Page 82 of About a Rogue
It took some time to settle the household.
Max explained in spare terms. His aunt had taken ill after her second marriage; a severe melancholy, the doctor said. She drank to excess, and fell into stupors that lasted days. There had been doctors and treatments in three spas, to no improvement. Greta wasted away and began speaking only German, the language of her youth. Her husband had her confined to an asylum.
Bianca thought there was much more to it than that. Max handled his aunt as protectively as if she were a child, and indeed she seemed as defenseless as one. She sagged heavily against Max’s side on the settee, her hand clutching a handful of his coat. Under his urging she ate a few bites of bread, and then fell asleep with a suddenness that astonished everyone.
Papa took himself off, saying he needed some port to calm his nerves. Frances slipped out of the room as well, and came back several minutes later to report that she had told the maids to prepare a room for Greta.
Max roused himself. By the end of his story he looked half-asleep himself. “No,” he said, his voice rusty. “I’ll take her home.” He stopped, and looked at Bianca. “If you’ll permit me to take her there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Frances with her usual brusqueness. “This woman is exhausted. Let Ellen wash her and put her to bed.”
Max shook his head. “I can’t leave her.”
“Of course not,” replied Frances tartly. “I’ve already sent for Jennie and your man. You shall have Bianca’s old room.”
“I’ll go with her,” offered Bianca as Max kept his arm around the sleeping Greta. “If you think that would help her.”
For a moment he stared at her, before blinking with a start. He was nearly asleep on his feet, she realized. “Yes. Yes, I think it would. Thank you.”
Greta woke with a panicked cry, but Max calmed her at once. He spoke to her for several minutes in a low, hushed voice. Bianca heard her own name, and saw Greta’s terrified eyes dart her way.
Even though she didn’t understand and still smarted under the sting of Max’s secrecy, she felt her heart move at the way he treated his aunt. Whatever the state of Greta’s mind, she had been treated abominably. It was clear she hadn’t had a bath in weeks; her clothes were rags, and she was half-starved. She kept plucking Frances’s shawl over her shoulders as if she hadn’t been warm in forever.
She sat quietly waiting until Greta looked at her again. Max smiled encouragingly. “Meine Frau,” he told his aunt. “Bianca.”
Slowly, Greta nodded once. “Schön,” she whispered.
“Sehr schön,” murmured Max with a ghost of a smile at Bianca. He helped Greta to her feet, and put his arm around her as he guided her from the room. For the first time Bianca noticed her feet were bare, scratched and scabbed. She told Aunt Frances to send for some salve, and wondered uneasily what Max meant bymad.
Max must have convinced Greta she was safe. The woman went into Cathy’s old bedroom with Bianca, only jumping uneasily when the door closed. Ellen came in with a bucket of warm water and Greta started to shake again, whimpering.
“Set it down and go,” said Bianca swiftly. “Go!” Looking startled, Ellen put down the bucket by the hearth and fled. Bianca heard her voice in the corridor, and the weary rumble of Max’s reply, followed by Frances’s tart admonition to Ellen to fetch more water for Mr. St. James’s bath.
Greta cowered from the hip tub, so Bianca abandoned the idea of bathing her. She settled for wiping away as much dirt as she could with a damp cloth, speaking softly and soothingly the whole time. She began to brush Greta’s hair, but the mass was so tangled and filthy, the brush made no progress. They would have to wash it and probably cut it, but that was for another day. Finally she coaxed Greta into a clean nightdress, and then into bed. The woman looked so childlike, clutching the blankets to her chin, her eyes roving the room.
When she was asleep, Bianca slipped out of the room. To her surprise, Frances was waiting. “How is she?” asked her aunt.
“Asleep. Aunt Frances, there are bruises all over her body. Her feet look as though they were whipped. Her hair is so matted, we’ll have to cut it—”
“Yes,” Frances said quietly. “Madhouses are terrible places, my dear.”
Bianca hesitated. “Is she mad? She looks a fright, but she understood what I told her to do, and she cooperated...”
“I do not know,” was Frances’s answer. “But now you must go to your husband. Assure yourself he has not fallen asleep and drowned in his bath. I will stay with her.”
Bianca nodded gratefully and went to her old bedroom.
Max had indeed fallen asleep in the bath. Of course, he was much too large for the bathing tub, so his head lolled on his shoulder while his knees stuck up out of the water. For a moment Bianca stared at his face in the flickering firelight.
Why hadn’t he told her about Greta? Or rather, why hadn’t he told herthisabout Greta?
Madness, of course, was terrible. A lunatic in the family was something most people would keep hidden. If Papa had known there was madness in Max’s family, he would never have invited him to dinner, let alone entertained a marriage proposal.
ButMaxwas not mad. No, not at all; he was the most logical, sensible, driven person she knew... and that meant he had known full well how people would have reacted, if he’d told. How Papahadreacted tonight. If Bianca hadn’t realized who Greta was and gone to her aid, Papa would have thrown her out of the house and barred the door.
And she was no better. If Max had told her of Greta in the early, antagonistic days of their marriage, Bianca knew she would not have taken it well. Not out of fear of Greta, but fury at him.
You kept her a secret so you could save her, she thought as she gazed at her exhausted husband. He clearly cared for his aunt. Greta had taken him in when his mother died, she had sent him to university, and she had tried to get him started in a respectable profession. Lawrence said Max had hired Mr. Leake to look for her months ago.
