Miss MacCallum almost jumped out of the carriage. Flush-faced, she did not look at him. He had flustered her, finally, with that last comment.
Her gaze swept the farmhouse and garden. “I expect she is much changed. I am. It has been some years.”
“Have you written?”
“I have. After a few letters, however, she stopped writing back. Perhaps once she married she was too busy.”
He sensed she debated whether to make this call at all. He let her take her time to decide.
The farmhouse looked to be a fair-size cottage with a well-tended garden in front. Past it, in the back, one could see another garden, probably for the kitchen, and outbuildings. Past those, the fields began. In the first one, a horse grazed. Her friend’s husband must be a yeoman farmer and not a tenant if he owned a horse.
The door opened and a tall, sandy-haired man stepped out. He eyed the carriage, then turned a curious expression on them.
Miss MacCallum marched forward. “You must be Mr. Bowman. I am Davina MacCallum. I grew up in these parts and knew Louisa when we were girls. I came hoping to see her for a short while.”
He met her halfway up the path. “That is good of you, but you’ll not be able to do that. You should not enter the house either. She caught that fever and is in bed.”
Miss MacCallum frowned. She looked at the house. “Who is tending to her?”
“I am, such as she will allow. She won’t let me in, and told me to keep our son away, so he is sleeping in the sitting room. I bring her food and such, but then she sends me away. She fears for the boy.”
“And for you, but that will never do.” Miss MacCallum sidestepped Mr. Bowman and walked to the house.
Mr. Bowman watched her, then turned back to Brentworth. “What is she doing?”
“Going to see your wife, I assume.”
Mr. Bowman looked at the coach. “We don’t see such as that around here. Who are you?”
“Brentworth.”
Mr. Bowman did not seem to know just which lord that was, but he did know from the coach and the title that it was some lord or other. “The lady may get sick if she goes in there. You may want to stop her.”
“I may want to, but I doubt I can.” All the same, he followed Miss MacCallum into the house, with Mr. Bowman in his wake, wishing that on hearing an illness lay within he had picked Miss MacCallum up and dumped her back in the carriage.
The son sat in the sitting room, tapping a stick against the floor. Blond like his father, he looked to be about eight or so. “That woman asked where mum was, then went upstairs,” he reported.
Eric decided he wanted very much to keep Miss MacCallum from spending time with her sick friend. He began mounting the stairs after her.
“Do not come up.”
He looked up to see her head sticking out an ajar door.
“If you were to take ill, I would probably be exiled from the realm,” she added.
“And if you take ill, I will not forgive myself.”
She made a shooing gesture. “I rarely take ill.”
“Your hair says differently.”
She felt the hair dangling next to her cheek. “Well, that once I did. I am saying there is no reason for more than one to risk it, and I already have. You can help, however. I can tell she needs water. Quite a bit of it. She has not been drinking enough. It can make all the difference. Ask her husband to draw some fresh water and bring up a jug to me. Then I could use more of it, warmed by the fire, not too hot, and some rags.”
Her head disappeared. Having issued her commands, she returned to her charge.
He retraced his steps and told Mr. Bowman what she wanted. After bringing up the jug, he set more water on the hearthstone and built up the fire a bit.
He looked up the stairs while they waited. “Does she know what she is doing?”
