The Wildest Rake: a stunning, scandalous Restoration romance Page 15

  Cornelia ate a little. Her stomach kept rising in protest at the food although she was hungry. She found it very hard to keep the food down. The plague odours which made the room so foul were affecting her.

  Andrew came back a while later, looked at Nan without tending her, shook his head slowly and went away with hardly a word spoken.

  It grew dark. The bright day fell into night without a murmur. The very birds seemed to have stopped singing. Only the hushed whispers of the watch and the slow tramp of their feet on the cobbles disturbed the silence.

  Nan began to be violent, fighting silently for her life, her crooked body tossing to and fro, her hands and head rigid in her struggle for survival. Cornelia gently rubbed her bare feet, finding them oddly chilled. She kept up her ceaseless vigil, moistening Nan’s temples and cheeks, forcing water between her clenched teeth, and Andrew’s physic mixed with warm wine to make it palatable.

  The longest hours, as she had learnt with her mother, were the night hours. Each minute then seemed an eternity. Time seemed almost to hang in suspense.

  At last Nan tried to sit up, screaming wordlessly, her lips frothed with dark blood. Cornelia was so frightened that she barely knew what to do. She wanted to run, but she made herself grip Nan by her shoulders and force her down upon the bed.

  Nan was far stronger though, despite her infirmity, and she no longer knew who it was with her. She fought back, that terrible sound coming from her all the time, kicking with her legs, tearing with her fingers.

  Then her back arched, she opened her eyes wide in surprise and the deep stillness of approaching death, and with a sharp cry fell backwards.

  Cornelia thought for a moment that she had fainted, then she saw blood trickling down Nan’s chin, and the faint upward slant of her eyeballs.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whimpered, moving back one step at a time. ‘Oh, no, God, no, not Nan too . . .’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Returning at dawn, Andrew found them both lying still. Nan in the last sleep of death, her jaw fixed rigid, her body at an unnatural angle, and Cornelia asleep in a corner of the room, exhausted and curled round like a foetus in the womb, her back to the world.

  He went to the living first, but Cornelia would not wake, although her breathing seemed quite normal and her colour was pale rather than feverish.

  Rendel came to the door. ‘What is it?’ he cried, seeing Andrew bending over his wife anxiously.

  Andrew spun, breathing hard, very white in the face. ‘Keep out,’ he said angrily.

  ‘She is my wife,’ Rendel said, walking forward.

  Andrew stood between them. ‘She is my patient. If she has the plague, she would never forgive me if I let you come to her and you caught it. Keep off, I tell you. For once in your life, sir, do what is asked of you, rather than following your own selfish desire.’

  ‘Selfish?’ echoed Rendel, flushing hard.

  Andrew stared into his face, sharp-eyed. ‘Yes, selfish. You know very well she would not want you to venture your life for her. If you want to be of use, see to it that the kitchen is fumigated. Burn everything in it. Smoke out the walls. Then keep yourself healthy. Walk in the garden at night. Exercise and food will keep you fit.’

  ‘My wife,’ Rendel said, looking past him. ‘Has she the plague?’

  ‘I do not think so. I will nurse her.’

  Rendel’s face was grey. ‘You will tend her,’ he repeated dully. ‘Very well.’

  Then he turned and walked away.

  Andrew lifted Cornelia and carried her out of the chamber into a small, bare room at the end of the passage. There was no bed. He laid her on a straw pallet, then went in search of a truckle bed for her. She was still asleep when he returned, her breathing still as regular.

  He made up the bed with clean sheets and laid her between them gently. Then he stripped her body and examined her slowly. Her skin was white and cool, unblemished. His face relaxed as he watched her.

  A sound behind him made him look round. Rendel stood there, a savage jealousy in his dark face, his eyes glinting.

  ‘You sly, hypocritical bastard,’ he snapped. ‘Get your hands off my wife. ‘

  Andrew drew the sheet up over Cornelia’s naked body. He looked with indifference at the dagger Rendel held, and shrugged. ‘I am a doctor. I have attended her since she was a child. Do not be a fool.’

