screens and overhead electric light fixtures. The people in charge here had certainly allowed their enthusiasm for Ye Olde Englande to run riot.
“How are you feeling?” William asked, returning to the chair he had drawn to her bedside. “You are looking so well that it is hard to believe how fiercely the fever raged in you only a few hours since.”
“I’m fine,” Robyn said. “But the doctor who was here—Dr. Perrick?”
William nodded. “Yes, Dr. Perrick attended you, as always. He is your favorite physician.”
“How can he be my favorite? I’ve never been anywhere near the man! And frankly, he sounded borderline crazy to me. Why didn’t he call for an ambulance to take me to the hospital? They must have someone better on staff there—a first-year medical student would have been better than Perrick. In fact, a hospital orderly would have been more competent than Perrick.”
William looked puzzled. “My dear, what is this obsession you have developed for visiting the hospital? Until you are fully recovered from your lying-in, you cannot possibly be expected to resume your charitable duties. Birthing fever is not to be treated lightly.”
Robyn didn’t know whether to scream with frustration or freeze in denial. “Why do you keep insisting that I’ve had a baby?” she demanded. “Why? What do you hope to achieve?”
William looked sad. “Arabella, it has been a trying—”
“I’m not Arabella!” she screamed. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
His gaze hardened. “My dear, you must stop indulging in these hysterical fits of denial. They cannot be good for you, and you are frightening the servants. I understand that the blow to your head has affected your powers of reason, but the servants are simple, ignorant people, and they are already whispering that you are possessed.”
“Stop it!” she said, turning away from the false concern in his sincere blue eyes. “For heaven’s sake, what are you trying to do to me? Who are you? What do you want from me, for God’s sake?”
He answered her quietly. “Arabella, if you have truly forgotten so much, then I will try to help you remember. I am William Bowleigh, your husband.”
She drew in a short, sharp breath. “You said that before.”
“So you do remember.”
“Some things.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Are you claiming to be Zach’s brother? Are you claiming to be that William Bowleigh?”
“I claim to be William Bowleigh because it is true, just as it is true that Zachary is my younger brother.”
“He is your older brother.”
William shook his head. “That is absurd, my dear. If Zachary were the elder brother, he would be Baron of Starke, not I.” His mouth twisted wryly.
“Forgive me if I point out how unflattering it is that you remember Zachary so clearly when you are having no success whatever in remembering me—your husband.”
“Don’t lie,” Robyn begged. “You’re not my husband. I’ve never met you. I’m in love with Zach.”
“Tact, my lady, would suggest that you do not mention such feelings to your husband. Our marriage would be more tolerable to both of us if you could only learn to accept that we are neither of us likely to see Zachary ever again.”
“No! Don’t say that!” Robyn’s voice shook with panic that she couldn’t conceal. “He’s coming for me! He’s flying in from Paris tonight! I mean yesterday. Friday. Whenever I was shot.”
“You believe my brother is flying here to meet you?”
“Why not? There’s perfectly good plane service between Paris and London. Dozens of flights a day. And the Channel Tunnel is such a dreary drive.”
William sighed. “Never mind, my dear, you may have the right of it. We should not be discussing these subjects that distress you so. We have much that is cheerful to speak of.”
“I can’t think what.”
“Your new son is certainly cause for rejoicing. He is thriving, eating lustily, and sleeping contentedly. Would you like me to ask the nurse to bring him here so that you may hold him for a moment? He is a handsome little fellow and you have not seen him.”
“I don’t have a son!” she exploded. “For God’s sake, shake off your fancy dress mentality and get a grip on reality. I’d never even met you until a couple of days ago when you found me in the hotel parking lot. Dammit, I’ve been out of my head with fever, and it’s cruel of you to play these games with me.”
She felt tears welling up at the back of her throat, and she dashed the back of her hand angrily across her eyes, not wanting to display her weakness in front of a man who seemed determined to torment her.
William pulled a lace-trimmed square of cambric from his sleeve and offered it to her. “Dry your tears, my lady,” he said, his voice weary but quite gentle.
When she refused to accept the handkerchief, he laid it on the bed, next to her hand. “Your breakfast will be here soon, and when you have eaten something we will talk again. You will feel stronger then, and more able to accept the truth.”
“No,” Robyn said. “We’ll talk now. Why are you keeping me here? Am I a prisoner?”
“Arabella, it is absurd to use such words to describe your plight. You have often expressed regret at your lot in life, but you enjoy all the freedoms of any other lady of your station. Indeed, you enjoy more latitude than most, for I do not question your expenditures or control your social engagements in any way.”
