Page 3 of The Hidden Heart

He took his wife’s hand, and they started from the room. The General turned his head toward Jessica. “Jessica. Make sure they leave.”

“Of course, General,” Jessica told him with a smile. “I shall be happy to.” She faced the others remaining in the room. “Gabriela, Vicar, why don’t we let the General talk to the doctor now?”

The clergyman was obviously eager to leave the sickroom—whether because he feared the General or was hoping to find Lady Vesey, Jessica wasn’t sure. Gabriela fairly skipped down the hall, keeping up a constant stream of chatter directed at Jessica.

“Oh, Miss Jessie, isn’t it wonderful? I was so sure that Gramps was going to die! I should have known that he was tougher than some old apoplexy.”

Jessica smiled at the young girl. At fourteen, Gabriela was already promising to turn into a beauty. Though her figure was still as slender and flat as a boy’s, there was a litheness to her walk that promised a future grace, and her skin was fresh and creamy, her face lively and well put together, with large, dancing gray eyes and a tip-tilted nose.

Jessica was glad to see her charge so happy, but deep inside she could not keep from having a few doubts herself. The General might have awakened and seemed his old self. He might regain his full strength. But Jessica had noticed, even if Gabriela had not, that the left side of the old man’s face had not moved much when he talked, and his left hand had not curled around Gabriela’s in response to her taking it in hers. He had been unconscious for some time, and if nothing else, he was bound to be far weaker than normal. He was an old man, and the old were always susceptible to fevers and coughs, especially when they were weakened by illness.

She worried about the General, not only because she was fond of the him, but also because his sudden illness had brought home to her how vulnerable Gabriela was. Underage, orphaned, she might very well be left to the mercies of such people as the Veseys. Jessica had taken care of Gabriela, been her companion, teacher and confidante since the girl was eight, and she loved her as if she were her own sister. But in the eyes of the world, hers was only a paid position, and if the General died, whoever became Gabriela’s guardian could terminate Jessica’s employment, and she would have no recourse. She had worried over the matter ever since the General fell ill.

Gabriela went upstairs with the promise that she would work on the studies she had neglected during her great-uncle’s illness, and Jessica turned into the kitchen to find the butler, Pierson, and inform him of the General’s miraculous recovery and his subsequent banishment of the Veseys. Nothing, she knew, could make the servants happier than those two events.

As she expected, the butler beamed when she told him what had taken place in the General’s bedchamber upstairs and assured her that he would assign two maids, not one, to packing up the Veseys’ baggage and would personally escort them to their carriage.

Jessica returned to the nursery upstairs, where her and Gabriela’s bedrooms lay, separated by the schoolroom. As she passed the Veseys’ room, she heard the sound of something breaking, followed by Leona’s high-pitched, angry voice and Lord Vesey’s lower-pitched but no less furious one. Jessica smiled to herself and continued on her way.

The doctor left, and not long after that, Lord and Lady Vesey also quit the house. Humphrey, the General’s valet, stayed by the old man’s side throughout the rest of the day and that night, relieved—after great resistance—for a few hours at a stretch when Jessica or the butler or the housekeeper took over his role of nursemaid.

The General slept much of that time, waking up now and then to complain of feeling hungry and devouring first a bowl of consommé, then gruel and, finally, demanding soup with some substance to it. With each irascible command or gripe, the spirits of the household lightened. The General was becoming more and more normal.

Jessica visited the old man with her charge every morning and evening, and she could see visible improvement in him each time. She was very happy, not only for Gabriela’s sake, but because she was fond of the General. When the scandal broke and her father was cashiered out of the army, most of their acquaintances and friends, even the man she had thought loved her, had turned away from her, but General Streathern had not. He had come to pay his condolences after her father’s death, a courtesy few other of his military friends had seen fit to exercise.

Her father’s death had left Jessica penniless. She had refused to seek the help of her father’s family, who had scorned him after the scandal. For a time she had stayed with her dead mother’s brother, but it had been an untenable situation. He had five daughters of his own, all coming up to marriageable age and making their debuts. The last thing they needed was another young female about the place, and Jessica, whose father had raised her to be strong-minded and independent, was accustomed to running a household, not living meekly in one. She and her aunt did not get along, and she had soon seen that she could not live with them, either. There had followed a series of positions as governess or companion, but she was generally considered too young or too attractive or too tainted by scandal to be hired, and when she was, she often found herself leaving because of the unwelcome advances of a male of the house.