  ‘You have wanted her since she was a child,’ Rendel flung bitterly.

  Andrew nodded. ‘I love her, yes. But if you think I would take advantage of my privileged position, you are wrong. I have never wanted Cornelia in that way. She is dearer to me than my own life. I would not stoop to lechery, sir. I have seen too much of what such foulness leads to; unwanted babes, syphilis, crude abortion. Love which indulges in such selfishness is not love.’

  Rendel stared at him. Andrew’s blue eyes were cool. Even in Rendel’s rage he could sense that the doctor was speaking truthfully. He sheathed his dagger again, feeling foolish.

  ‘Well?’ he asked flatly. ‘Has she any signs of the plague?’

  ‘None,’ Andrew said. ‘So far. She may simply be too tired to wake. She has lived for so long in terror, and has barely slept. Such horrors can do strange things to the human mind.’

  ‘Not yours, apparently,’ Rendel said curiously, staring at him as if he did not quite believe him to be human.

  Andrew’s weary smile was rather terrifying. There was an inhuman strength behind it, a leashed control holding at bay all the normal reactions of a man.

  ‘I am not immune,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Yet you seem to keep working despite all the horrors you have seen.’

  ‘I have grown a hard skin over my eyes,’ said Andrew. ‘I see and do not see. I feel and do not feel. It is the only way to keep working. One death so far has moved me more than all the others—a child in my own house, my housekeeper’s little boy, a bright child of four years. He died in my arms and I wept until I thought my eyes were dry as kilns. I think I wept them for all those who had died at that one death. I have no more tears left.’

  Rendel chewed his lip angrily. ‘You make me feel ashamed. I am sorry I lost my temper with you.’

  ‘Do not be,’ Andrew said indifferently. ‘You are entitled to the emotions of a man.’

  Rendel looked at him hard. ‘Are you not, Belgrave?’

  Andrew smiled. ‘I? Oh, no. I long ago put aside such a privilege.’

  Cornelia slept for a day and a night without ever once waking. Andrew came and went, nursing her father, who had a slight chill and had, in his terror, decided that he had the plague, and keeping a watchful eye upon the sleeping girl in between times.

  When she awoke at last Andrew was sitting on the floor beside her drinking a cup of steaming spiced ale which Rendel had just brought up to him. Rendel was standing in the doorway, talking softly, smiling.

  Her lids fluttered open. She gazed like a child at the patch of bright sunlight on the rough ceiling, then slowly turned her head to look at Andrew.

  Rendel, seeing the movement, gave a sharp cry.

  Andrew motioned him to stay where he was, one hand held up. He smiled at Cornelia. ‘It is good to see you awake at last. How do you feel?’

  She looked at him calmly. ‘Light,’ she said slowly. ‘Cool and light as though I were floating.’ Then her face clouded over. ‘Nan?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘Buried,’ Andrew said in a stark voice. ‘But you live, child. You have not taken the contagion.’

  Her eyes were full of tears. ‘My poor Nan,’ she said. ‘Oh, Andrew, you did not have her thrown into one of the death pits? She had full Christian burial?’

  ‘She was buried in a grave,’ he promised. ‘With an elm coffin and the proper rites, I promise.’

  Rendel moved restlessly, his eyes fixed on her face, and she looked towards the door in surprise, then smiled, her whole face illumined with joy.

  ‘Are you still here too, Rendel?’

  ‘I would prefer to come closer
.’ He looked passionately at her across the small space dividing them. ‘This doctor of yours will not let me enter the room.’

  ‘He is right,’ she said. ‘I wish you could be got away from this house. It is fatal.’

  ‘I will not let it be so,’ he said.

  Andrew stood up and walked to the door, shrugging. ‘I wash my hands of the pair of you,’ he said in wry humour. ‘Do as you please, Sir Rendel.’

  Rendel grinned at him, and it made Cornelia’s heart leap with delight to see the new understanding between the two men whom she loved most in the world.

  ‘Love makes lunatics of us all,’ Rendel told Andrew cheerfully. ‘And only a madman would attempt this wild folly of life at all.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘I think you have the right of it. Life is mere folly. Go to your wife, if you choose. I will see how the Alderman fares today.’

