Moving Forward (Chapter 4)
Rating: T
Relationships: Dwight & George, George & Ross, George & Cary, past George/Elizabeth.
Summary: The next chapter of my post s5 AU. As George battles the fever from his wound, Cary presents Dwight with an ultimatum. Meanwhile, Caroline contemplates the effects of her recent actions and the residents of Nampara receive a nasty surprise courtesy of one Mr Merceron.
@ticketybooser, @lashbrook11, @forcebros, @harry-leroy Finally managed to finish this chapter! Tagging you if you're still interested in reading after the ridiculously long wait. :D
AO3
***
The sounds of icy rain pouring down in torrents outside, and the rattling windowpanes of his bedchamber at Cardew were a relentless accompaniment to the fit of shivering that had seized George in its grasp, violent as it was inconvenient, as he stood before the full length mirror, attempting to tie his neckcloth into something at least vaguely respectable with uncontrollably shaking hands. He was feeling odd that evening—hot and sick and entirely out of sorts—which was not at all fortuitous considering he had recently received a very illustrious invitation from...the name escaped him. No matter how he strained, he could not recall it, but he did remember that they were important. As such, he must compose himself with the utmost decorum if he were take the opportunity presented to him to cultivate the connections his family sorely needed, and any failure—no matter the reason—would not be regarded sympathetically. His uncle had never been a forgiving man, and nor, as a matter of fact, were what Cornwall had in the way of gentry when it came to blunders and faux-pas.
How exactly he had managed to secure the invitation he was not entirely sure of either. Frowning, he tried to recall past the strange fog that seemed to have settled in his mind. It must have been Francis, he thought, out of a wish for some form of friendly company no doubt—his friend had never much cared to be left alone under the scrutiny of his father and associates, and now that Ross' focus seemed more on his new wife than on shocking people at social functions, it had fallen to him, George, to—
But no, that was not right. Ross had been sent to America only some months ago after his violent foray into the world of free trading, unattached save for the ring he had taken from the finger of his sweetheart before he left for battle—dear, lovely Elizabeth, whose heart that man had never deserved to win. And yet he was sure that he had met Ross' wife—red-haired and fierce, a miner's daughter from Illugan of all things—and Ross himself at her side...or perhaps away from her side, at the card table with Francis, and his cousin, Matthew, bearing a long, angry scar down the side of his face which he was sure hadn't been there before he had gone away...
George shook his head, trying to dislodge the troublesome thoughts from his mind. Now was not the time to indulge in such...he forgot the word...confusions? Fantasies? He had to make a good impression on...good God, what was their name? He had to make connections, allies. That was what his father—no, his uncle; his father wasn't in a position to tell anybody anything anymore—had told him, and he could hardly do that whilst all his thoughts were swirling about his head like silt in a pool at high tide.
“George Warleggan!”
George started. The name had been fairly spat out, with all too familiar malice, and when he whirled about in search of the owner of the voice, his eyes fell upon the equally too familiar figure of Agatha Poldark, withered and shrewish, hunched up in the very same chair she favoured at Trenwith like an old crow.
“I remember when Francis first brought you here,” she rasped, her lips curling into a nasty sneer. “Velvets and silks you wore. It was plain your mother had no taste.”
George stared at the old woman, both in chagrin and with no small measure of bafflement. Not only had Agatha Poldark never set foot in Cardew once in her not inconsiderable life, but he quite distinctly remembered her having died at Trenwith some years ago. It struck him as rather odd, yet his muddled mind couldn’t quite linger on it as it perhaps ought to have done. As rude and inconsiderate as it was to rise from the grave simply to insult a man in his own home, he thought, it was hardly out of character for the woman in question.
“Here?” he murmured. Or perhaps gasped out. He was burning, his neckcloth like a noose about his throat. 'Here?' what did she mean by 'here'? He was at Cardew, after all, and he couldn't think of any reason Francis would have to bring him to his own damned house—
But no, this wasn't Cardew. This was his bedchamber at Trenwith, dark and cold, the fire unlit. No, not cold. Hot. Too hot. He was shivering violently, sick and dizzy, and he stumbled, reaching out to catch himself on the bedpost. He blinked. Instead of the cuff of his new tailcoat, he saw the sleeve of his silk dressing gown pooling about his wrist.
