Jade Star - Catherine Coulter [113]
Jules slowly straightened. She saw Thomas’ startled look, and silently shook her head at him. No excuses, no pity. He wasn’t a hurt child, to be soothed. He was a man and he was proud. And he was frustrated and angry. She supposed she would be also.
“No, I will clean it up,” she said, forcing a bit of humor into her voice. “Since for the time being you can’t see a thing, I will be your eyes. Besides, Michael, the peas scattered all over the carpet. I don’t want you to squish them with your big feet.”
“Jules—” he began, then broke off abruptly.
She continued smoothly, “Thomas, tell Michael exactly what happened and what Dr. Pickett is doing for Bunker.”
Jules listened with only half an ear to Thomas as she cleaned up the mess on the carpet. Then she poured each man a glass of wine. She said nothing, merely took Michael’s hand and placed his fingers about the glass stem.
“Thank you” was his stiff reply.
“So,” Thomas concluded a moment later, “Dr. Pickett thinks that the shock of the explosion at the foundry probably triggered the stroke. What do you think, Saint?”
“Perhaps,” Saint said, well under control again. “That and the fact that Bunker is fat as a stuffed turkey, something I’ve spoken to him about many times, to no good effect. You say his entire left side is paralyzed?”
Thomas nodded, then quickly added, “Yes.”
“But his speech isn’t terribly impaired?”
“Only a bit. That surprised Dr. Pickett.”
Saint said thoughtfully, “I’ve been Bunker’s doctor for over two years now. I tend to think that he’ll make it mainly because he’s so damned stubborn. But then again, helplessness and dependence tend to change one.”
Jules shot her husband a pained look, but his expression was unreadable, at least to her it was. It was difficult to know what he was thinking with his eyes bandaged. Talk about looking helpless, she thought, staring at her brother. Thomas looked drawn and worried and scared.
Thomas said, “The question is, what am I going to do now?”
“I think, Thomas,” Jules said, smiling at him reassuringly, “that it might be the best thing if you married Penelope now and moved into the Stevenson house. You aren’t needed here, my dear, merely appreciated.”
Thomas would have protested, but Saint said quickly, “Jules is right, Thomas. Penelope and her mother are used to having a strong man about to take care of them. The two of you should probably marry immediately.”
Thomas and Penelope were married one day before Saint’s bandage was to be removed. It was a private ceremony at the Stevenson house, and Bunker was carried down by a servant and his driver to give his daughter away.
“I have never seen her so subdued,” Chauncey Saxton said to Jules. “I’m beginning to agree with Del that this is probably all for the best.”
“I certainly hope so,” Jules said. “Thomas is my brother, after all.” Penelope looked lovely, Jules thought objectively, and then realized: She’s now my sister!
It was a rather unsettling thought, given the fact that Jules’s only sister, Sarah, hadn’t played that role with much warmth or caring. Please, she prayed as the two solemnized their vows over the loud sniffling of Mrs. Stevenson, let it work out properly. Let Thomas be happy.
There was, of course, champagne, and heavier drinks for the men. Chauncey had helped with the buffet, and it was impressive. Jules was slowly eating a lobster canapé when she heard Bunker say in his loud, carrying voice to Michael, his speech only slightly slurred, “Well, my boy, here we are, two war horses, shot down! But Dr. Pickett tells me you’ll be eyeing that lovely wife of yours again in no time at all now.”
Sally Stevenson, her mother’s duty accomplished, was smiling now, accepting congratulations. But, Jules thought, she looked ill, her jowls noticeably sagging, as if the shock had aged her five years. She wondered if the shock was about her husband or her new son-in-law. Thomas had never said if his mother-in-law approved or disapproved of her daughter’s marriage to him, a penniless young man. I must tell Mrs. Stevenson how very lucky she