Robyn realized that her body was covered in sweat—not the honest sweat of a fever, but the cold, clammy sweat of fear. Try as she might to find some other explanation, the longer she listened, the more she was being forced to accept that William and the other people in this crazy hotel were all pretending that they lived hundreds of years in the past. She couldn’t imagine what their purpose was, but she doubted if their intentions boded well. Nobody would maintain such an elaborate masquerade for any legitimate purpose.
“Why are you trying to pretend that we’re stuck in some eighteenth-century time warp?” she asked, trying hard to keep her voice under control. The less she panicked, the better she would be able to judge what she needed to do next. “Why are you determined to make me believe I’m crazy?”
“My dear, nothing could be further from the truth of my wishes—”
“Where did you get all these antiques?” she asked. “This room must have cost hundreds of thousands to furnish. Why go to such incredible lengths, just to deceive me?”
She frowned. “Or maybe I’m not the person you’re trying to deceive. Maybe this is connected to Zach and his problems at the Gallery. Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? These are antiques you’ve stolen from Zach, or maybe they’re fakes and you’re planning to pass them off through the Gallery.”
“I do not understand what you ask, Arabella. What are antiques?”
He sounded so genuine in his puzzlement that Robyn almost found herself explaining, before she stopped short, furious with herself for falling into the trap. “Okay, enough already. Let me out of this bed,” she said.
“No, I must insist that you remain where you are. You should not get out of bed—”
“Now I see what you’re up to!” She felt a surge of triumph. “You can’t let me out of the bed because the rest of the room isn’t real. I’ve caught you out! There’s no furniture in the room, is there? The whole scene, the view from the windows, everything, it’s just a hologram!”
“I do not understand. What is a hollow grim? Arabella, I beg you to repose yourself—”
“Oh, get out of my way!” she ordered angrily. “I’ve had enough of this farce.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and jumped the six inches or so to the floor. She took two steps, but got no farther. Her legs, weakened by days of fever, started to buckle under her, and only William’s swift intervention prevented her from falling.
“Arabella, you must not overexert yourself,” he said compassionately.
Robyn didn’t answer. She was staring at her hands, transfixed with horror. “What have you done to me?” she whispered, her fingers tightening in a convulsive grip on William’s sleeve. “What have you done to my hands?”
“My dear, your hands are a little scratched. They will soon recover their normal whiteness.”
“These aren’t my hands,” Robyn said feverishly. She sank onto the bed and looked down at her body for the first time since she regained consciousness. On the edge of full-blown panic, she realized that not only were her hands the wrong shape, but her legs were too long, the flesh of her abdomen was limp and flaccid, and her breasts were leaking fluid from the nipples. Sick, dizzy, disoriented, she pressed her hands against her flabby belly.
“Give me a mirror,” she said hoarsely.
“My dear, that is not wise—”
“Give me a mirror!” Her voice was a high-pitched wail, totally out of control, but she didn’t care. She patted her hands over her face, feeling frantically for familiar contours, wincing when her fingers tangled in the matted skein of her hair.
“If you promise to lie quietly in bed, I will bring you a mirror,” William said.
“Yes, yes.” She lay back against the pillows, rigid with tension, but willing to say anything that would produce the desired result.
He walked across to the dressing stand and returned carrying the elegantly chased, antique silver mirror. “Here you are, but bear in mind that you have suffered an arduous lying-in—”
Robyn snatched the mirror—and confronted the reflection of a woman she had seen only once before, and never in the flesh. The immaculate blond hair was tangled, the pink-and-white complexion scratched, the gorgeous blue eyes bruised by shadows, and the full lips cracked and bleeding where she had bitten them, but the woman in the mirror was unmistakably the same woman whose portrait now hung in Zach’s penthouse.
“It’s a trick,” Robyn whispered. “How did you make me look like this?” She flipped the mirror over. “It’s some sort of electronic imaging device, right?”
“Arabella, it is your own mirror.”
“Please—stop! Don’t keep calling me by that name!” Robyn glanced into the mirror again. The image was crying. She touched her face and felt the wetness of tears.
“It isn’t me,” she said, denying the evidence of her own eyes. “It isn’t me. I have freckles!”
She threw the offending mirror with all the strength she could muster. It hit the wall with a satisfying crash. Then she leaned back against the lace-edged pillows, and let the darkness carry her into its warm, comforting depths.