“What news, Doctor?”
George startled once again. The voice, grim and tired and as familiar to him as the back of his own hand, seemed to come from everywhere at once, and he began to search wildly about for its owner. Agatha, he saw, had vanished, and he was alone in the room.
“Uncle?,” he called. “Uncle?!”
Nobody answered. There was nobody there.
“Uncle, please, I—”
There was a shadow, in the corner of the room, lurking where the mirror had been only moments before. Unable to look away, he stared at the shadow, shape...no, silhouette, blurred and indistinct. The figure of a man, large and imposing, with cruel, dark eyes and a glimmer of white teeth as his lips twisted into a wicked smirk.
“Your uncle is not here, Sir George,” the shadow said. “He has abandoned you to my care. Now, I advise that you yield, lest you give me cause to be...displeased.”
“No” George whimpered. No, no, no. He couldn't— He wasn't— He couldn't be— But the shadow was moving closer, his teeth and eyes glinting, and he could do nothing—couldn't fight, couldn't flee, as if he had been shackled to the bedpost he was pressed up against. There was a glass of something in the shadow's hand, he saw—some foul, bubbling, evil-looking concoction, black like the ooze from the peat on the moors.
“This decoction of lacroma papivarus will subdue the animal spirits which have seized the patient in their grip.”
So fast he barely had the chance to realise what was happening, the shadow was upon him. He felt a hand take a hold of his chin, keeping him in place, the rim of a cup pressed against his lips. Then an order, snarled, low and cruel, from twisted lips.
“Drink.”
***
“Please, George, you must drink.”
Trying his utmost not to spill any of the cool liquid inside amidst the man's tossing and turning, Dwight pressed the rim of the cup of water to his patient's tightly pursed lips. The third attempt, however, was no different from the first or the second. George flinched violently, turning his head away without so much as drinking a drop.
“No” he whimpered—or at least, Dwight thought it was something that sounded like the word 'no', muffled as it was with his face pressed into the pillow.
“It is alright, George,” he murmured. “It is alright.”
He did not know what the man was seeing in his fevered haze, but it was clear enough that it was causing him a great deal of distress. He could feel him shivering beneath the palm he had placed upon his shoulder to keep him from shifting too wildly, taut as a bowstring.
“It is alright” he repeated softly.
There was a bitter snort from the other side of the bed, but he didn't allow himself to take note of it. George let out a weak moan, his lips parting slightly as his head lolled back to face him, and Dwight rushed to take his opportunity. He pressed the cup to the man's lips before he had the chance to flinch away, and this time, he swallowed obediently, allowing the cool liquid to trickle down his throat.
Only when he was satisfied that George had drunk his fill did he turn his attention, briefly, to the other man in the room. Cary Warleggan, who had arrived some minutes earlier upon being informed of the change in his nephew's condition, was sat opposite him, his gaze transfixed by the feverish figure on the bed. He looked slightly sick, Dwight thought, and very pained. It was an expression he had come to recognise well on the face of the old man, ever since he'd taken George home from the clifftop and subsequently drawn from the man's lips everything that he had stood by and allowed him to endure. It was the expression of a man who saw his nephew suffering, and hadn't the slightest idea how to alleviate it.
In that, Dwight thought with a grim frown, he could sympathise all too well. For all that he was looked to for assurances and cures—had been ever since he'd been able to take a breath to wash George's blood off his hands after the surgery—he was all too aware that a physician was only slightly less helpless in the face of such debilitating fever as the average man. Such things could only be battled through, and no matter what he—or Ross, or Demelza, or Prudie—did to try and alleviate his pain, it was in George's hands alone to fight his way to its end.
“Surely there is something that can be done,” Cary scowled, suddenly. Rigid as a board, his eyes burning, he looked for all the world as if he were some confined beast ready to tear apart whatever lay within his grasp the moment he had the chance. “Something more than mopping his forehead and hoping he doesn't—”
He cut himself off, turning sharply away from the sight of his distressed nephew, jaw clenched. Dwight bit back a sigh, willing himself, despite his own overwrought nerves, to be patient. He shook his head.
“The fever must burn itself out before he can recover,” he said. “There is only so much we can do to keep it under control, but I promise you, we are doing everything we can to keep him comfortable through the worst of it.”
Cary sneered, his eyes flashing.
