lies choice, Miss Stanhope?’ His words cut deep across her arguments and she was still as she answered him.
‘The freedom of choice has never belonged to any of these children, your Grace. It was gone before they ever had the means to exert it.’
‘So now you choose for them. They never had it nor are they likely to with your reasonings.’ His voice came louder with his own growing exasperation. ‘You think people, once choiceless, can never be empowered; you think opportunity must be dismissed in the face of a chequered past and all in the name of a changeless future. You think people can’t drag themselves out of a mire and triumph over adversity and disaster to spite circumstances over which they never had control in the first place?’ His fist came down hard upon her table. ‘Damn, Brenna, I don’t believe you or you wouldn’t be here trying to make the difference.’
Brenna jumped at the noise, her eyes large and dark in a paling face as she struggled against his anger, knowing that to lose his patronage would be a disaster and knowing too that his money did buy him the right to order things just as he willed it. Accordingly she withdrew into silence.
He watched her with a frown in his eyes. He wanted to cross the room right there and then and drag her away from all of this: his anger and her fears and a world of parentless children, the poverty of east London, a table of food set only with scraps, and a house that had seen better times. And Brenna herself, this dark-haired lady of mystery, whose world offered no path for friendship or understanding but, rather, buried the gifts he offered under the age-old resentment of privilege. He spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat and said wearily, ‘Think it over and send me word of your decision tomorrow.’ With that he bowed his head slightly and left the room, this time shutting the door firmly behind him.
Brenna groped her way to the chair and leant her head against her arms, her mind running numbly over their dispute. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered to herself. She was too old to feel like this, like a child who’d been castigated by a righteous and reasonable parent, though one fully ignorant of the very arguments themselves.
She lifted her eyes to the door, knowing the reaction Kate and Betsy would give to even the mention of a privately performed ballet; all the joy and disbelief she herself might have felt had it not been Nicholas Pencarrow who was offering it. In a flash she knew what it was that she would do. The others and the children would go on Wednesday and she herself would depart for Worsley with three of Michael’s burliest servants accompanying her, given the recent problems of the road. Her absence would then determine the Duke of Westbourne’s true intent. If he continued with these more-than-generous offers, it would be on the basis of his wanting to for the sake of the children and not for some misbegotten sense of indebtedness that their meeting in the woods of Worsley had seemed to inspire in him.
She wanted their personal relationship severed. He was dangerous and she was vulnerable. She wanted Nicholas Pencarrow, Duke of Westbourne, Earl of Deuxberry, completely gone from her life.
Returning to London from Airelies the following Friday, Brenna found her uncle ill and propped up in bed, surrounded by lemon barley drinks and a strong smelling camphor-based inhalant. One look at him, however, told her the problem was one far worse than the common cold he seemed to be attributing his breathing problems to, for he appeared blue about the lips and his chest rose and fell in a motion she found instantly disconcerting.
Gesturing to Dumas, she crossed to Michael’s desk, took paper and a pen from the top drawer and addressed the letter to the doctor, asking for his immediate assistance. Folding it and sealing it, she handed it to Dumas.
‘Take this to Dr McInnes’s house immediately and wait till they give a reply before you come home. Tell him I said it was urgent and that I’d be very indebted if he could come straight away. And, Dumas,’ she whispered as she followed him to the door, ‘please be as quick as you possibly can. I’m sure Michael is a great deal worse than he realises.’
Dumas squeezed Brenna’s hand and she watched him leave, using the small space of time to plaster a smile back on her face. She did not want to worry Michael with her own fear. He nodded at her weakly as she rejoined him, taking the hand he offered and bringing it to her lips. ‘Michael, you’d be cross with me if I’d just lain there as you have and demanded no help at all, and at the moment I feel like strangling you for your carelessness.’ Fluffing the pillows up behind him, Brenna ordered hot water to be added to the camphor to try to create an inhalant to ease him. The minutes ticked on, each one inexplicably longer, Brenna’s ears listening.
At last there was the sound of a carriage drawing up to the front porch, then she heard footsteps upon the paving.
‘The doctor’s here.’ She sighed in relief, leaving Mrs White to watch Michael as she hurried to the front door to let him in, pulling it open in one quick movement, almost colliding as she did so with the Duke of Westbourne. Frustration and anger veiled manners as she gave him no greeting. Could she never meet him without this ridiculous blush?
‘I am waiting for the doctor,’ she said shortly, stepping outside to peer up and down the street for any sign of a returning Dumas. Fresh tears of frustration rushed unbidden to her eyes as she saw the street empty and Nicholas was both astonished and alarmed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked brusquely, pulling her around to meet him.
‘It’s Michael,’ Brenna answered tightly. ‘He’s so sick and a doctor has yet to arrive.’
Hailing his waiting phaeton, Nicholas ordered his driver to Harley Street for help before returning to the house. He caught a glimpse of Brenna as she hurried to the second-floor landing and was beside her in a trice. Both came at the same time into Michael’s room. His breathing now was erratic, jerkily taken and noisily completed and Nicholas went to his side, loosening the nightshirt from around his neck and pulling him from the bed towards the window.
‘Get the chair, and bring it over to the balcony,’ he said to Brenna, throwing open the doors to the frigidness of the late afternoon. Cold winter air came rolling on to Michael in icy waves and the change in temperature seemed to soothe him for, seated in the armchair by Nicholas, he regained at least a little measure of his breath, and his colour settled slowly into a more normal pinkness.
Brenna knelt at her uncle’s feet, her hand in his, tears streaming down her cheeks in relief at his improvement, her trance broken moments later when a well-dressed stranger appeared in the bedroom.
‘Clive.’ The Duke of Westbourne strode towards the new arrival, hand outstretched, and Brenna’s eyes strayed thankfully to the black medical bag he carried. Nicholas Pencarrow’s doctor and here so quickly? She stood with an uncertain gait, wishing Dr McInnes and Dumas present so that she might dismiss this pompous-looking newcomer, but one glance at Michael changed her mind for he still struggled for a normal breath. The man observed it too and quickly took control.
‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting downstairs, miss, I would like to examine my patient in private.’ His eyes moved to the Duke, who came forward and led her out of the room and down to the parlour he’d been in the first time he’d ever come here. His ministrations raised Brenna from the state of shock she’d felt ever since she’d seen the danger of Michael’s affliction and she shook free from his arm and seated herself on a chair near the cold and fireless hearth, raising her eyes to Nicholas’s as she did so.
‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say; she couldn’t even speak any more. She was sorry for herself and for Michael, sorry for all the huge and unsolvable problems that suddenly seemed laid at her door, sorry for Nicholas’s help given so freely even in the face of her own secrets, and sorry she could not lean into his strength and sob her heart out. Her chin wobbled and, as her hand came up to hide it, she cast her eyes down towards the floor, willing herself not to cry, not here and not now. She drew in a noisy breath and held it, struggling for a strength she far from felt.
Nicholas watched her efforts and crossed to a drinks’ tray, pouring out a liberal brandy and swirling it in his hand to warm it before turning to rejoin her. Effortlessly he came down on his haunches in front of her and placed the glass in her hands, a little distanced