Southampton Row - Anne Perry [97]
“Indigestion can be very unpleasant,” she said quietly. “Anyone who makes light of it has never suffered. But it does pass and leaves no harm behind but the tiredness of being unable to sleep. Please don’t worry.”
“Do you think so?” he asked. He did not turn his head towards her, but she heard the eagerness in him.
“Of course,” she responded soothingly.
They rode in silence the rest of the way home, but she was acutely aware of his discomfort. It sat like a third entity between them.
She woke in the night to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, his face ashen, his body bent forward, his left arm hanging loose as if he had no power in it. She closed her eyes again, willing herself to sink back into the dream. It had been something to do with wide seas and the gentle rush of water past the hull of a boat. She pictured John Cornwallis there, his face set towards the wind, a smile of pleasure on his lips. Every now and then he would turn to her and meet her eyes. Perhaps he would say something, but probably not. The silence between them was one of total peace, a joy shared too deeply to need the intrusion of words.
But her conscience would not allow her to remain with the sea and sky. She knew Reginald was sitting a few feet from her in pain. She opened her eyes again and sat up slowly. “I’ll get you a little boiled water,” she said, pushing back the covers and getting out of bed. Her fine linen nightgown came to the floor and in the summer night she needed no more for warmth, or for modesty. There would be no servants about at this hour.
“No!” The cry was almost strangled in his throat. “Don’t leave me!”
“If you sip the water it will help,” she said, sorry for him in spite of herself. He looked wretched, his skin pallid and beaded with sweat, his body locked in a huddle of pain. She knelt down in front of him. “Do you feel sick? Perhaps something in the meal was not fresh, or not well cooked.”
He said nothing, staring at the floor.
“It will pass, you know,” she said gently. “It is fearful for a while, but it always goes. Perhaps in future you should think less of your hostess’s feelings and decline all but the simplest dishes. Some people don’t realize how often you are obliged to eat as others’ guest, and it can become excessive after a while.”
He raised dark, frightened eyes to hers, pleading without words for some kind of help.
“Would you like me to send Harold for the doctor?” It was an offer simply for something to say. All the doctor would give him would be peppermint water, as he had in the past. It would be an indignity to send for him for a case of wind, no matter how fierce. The Bishop had always refused before, feeling it robbed him of the gravity of his high office. How can one look with awe up to a man who cannot control his digestive organs?
“I don’t want him!” he said with desperation. Then he caught his breath in a sob. “Do you think it is something in the dinner?” There was a wild note of hope in him, as if he were begging her to assure him that it was.
She realized he was terrified that it was not merely indigestion, that after all the years of petty complaints at last he really was ill. Was it pain he was so deeply frightened of? Or distress and the embarrassment of vomiting, losing control of his bodily functions and having to be cared for, cleaned up after? Suddenly she was truly sorry for him. Surely that was a secret dread of everyone, but especially a man to whom power and self-importance were everything. In his heart he must suspect how desperately fragile was his hold on respect. He did not really imagine she loved him, not with the passion and tenderness that would bind her to him through such a time. Duty would hold her, but that would almost be worse than the ministration of strangers, except to the outside world, who would see only a wife at her husband’s side, where she should be. What really passed between them, anything or