Cain His Brother - Anne Perry [43]
As he had said, it was less than five minutes before they were outside the fever hospital, and she went inside to fetch Enid, who was by now so dizzy and faint she was unable to walk unaided. Hester and Callandra were obliged to come, one on either side of her to support her, and Hester thanked God in a silent prayer that the street lamp was around the corner and the cabby could see only the lurching figures of three women and not how ghostly the center one looked with her ashen face and half-closed eyes, and the sweat streaming off her, making her skin wetter even than the fine rain of the night could explain.
He peered at them in the gloom, and snorted. He had seen gentry drank before, but the sight of a drunken woman always disturbed him. Somehow it was worse for a woman than a man, and the quality had not the same excuses. Still, if she gave money for the sick, he would reserve judgment … this once.
“ ’Yal in,” he said, holding the horse steady as it smelled fear and threw its head up and took a step sideways. “ ’Old ’ard!” he ordered, pulling the rein tighter. “Come on!” He turned back to his passengers again. “I’ll take yer ’ome.”
The journey was a nightmare. By the time they reached Ravensbrook House, Enid was hot and cold by turns, and seemed unable to keep her body from shaking violently. Her mind wandered as if she were half waking and half in dream.
As soon as they drew up, Hester threw open the door and almost fell to the pavement, calling out commands to the cabby to wait exactly where he was. She rushed up the steps and rang the bell violently, then again and then a third time. She heard it jingling in the hall.
A footman came to the door, his expression fixed in furious disapproval. When he saw a white-faced, bedraggled young woman with wild eyes and no hat, his offense knew no bounds. He was a good six feet tall, as a footman should be, and with excellent legs and a suitably supercilious mouth.
“Lady Ravensbrook is extremely ill in that hansom!” Hester said curtly. “Will you please assist me to carry her inside, and then send for her maid and anyone else necessary to make her comfortable.”
“And who are you, may I ask?” He was shaken, but not to be stampeded by anyone.
“Hester Latterly,” she snapped back. “I am a nurse. Lady Ravensbrook is very ill. Will you please hurry, instead of standing there like a doorpost!”
He knew where she had been, and why. He wavered on the edge of argument.
“Are you hard of hearing?” she demanded more loudly. “Go and fetch your mistress before she falls insensible faint and may injure herself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He galvanized into action, striding past her down the steps and across the pavement gleaming wet in the lamplight to the hansom where the cabby was fingering the reins nervously, staring down at the doorway as if it were an open grave.
The footman flung the door open and with the expression of a man about to spur his horse into battle, poked his head and shoulders inside to lift Enid, who was now fallen sideways and almost unconscious. As soon as he had grasped her, which even for a man of his strength was not easy, he pulled her out and straightened up, bearing her in his arms back across the footpath towards the door.
Hester took a step down, fishing in her reticule for money to pay the cabby, but he stood up in his urgency to get his horse going, flicking the long whip over its ears, and was already away from the curb and increasing pace before she could go any farther.
She was surprised only for a moment. He knew where he had picked up his fare, and seeing the address to which he brought her, and the liveried footman, he had guessed the truth. He did not want her close enough to touch, or to take anything, even money, from her hand.
Hester sighed and followed the footman, closing the door behind her.
He was standing in the center of the hall helplessly, Enid in his arms as lifeless as a rag doll.
Hester looked for a bell rope to pull.
“Bell?” she