Page 14 of Libby's London Merchant
“Some victuals, sir?” she asked.
He shook his head and held out the cup. The barmaid disappeared behind the counter and returned with another glass, which he drank more slowly this time, rolling the flavor of it around his mouth, and wondered why it didn’t taste as good as he remembered.
When Nesbitt finally dragged himself up to his room, he sank down on the floor by the bed and rested his head against the counterpane, which reeked of tobacco. He closed his eyes and tried to think of a prayer, but there wasn’t anything in his mind.
Nez crawled into bed and slept, slipping immediately into a pit, maws gaping wide, that swallowed him whole. He fell and fell, all the time wishing that he would hit bottom and there would be nothing else.
When Benedict awoke, the sun was up and the cleaning woman was rattling the doorknob.
“Another ten minutes and I charge you for another day,” she bellowed through the keyhole as the duke groaned and tried to smother her voice with the pillow.
The pain in his head was a vise slowly tightening, inch by inch. He finished off the bottle he had brought upstairs the night before, lurched to his feet, and found himself face to face with his reflection in the cracked mirror over the bureau.
He didn’t recognize the hollow-eyed man with the grim mouth who stared back at him. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder in hopes of seeing himself.
With hands that shook, Benedict shaved, changed clothes, and was stumbling down the stairs when the maid came out of the room across the corridor, mop and pail in hand. She sniffed as he passed and drew her skirts aside.
The taproom was closed and locked. He nearly wept as he leaned against the door. He settled instead for a pot of scalding tea bullied down him by the landlord’s wife, who appeared more than usually eager to have him off the premises. She offered him hard bread and then egg and bacon, but he could only shake his head and turn away, nauseated.
His modest horse was already hitched to the gig, and Copley’s precious sample case was right where he had left it last night in his rush to get into the taproom. Remorse stabbed him as he remembered Copley’s admonitions to take care of the case. He opened all the little drawers, relieved to find the chocolate and hard candies undisturbed, each piece solid and glossy in its compartment.
Benedict asked the ostler for directions to Holyoke, and then Holyoke Green, the Ames estate. The man answered him in some detail, but he might have spoken in tongues, for all the sense Nez could glean from the conversation. Finally, the man drew a map, which he tucked in the duke’s pocket as he kindly advised that he would not be able to miss the place.
Nesbitt clucked to his horse and started down the road, only to be whistled back by the ostler. He sucked in his breath, clutched at his temples, and turned slowly around, careful to keep his throbbing head level.
“Nay, then, sir, do ye not recall anything I said, think on? That road over there, as I live and breathe.”
Benedict turned his horse and gig about, ignoring the catcalls of little boys who shouted to him and jabbed their fingers in all directions for his benefit, pointing this way and that, directing him back to London, north to Essex, south to Sussex.
He drove with his eyes half-closed until he was accustomed to the brightness of the summer morning. The birds that flew about and admonished him from the trees seemed swollen to enormous size, and he ducked in terror several times until they went away.
He sniffed cautiously at the easy puffs of wind that circulated, bringing with them the heady smell of flowers. He squinted in the sunlight, breathing deeper finally and feeling a measure of enjoyment that had eluded him for many more mornings than he could remember. If only his head didn’t ache so!
He came to Holyoke before noon, but could not discover the estate. He paid closer attention to the directions he got from a member of the farming fraternity who was broadcasting seed in a newly turned field.
“Back the way ye came, sor,” the man told him. “I don’t know how ye missed it. It’s one half mile to the turnoff. You’ll see the house set back in the trees, sor, indeed ye will.’’
And there it was, a pleasant brick edifice of two and more stories, relentlessly old-fashioned and covered with vines, a far cry from the magnificence of his own ancestral estate in Yorkshire, but filled with a quiet prosperity that he could recognize from the road. Thoughtfully, he spoke to the horse and passed in front of the house, down a long slope that likely led to a river. He turned and came back, looking about and seeing no one. He noticed a large black horse in front of the house, but no rider. People were moving about in distant fields.
He walked the horse down the road again and planned the accident. It would be a simple matter to stop the horse by those trees that hid it from the house and upend the gig. He would lie down by the gig. He could be sitting up and clutching his head when someone came to help. It would be a simple matter to clutch his head, which had not stopped throbbing all day.
The inmates of Holyoke Green would take him in; he could look over Eustace’s intended bride and beat a retreat to Brighton with a full report. When the issue was settled with Eustace, he would find an inn on the coast where both the sheets and the ale were dry, pause there, and regroup while Augusta got over her fury and Lady Fanny Whoever had retired for the summer to the serenity of one watering hole or another.
He made one last jaunter up the slope. The horse looked back at him as if to question him. “Don’t stare at me like that,’’ he snapped at the animal. “Blame it on Eustace and his squeamishness.”
He took a deep breath and had started down the slope one last time, moving faster, when it happened. A rabbit exploded out of the hedgerow and darted into the road. The horse, city-bred and familiar only with pigeons, shied, reared, and began to gather speed as it raced down the slope.
Swearing a mighty oath learned from a sea captain and saved for such a moment as this, Benedict Nesbitt pulled back on the reins. Nothing. The horse only went faster. He tugged again, wondering if his arms would part from their sockets. “Wait until I see you again, Eustace,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
And then there was no more time for threats or oaths. The horse lost its footing on a patch of gravel and spun the gig around. The last thing Nez remembered was a pop in his shoulder and a mouthful of Kent.
4
At the sound of someone running up the steps, Libby turned to the doorway. Joseph threw himself inside, his eyes wide.
“Libby! You must come quickly! There has been an accident on the road!’’
Libby stared at her brother, but Dr. Cook had no hesitation. He took Joseph by the arm and turned him around.