It had struck Jessica as grimly ironic that she, who had struggled through her younger years as a gawky, clumsy ugly duckling of a girl, had now somehow become the unwelcome object of male lust. She knew that the development of her late-blooming figure had had something to do with it, but she had difficulty recognizing that her despised riot of flame-colored hair was a lure to men, or that her features, once too large for her face, had matured into striking beauty. So, rather cynically, she laid the bulk of the blame for her attraction for men on the fact that they were drawn to her because she was no longer under her father’s protection. They wanted her, in short, she decided, because they thought she was an easy target now, a woman who was at their mercy because she had to work for a living.

Dismayed and embittered, she had stopped applying for positions as a governess and had managed to scrape out a living taking in fancy sewing. She had a good eye and hand for needlework, and when she swallowed her pride and went humbly asking for work, a number of women of wealth and position had paid for beautiful embroidery. Still it was a difficult and minimal living, and there were times when she despaired. Winters were the worst, for it cost more to live, as she had to heat her small room. She tried to save on coal, but she could not do the fine threadwork with fingers that were freezing. One winter, about six years earlier, the amount of sewing that she had been given had fallen off, and then she fell ill and had to turn away work for a week. She found herself suddenly on the brink of disaster, and she was forced to consider going back to live with her uncle or even asking her father’s stiff-necked family for help.

It was then that the General had appeared on her doorstep, a gruff, unlikely angel of mercy, and had offered her a position as companion and governess to his great-niece, Gabriela, whose parents had died a month earlier, leaving the General her guardian. The General had immediately thought of Jessica, with whom he had retained contact throughout the years. In fact, she had long suspected that he was behind some of the bonuses and gifts that she had received from her customers over the years. Jessica had seized on the offer of a position with joyful relief, and she had never regretted her decision.

Her time here had been happy. She soon grew to love her charge, and as she stayed, she took on more and more of the running of the household. The servants relied on her for advice and orders, quick to realize her competence, and the General was happy to turn such “women’s things” over to her. She enjoyed her life here, and it seemed almost as if General Streathern and Gabriela were her family. She did not think she could have been more concerned for the old man or happier that he was coming out of his illness if he had been her own grandfather.

After another day of convalescence, the General informed his valet that he did not need a “damned nursemaid sitting up and staring at me all night,” and ordered him to go to bed and end his nightly watch. The following morning he sent Humphrey to Jessica with the request that she come to his room. She left Gabriela with a paper to write and went to see the General, wondering what he wanted. Knowing the General, it could be anything from an accounting of the household budget to a game of chess to alleviate his boredom.

In this instance it was neither. General Streathern was sitting up in his bed, looking much stronger than he had the day before. He smiled when he saw Jessica, and she noted that the expression still did not reach the left side of his face. His left arm, too, was held across his lap and did not move much as he talked. But his color was much better and his gaze was alert, and when he spoke he sounded much like his old self.

“Well, girl, had you given me up for dead, too?” he barked.

“I was very worried,” Jessica admitted.

“Doubter.”

“You had been unconscious for a week, General,” Jessica pointed out. She had grown up speaking her mind, for it was the way her father had trained her, and she had been greatly relieved to find that the General was the same sort of man.

The old man chuckled. “I can always count on you to tell me the truth, Jess.” He patted his bed. “Come, sit down where I can see you without having to break my neck.”

Jessica went forward and sat down on the edge of his bed, facing him. “I am very glad to see that I was mistaken.”

“I am, too, my girl.” General Streathern let out a sigh. “I have to tell you, I gave myself a scare. I wouldn’t let on to that old sawbones, of course, but I know I had a close brush with death. I can feel it.” He patted his left arm. “Haven’t got full movement here, you know.” He shook his head. “It’s a frightening thing, your brain attacking you.”

“I imagine it is. But you are better now. And perhaps your arm will grow stronger.”

“I hope so. It’s damned irritating. Not as irritating as waking up and finding that scoundrel Vesey in my room, though. Don’t know how my sister could have produced a grandchild like that. Nothing wrong with her daughter—course, the Vesey line has always had bad blood. I told Gertie that no good would come of it, but it was out of her hands. Her son-in-law always did have batting for brains.”

“I am sorry they were here.”