  When he had gone Rendel crossed the room in three strides and knelt to take Cornelia in his arms. His strong body warmed her and she clung to him weakly, her chestnut hair tangling with his long black curls.

  He kissed her upturned mouth, her bare shoulder, the long curve of her throat.

  ‘My dearest love,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘At last I have you.’

  She laughed, stupid with happiness. ‘It was very hard for me to be trapped here, thinking I was going to die, fearing at all times that I would never see you again. I only realised I loved you when I knew how much I would hate being parted from you.’

  He sat down, his back against the wall, cradling her in his arms, the sheet wound round her breasts, leaving her shoulders gleaming white against the black cloth of his suit.

  ‘I realised I loved you, Madame,’ he said mockingly, pretending to bite her shoulder, ‘when I first set eyes upon your angry little face. That hair, those spitting eyes, made my head swim with desire, but I had wanted and bought women often enough before not to know the difference between what I felt for you and what I had ever felt before. It was the difference between gold and gilded iron.’

  ‘You should not boast to me of your conquests, sir,’ she teased with mock severity, frowning up at him, yet with eyes that danced beneath her drawn brows.

  He laughed down at her. ‘You heard of them, I suppose? I guessed that the Court gossips would waste no time in spinning their lures for you.’

  ‘I heard about Germaine,’ she said, with an assumption of indifference which did not deceive him for a second.

  He bent to look into her eyes, a smile curling the thin lips which once had seemed so cold and sneering to her.

  ‘You are mighty calm, then, Madame. You do not feel any jealous pang, knowing I was her lover?’

  She felt a stab as he spoke, and her eyes reflected the jealousy site felt.

  He smiled, caressing her. ‘Ah, you need not look like that, my love. Germaine was available. It is a hard fashion in which to speak of a lady, but so it was—she offered amusement. I accepted. It was all very polite and all very pointless. I was tired of the game before ever I set eyes on your face.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked huskily.

  He kissed her with tenderness. ‘Quite sure,’ he whispered. ‘I saw you, I loved you and I pursued you assiduously, as you must have realised. I had no difficulty in finding out your name. A few discreet enquiries in the city, a servant set to watch for you. I discovered your father’s ambitions and persuaded the King to see to it that he was invited to Greenwich that day, so that I might strike up his acquaintance, apparently by chance.’

  ‘I suspected it,’ she cried, laughing yet reproving. ‘You are very cunning, sir.’

  ‘It was equally planned that I should be in the theatre on the evening of your birthday visit there—your father had mentioned it and I immediately determined that should be the place of our next meeting.’

  ‘What if I had denounced you to my father?’ she asked him.

  He shrugged. ‘I am a gambler, love. I took that chance. And I had had the chance to weigh up your father, remember. I knew how much he wished to rise in society. I fancied that he would be forgiving towards me even if you did denounce me.’

  She nodded. Once this calm admittance might have angered her, but now she knew that he spoke the truth. Her father would have found excuses for him. His own ambition would have made him eloquent on Rendel’s behalf.

  Then she remembered the day on which Rendel had proposed to her, and asked him why, if he had loved her, he had been so lukewarm in his manner.

  He frowned. ‘I had not expected your father to be such a fool. His financial difficulties precipitated my proposal. I had intended to wait until I had coaxed you round. I was sure I could make you love me.’

  ‘Oh, were you?’ she interrupted, stung, yet amused.

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ he said softly, smiling teasingly at her. ‘I was too experienced to be blind to your hidden reactions to me. When I kissed you that first evening, it happened then —you blazed into life under my kiss. I felt your body respond.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, I know your mind still resisted, still repeated that you hated me. But I trusted to nature’s own laws, my dear.’

  She laughed breathlessly. ‘I truly believed I hated you. I knew, of course, that you had another effect upon me. I was not so innocent that I could fail to notice that.’

  ‘If it had not been for your saintly doctor, you would have admitted the truth much earlier,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Andrew stood between us for a long time. But I think that I already knew, on our wedding night, that I loved you. I had not faced the fact, that was all.’

