Spears found Patricia Wyndham lying on her back on the pale blue Aubusson carpet in the middle of the Green Cube Room, staring at the ceiling. She was utterly immobile, and for one horrible moment, Spears was certain she was dead.
“Madam!”
She slowly turned her head and smiled. “Hello, Spears. Come help me up. I do hope the carpet is clean, but certainly it is. Mrs. Emory is a household tyrant. There, thank you, Spears.” She dusted off her skirts, shook them out, then beamed up at him again.
“May I inquire what you were doing lying supine on the floor, madam?”
“You may, but I shan’t tell you, at least not yet, Spears. Where is my son?”
“His lordship is probably giving orders to the Duchess, or to Maggie regarding the Duchess.”
“He’s such a sweet lad,” she said.
That brought a choking sound from Spears’s throat. “ ‘Sweet’ isn’t exactly an epithet I’d attach to his lordship. I, er, wished to ask you, madam, if you had any notion of who is responsible for all this misery we’re having.”
“I can’t know everything, Spears.”
“Do you know anything, madam?”
“Oh yes, I know quite a bit more than just anything. Indeed, perhaps soon now, I’ll be able to clear at least some of this mystery up.”
“I see, madam. Perhaps you’d like to have a judicious ear to pour some of your opinions into?”
“Yours, to be exact?”
“Exactly so, madam.”
“Not yet, Spears. Forgive me, I’m not being coy, I’m just not quite ready. Untidy strings that don’t weave themselves into the fabric, you understand? Now, I believe I’ll see how my darling boy is doing with the Duchess. Poor girl, losing the babe has really pulled her down.”
Not to mention being shot, Spears thought, but didn’t say anything.
Her darling boy was yelling at the top of his lungs, his fond mother realized while she was still twenty feet from the Duchess’s bedchamber. She opened the door to see the Duchess standing beside the bed, holding on to the cherub-carved bedpost and looking quite limp.
“Marcus,” the Duchess said, a goodly dollop of temper in her voice that pleased her mother-in-law, “stop your shouting. For heaven’s sake, I’m all right.”
“You swore to me you’d stay in bed, damn you. Just look at you, white around the gills, sweating like a stoat, and out of breath and bed.”
“My dears,” Patricia Wyndham said, sweeping into the bedchamber, “this is surely not good for the Duchess’s nerves. He’s right, however, my dear, whatever made you get out of that very comfortable bed?”
“I knew you’d side with him.”
“True, but what’s a mother to do?”
“She was relieving herself, Mother. She actually thought to get out of bed, walk all of fifteen feet to the screen, and use the chamber pot. I won’t have it, do you hear me, Duchess? Now, you’re getting back into that bed this minute.”
“Yes, Marcus, I know. I was on my way back to the bed when you burst in here and started screeching like a crazed owl.”
“Crazed owl? Good God, even your mental works aren’t functioning properly. You mean you’ve already used the chamber pot?”
“Yes, Marcus, and I even managed to walk back to the bed all by myself.”
Patricia Wyndham cleared her throat. “This is doubtless fascinating, children, but all this talk of the chamber pot can surely wait. Come, Duchess, I’ll help you.”
“You just stay put, Mother.” He very carefully angled the Duchess so he wouldn’t touch her side, lifted her some two inches off the floor, and carried her the remaining three feet to the bed.
Once he’d gotten her into bed again, on her back now for the pain in her side had lessened quite a bit during the past four days, he said, “There, now don’t move or it will go badly for you.”
“That sounds quite intriguing. Just what will you do, Marcus?”