He could not have said when the summons came from Crenshaw—the third day of their ordeal? The fourth?—who one afternoon said, just outside the door to Grandmama’s chamber: “Lady Enchwood, sir, most urgently requests your presence in the drawing-room.”
Gabriel was just barely managing to get a spoonful of Cook’s excellent broth into his grandmother’s mouth. “Tell her I’m busy.”
Softly Crenshaw cleared his throat. “So I have, sir, but she is insistent.”
Gabriel knew that Livia and Miss Cott were both taking much-needed naps. He supposed that Lady Enchwood, one of Grandmama’s closest cronies, wished to hear from his own lips just how her friend went on. “Stay here, please, with my grandmother; I’ll go down.”
He found Lady Enchwood sipping at a cup of tea, a macaroon in the other hand.
“Oh! Mr. Penhallow! I must speak with you!” Hastily she swallowed the last bite of macaroon and restored her cup to its saucer. “I need hardly say how pained I am, but only the utmost necessity compels me to bring to your attention that fact that rumors are positively galloping through the town! It’s said that you have vacated your rooms at the York House and are staying here! In the same house as Miss Stuart! Of course that would be quite shocking, if it were true!”
Gabriel looked at her for a long moment. “I thought,” he said coldly, “you had come to inquire after my grandmother’s health.”
“Oh yes, indeed I have!” she assured him. “But one can’t safeguard one’s reputation too closely, you know, and after what Miss Orr has been disclosing, I am afraid that Miss Stuart is in a—well, a vulnerable situation, shall we say. And with the wedding date so near! Do you think dear Mrs. Penhallow might be permitted to attend, perhaps in one of those darling wheeled chairs? So comfortable, so snug for an invalid! When I was stricken with the influenza last year, Dr. Wendeburgen told me where I might procure one. It was just the thing, for my legs were like blancmange, and I was able to select upholstery in the most modern colors. Such a relief, for I had feared I should have to go about in an old fusty chair, looking dreadfully like a relic from a Gothic story! But I am happy to tell you that was not the case at all. So many compliments as I received! I vow and declare it quite turned my head.”
A vision of himself picking her ladyship up by the scruff of her fat neck and booting her down the stairs floated agreeably through Gabriel’s mind. As much as he had disliked Bath before, it was as nothing to the raw hatred for the place which now suffused him.
“You stare, Mr. Penhallow, and I do not wonder at it! You are amazed at my complete recovery. Why, I am myself! Many times was my life despaired of! Dr. Wendeburgen declared it was a miracle.”
“I’m sure he did,” replied Gabriel, in a voice that had gone from cold to arctic. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my grandmother.”
“Wait!” Lady Enchwood said, in throbbing accents. “Is it true, dear Mr. Penhallow, that you have rejected the services of Dr. Wendeburgen? It seems an incredible tale! I have been telling all my acquaintance that it must be the rankest, most scurrilous falsehood!”
Before he actually grabbed at her neck and did real violence to her person, Gabriel muttered a word of farewell and left the room, taking the stairs three at a time back to Grandmama’s chamber.
“Get rid of that damned tabby,” he told Crenshaw, “and don’t admit her again.”
A faint smile, so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable to the human eye, flickered across the butler’s normally immobile countenance. “It shall be as you wish, sir.”
There were no more foolish interruptions after that, and a good thing too, as in the evening Grandmama’s delirium worsened and it took all their combined efforts to keep her as calm as possible. When Dr. Crombie announced his intention to remain through the night, Gabriel’s fears for her deepened and though he said nothing aloud, he could see his concern reflected in the worn, pale faces of Livia and Miss Cott. None of them cared to leave the old lady’s bedchamber, and when Cook, stepping into the room around midnight with a little pork jelly in a covered dish, they none of them had the heart to send away the small visitor who crept in at her heels.
It was Muffin, the dog whom Livia had rescued.
Flustered and apologetic, Cook tried to quietly shoo him away, but after briefly wagging his tail—as if offering a general, friendly salute to the others in the room—he trotted over to Grandmama’s bed, leaped up onto it, and promptly curled up at her side in a small, white, furry ball and would not be dislodged, even by Cook’s coaxing offers of a nice bone or her firmer commands to “Come here, do!” Muffin had made his wishes very clear, and obviously would be removed only by force.