‘Imagining me dead already, are you?’
The harsh words made her flinch.
‘The wound has some heat, sir, but I doubt that you will die of that,’ she told him, with more conviction that she felt. ‘I shall cleanse it and bandage it, and then if the heat has not gone I believe you should send for Dr Hollingshead.’
‘That quack! I’ll not have him near me.’
‘Perhaps another doctor, then?’
‘Aye, perhaps I should get myself one from Manchester—like my new housekeeper,’ he taunted her.
Marianne said nothing, getting up instead to fetch what she had brought with her.
She wiped the wound clean first with boiled water, using fresh pads as hot as she thought he could bear to draw the poison as her aunt had taught her, whilst keeping an eye on him to make sure that she was not causing him more pain than he could stand. And then, when she had done that, she reached for the honey.
‘What the devil do you mean to do with that?’ her patient demanded angrily, attempting to draw his leg out of the way.
‘It is honey, sir. My aunt believed that it has great efficacy in the drawing and healing of wounds.’
‘Well, I’m having none of it. Douse the injury with brandy and then wrap it up clean, and let’s have done with it.’
Marianne could see that he meant what he was saying. Reluctantly she did as he bade. She could not swear to it, but as she secured the clean bandage over the wound she feared that his flesh already possessed more heat.
‘I will go downstairs now and bring your supper, sir.’
His brusque nod told her that he was in more pain than he wanted her to see, she acknowledged as she hurried back to the kitchen.
A faint scratch at the back door told Marianne that the cat had returned and wanted to be let in. When she opened the door she saw that whilst she had been attending to her patient the sky had clouded over and it had started to snow, the flakes whirling in such a dizzy frenzy that she couldn’t see across the yard.
Shivering, she closed and then locked the door.
She had found blankets and pillows in the linen cupboards that would suffice for now, and had made herself a bed up on the settle. The range was stoked up for the night and banked down, and the kitchen clean and warm.
The baby, more lively now, held up his arms to her and smiled.
‘You should be asleep,’ she reproved him as she lifted him from the basket. Surely he was fatter and heavier already.
Marianne laughed to see the eagerness with which he took the small spoonfuls of soup she fed him, laughing again when he crowed happily at the sound of her laughter. The nurse might have wanted to see him swaddled, but Marianne could see his pleasure in being able to wriggle and kick out his legs.
‘My, but your daddy would be proud of you,’ she told him emotionally. There had been so many times during the arduous journey here when she had asked herself if she was doing the right thing, and now that he was here she was no closer to knowing the answer.
According to the nurse and the doctor, the Master of Bellfield was a man who had treated his late wife cruelly, abandoning her in her hour of need and leaving her to die along with his child. He was a man who had driven away his stepson, surely his rightful heir, and had caused the disappearance of the young innocent girl in his care.
But then his mill manager had spoken highly and warmly of him, and so had others. Who was to be believed? The baby yawned and closed his eyes. Tenderly Marianne carried him to his basket and laid him in it, kissing his forehead as she did so.
It was gone ten o’clock and she was tired. Once she had cleaned the housekeeper’s rooms on the attic floor she could enjoy the luxury of its bathroom, but for tonight she would have to make do with a wash here in front of the fire. Even that was a luxury compared with what she had known in the workhouse.
She started to take down her hair, ready to brush it. She had no nightgown to wear and would have to sleep in her chemise. Perhaps Mr Gledhill might know of somewhere where she could buy some serviceable lengths of flannelette. There was a sewing machine in the nursery, and her nimble fingers would soon be able to fashion some much needed new clothes for the baby and for herself.
Fashionable ladies might wear the new ‘health’ corsets beneath their expensive gowns, to emphasise the sought-after S-shaped curve that the King so admired, but even if she could have afforded such a garment there would have been no point in her wasting good money on it, Marianne reflected, for she had no one who might fasten it up for her.
Tears weren’t very far away as her meandering thoughts brought home to her how very alone she now was. All those she had loved had gone, though her beloved aunt thankfully would never know how cruelly her much-loved orphaned niece had been treated by those who should have cared for her. Her aunt’s estate, which should have been hers, had been sold over her head to pay off a bank loan Marianne was sure had never really existed, but at seventeen she had been too young and powerless to be able to prove it.
Life in the workhouse had come as a terrible shock to a young girl reared so gently. But it had been there that she had met and lost her very best and dearest friend.
And her husband. Poor Milo. He had fought so hard to live. She had seen how much he wanted to do so from the look in his eyes when he had asked her to place the baby in his arms one time. Tears stung her eyes, but she wiped them away. She was here in Rawlesden now, where Milo had wanted her to be.
A dab of salt on her finger, brushed round her mouth and then rinsed away, would have to serve to clean her teeth for tonight, and she summoned the courage to push her sad thoughts to one side. She must ask Mr Gledhill if he would authorise an advance on her wages, she decided, so that she could buy a few small personal necessities.
She was so tired that her eyes were closing as soon as she lay down on the settle beneath the blankets she had found.
Outside the snow whirled and fell in the biting cold, obliterating the landscape in deep drifts.
Marianne woke abruptly out of the dream she had been having. Her body felt warm but her mind was not at rest. She thought about the man upstairs and the ominous heat she had felt round his wound. Pushing back the blankets, she swung her feet to the floor.
It was not her responsibility to worry about him, but somehow she could not help but do so.
That flushed and discoloured wound and what it might portend was preying on her mind.
He would be sleeping, of course, she told herself as she lit a lantern, her toes curling in protest against the cold of the stone floor. And no doubt he would be angry with her if she woke him. But she knew that she would not rest until she had done as her aunt’s training was urging her and checked the wound, in case her fears weren’t merely in her imagination.
The lantern light cast moving shadows on the stair wall, elongating her own petite frame, so that it almost seemed to Marianne that as she climbed the stairs others climbed them with her.
In turn, that led her to think of the other women who had climbed these stairs before her, like the master’s neglected wife, her heart perhaps even more heavy than her body as she fought against her too-early labour pains.
And what of the wife’s niece? Had she too climbed these stairs in dread?
This house had known so much unhappiness and so much death. It needed the laughter of happy young voices to drive away its sadness.
The lantern highlighted darker patches on the landing wallpaper she had not noticed before, where a trio of paintings must have once hung. The chill of the unheated space drove Marianne on until she reached the master’s bedroom. She paused before