Mistress Montrose stood sentinel in the corner, hands clasped across the hard front of her bodice. Her steady, gray-eyed gaze made Jack uncomfortable: another reason to attend to Sir Antony. He picked up a basin, wet a cloth, and used it to dribble more water into the man’s mouth. How long he had been in this coma was another thing no one would tell him, along with how the baronet came to be in this condition to begin with.
Footfalls on the staircase, the frantic steps of a woman who couldn’t clear her skirts enough to take them two at a time, as a man would. Jack rose from his chair just in time to get out of Lady Ware’s way.
She drank in the sight for long moments, while Jack held his peace. He’d endured enough letters from her over the last few weeks, demanding to know where her husband was, that he understood how much it meant for her merely to see him. Only when that need was filled did she begin to see, to take in the slack limbs, the gray-tinged skin, the dry, cracked lips.
Then, right on cue, came the anger.
She whirled on Jack first. “What has happened to him?”
He nodded at Mistress Montrose. I would lay odds Lady Ware did not even notice her. “This good woman brought him to me, as you see him now.”
After dealing with that uncommunicative presence for the last day, Jack took a certain pleasure in unleashing Antony’s wife on her. “What have you done to him?”
Katherine Ware needed no watching, except insofar as she might employ her claws; Jack kept his attention on the stranger. He therefore caught the brief tightening about her eyes. Guilt? I do believe so.
It went no further than that fleeting sign, though. Mistress Montrose answered, in a quiet, unremarkable tone that nonetheless checked the lady’s incipient harangue. “If you act quickly, you may yet be able to gain the answers you seek from your husband. I sent for you, Lady Ware, because Antony needs you. Indeed, you may be the only one who can help him.”
Which piqued Jack’s curiosity enough that he almost overlooked her unadorned use of Sir Antony’s Christian name. Physicking now; questions later. “I don’t know what ails him,” he admitted, coming forward a step. “He’s been weakening for as long as I have known him; now, his body seems stronger, and yet…”
“His mind is lost, I fear.” Mistress Montrose also left her post, holding up one delicate hand to forestall Katherine Ware’s frightened response. “I do not mean madness. I mean that he has gone far away, and what it needs is for someone to call him back. This is something no physician can do for him. You have been the foundation of his life, the means by which he keeps himself grounded in this world; you, I believe, have the capacity to bring him back to himself.”
Katherine looked unwillingly down at the motionless body on the bed, as if she could scarcely believe it belonged to a living man. “How?”
The other woman shook her head. “I do not know. Your instincts, not mine, must guide us now.”
Lady Ware’s hand descended slowly, then took Sir Antony’s limp fingers into her own. Her other hand clutched the air behind her until Jack realized she was reaching for the chair; he pushed it forward, and she sank down beside the bed. “Antony,” she whispered, hesitant but determined, “I am here.”
They withdrew from the room, granting the two some privacy. Jack looked in from time to time, bringing wine to wet Katherine’s throat when her voice began to flag. But he was not above discreet eavesdropping, and through the door he heard her speaking of anything that came to hand, from their children to politics. This world, Mistress Montrose had said. Another wife might have read to Sir Antony from the Bible, but they did not want him thinking of God and Heaven—not if the goal was to keep him here. It was not, perhaps, the best course of action for his soul, but Jack didn’t fault her tactics.
Except they produced no change. Sir Antony’s body lived, but his spirit might as well have departed it for another realm. Jack was there when Katherine looked up at their hostess and said, ragged and despairing, “I do not think he hears me.”
The gray eyes regarded her, and Jack was more sure than ever that they hid a wealth of thought and feeling. Who was this woman, to whom Antony was important enough to save—and yet Jack had never heard her name? He understood that the baronet had other allies, but he couldn’t fit this one into any position he knew, and that bothered him.
As did the words she spoke at last. “He must be called by a human voice. What distinguishes humanity from the soulless beasts of the field?”
“Love,” Kate whispered. “But I have said it a dozen times, and he does not hear.”
“Then don’t say it,” Jack said. A strange, unspoken communion of urgency breathed among the three of them, in this candlelit room, with the noise of the St. Martin’s Lane tenements distant and faint. We all want him back. We refuse to lose him in such fashion.
He knelt at the side of the bed, taking Antony’s other hand. Discarding the delicate touch of before, he gripped the unresisting fingers, hard enough to feel the bones beneath. A friend may love, as well. Capturing Kate’s gaze, he said, “Speak to him by means other than words.”
Understanding sparked. Bending over her husband, Kate took his face in her hands, cupping the line of his jaw, brushing his thinning hair back with one gentle thumb. The devotion in her eyes was uncomfortable to see; such things were meant for private display alone. Jack felt like an unwelcome spy. But he held fast to Antony’s hand, and stayed as Kate lowered her head and kissed her sleeping husband.
Time might have stopped. Or perhaps it was only Jack’s breathing, held tight in his chest, for fear of shattering something fragile. Kate pulled back at last, and whispered her husband’s name.
Antony’s eyes fluttered open.
His pupils were wide and drowning, his gaze unfocused. Then it sharpened, and Antony seemed to be looking past the two of them, to the figure that stood at the foot of his bed.
But when Jack turned to see, Mistress Montrose had vanished.
ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 11, 1659
Kate held her peace while Jack Ellin fed Antony beef broth, while he rose and walked a shaking circuit of the room, while he drifted into the embrace of true sleep, restorative as his previous stupor had not been.
But when he woke in the small hours before dawn, she still sat in the chair, and in the light of the one candle he saw the questions she had suppressed for so many years.
His wife, noticing he was awake, poured him a cup of wine and helped him drink. Red wine and beef broth—meat as soon as he could manage it—for Jack had told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to strengthen his blood. At least he was spared any foul-tasting potions.
When he was done, Kate set the cup aside and asked, very controlled, “Who is she?”
“A friend,” Antony said. What else can I call her, that will not open a Pandora’s box of trouble? Once he had been certain that God had placed the fae in the world to show humanity what they might be, without their immortal souls and the salvation of Christ. Capable of both great good and great evil, but lacking a guiding star by which to steer their choices. That certainty, like so many others, was long gone. And in its absence, he did not honestly know if he could explain his association, to Kate or anyone else, in a fashion that would render it into sense.
Kate’s expression hid in the shadows of her face, fragmented and unreadable. “How long have you…known her?”