  ‘If you had done so it would have solved all our problems,’ he said on a harsh sigh. ‘I was so sick with jealousy after I had seen you with him in the city, the day I followed you here. I would never have humiliated you as I did have I not been out of my mind with love.’

  ‘Oh, do not talk of that,’ she said quickly. ‘Let us forget the past now. We may have very little time left together. You realise that?’

  He held her close against him, stroking her hair. ‘Yes, my dear love, I know.’

  ‘Then why waste it in reproach?’ she asked gently. ‘Let us at least enjoy these days together for as long as we can.’

  His eyes suddenly hot with desire, Rendel ran his hand along the cool bare length of her -arm. ‘Why do you think I came here? In life or death, we must be together, Cornelia. It was written in our stars from the beginning.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Alderman’s chill became a high fever three days later. He died of it in the night with Cornelia and Rendel beside him, praying, and Andrew calmly doing what he could to ease his passing.

  ‘It was not the plague,’ he told them afterwards. ‘He has no carbuncles, and I can so declare to the city officers with a clear conscience.’

  Cornelia took little comfort from the thought. There had been too many deaths in the house. She had accepted the possibility, even the probability, of her own death now. She would not admit a ray of hope. To do so would be to weaken her small store of spirit. She seemed to have reached a pinnacle of peace. Resignation to death was like an act of faith. One gave up one’s soul to God and waited, trusting in him. To admit a hope of life was to ask for one’s soul back, and peace would be smashed to pieces.

  The days passed swiftly now. The house was empty. Only she and Rendel were there, together. Andrew came daily with food and drink, giving them news of the course of the plague. The summer heat sweltered around them. The city seemed like one vast sewer, stinking in an odour of decay and dissolution. The watch fires burned continually in the streets. The watchmen paced to and fro. The carts rumbled past. The bells rang. In and out of the secret tunnels under the wooden tenements scampered the rats, their eyes shining.

  Rendel had found a small, stray dog wandering disconsolately in the garden, and had taken it into the kitchen to feed it scraps, although the city had ordered the destruction of all pet animals, on the grounds that they might carry the plague.

&nb
sp; Cornelia shrugged when Andrew protested. ‘Poor creature. We have lived in contact with the contagion so long—does it matter now? I have seen enough of death. I’ll not kill the poor animal.’

  Rendel, content now in his new-found happiness, was equally indifferent to possible contamination. ‘Let it be, let it be,’ he told Andrew. ‘It amuses my wife, and is a pretty little thing.’

  The dog chased the rats which still remained since Rendel fumigated the kitchen. He killed them with a worrying snap, breaking their necks, and Rendel burnt their sleek black bodies on a bonfire in the garden. The house, once so rich and fine, seemed a stark place now. All the hangings and curtains had been destroyed. The carpets, the linen, anything which might harbour infection, had been burnt with the clothes of the dead.

  A scent of smoke seemed to hang everywhere for days. It hung about in their clothes, filling their nostrils. They had grown tired of burning nitre and tar on the fires. The scent made Cornelia sick with fear and disgust.

  Instead, they bathed in cool water every morning, in the kitchen, and washed their clothes daily, too, at Andrew’s suggestion.

  Whether it was this new cleanliness, or an act of God, was never to be known, but gradually, as the days passed, it became clear that the tide of the plague had moved elsewhere.

  Cornelia was still afraid to admit the little bird of hope, but at the back of her mind she was beginning to do so secretly.

  The month of quarantine came to an end. They were free to leave the house. Rendel sent for his servants and took her in the coach down to Stelling, to spend the winter in the clean countryside, hearing the news of the plague from a safe distance.

  They had occasional news of Andrew through mutual friends. He was still working in the city, still untouched by the contamination.

  ‘It is a miracle,’ Cornelia told her husband as the leaves began to drop silently from the great elms which stood sentinel across his park.

  ‘God takes care of his own,’ Rendel agreed. ‘Andrew must be stronger than he looks. He did not look fit for such back-breaking labour, yet he goes on somehow.’