“Ah, well, as long as he's comfortable before he goes to the grave” he snarled, bitterly.
Dwight swallowed. He did not want to contemplate the possibility that George might not pull through the fever, but he, perhaps more than any of them, knew all too well how close to the brink he was hovering. He could not give in though—not yet—and as much as it was clear that Cary was a man all too inclined to prepare for the worst than hope for the best, he could not in good conscience allow others to do so either.
“He isn't lost to us yet,” he murmured, his eyes flickering up towards the man opposite him even as he felt George shifting restlessly, flinching away beneath his touch. “It may not seem so now, but your nephew is strong. He will not give in without a fight. We owe it to him not to give up hope that he may yet survive.”
Cary snorted. Another soft whimper from the bed, and though he still kept his face turned sharply away, Dwight saw something raw and pained creep across his features like a shadow.
“Yet,” he said, his voice suddenly very rough. “What use is 'yet' to me? If he—”
“Uncle...”
George's voice was soft, barely even a whisper above the hammering of the rain against the window, but that single utterance was enough to mute Cary's reply in an instant. His gaze finally turned away from the door, and back down to his shivering, trembling nephew, his eyes blazing.
“Uncle...” he murmured again. Dwight, who had been halfway through wetting the damp cloth in his hand, paused. He could see his eyes flickering back and forth behind his lids, his fine features contorted with fear at whatever bizarre visions were plaguing him. “Uncle, please...don't let him...”
Cary turned white, his jaw clenched so tight now that Dwight half wondered whether he would be able to open it again once the time came for him to speak. He swallowed. He could guess well enough what—or rather, who—was haunting his patient's feverish imagination, and it was clear from Cary's expression that he was not alone in the assumption.
“Hush, George, it is alright.” He pressed the cloth firmly against his burning forehead, trying to soothe him as he flinched at the contact. His other hand came to rest over one of the man's balled fists, clutched tight at the dishevelled sheets, tracing a gentle, calming rhythm over his white knuckles with his thumb. “There is nobody here but your uncle and I. You are safe.”
He wasn't sure if George could hear him—or if he could, whether he had enough presence of mind to understand him—but he knew that it was the best he could hope to do to relieve his patient's distress. He whispered words of comfort, over and over, until the man's quiet, troubled murmurings faded into incoherent little whimpers, and his wild shifting into slight shivers from the fever. All the time, Cary watched on, strange flashes of disquiet flashing across his face, as if somebody had forced him to watch something disturbing and unnatural.
“Has he been...speaking often?” he spoke up eventually. With George having finally quieted, and the repetitive pattern of the rain on the windowpane, his rough voice sounded harsher even than usual, for all that he had been trying to speak softly.
Dwight frowned.
“Not coherently enough to reveal anything you might wish to keep secret,” he said, guessing the old man's worries easily enough. Several demands of complete discretion—and one notable threat of being sued—both throughout and after his previous treatment of George had been enough to demonstrate to him Cary's insistent and unrelenting desire for absolute secrecy regarding his nephew's particular ailment, and the business with the horrid Penrose. “Nobody shall make anything of it.”
Part of him thought it an odd priority—to see one's nephew deathly injured and wracked with fever, then to think first of what he might reveal in the midst of his delirium to those in whose care he had been placed. It was the sort of thing that would outrage Ross, who cared little for reputation and whose concern had never been for malicious gossip and and the consequences that might ensue. Dwight, though, for all he disliked the hard and unfeeling elder Warleggan, thought he could understand it. For all that he was sure that none at Nampara would use it against them, evidence of suspected lunacy was a dangerous thing, especially should it fall into the wrong hands.
“Poldark might make the connection,” Cary replied, his features contorting into a truly impressive sneer as he spat out Ross' name. “He saw enough to know there was something going on. And that's leaving aside what Valentine might have told him, fool of a child. Or you.”
Dwight's head shot up, shocked for a moment into silence by the vehement accusation. His thumb, which had still been running gently over George's knuckles as they spoke, slowed to a stop.
“I have told him nothing, sir,” he said coolly, fighting the urge to bristle at the insinuation—as if he made a habit of blurting out pertinent information concerning patients to his friends like a child who understood no better. “You asked for complete discretion and I have done my utmost to adhere to that request.”
With the exception of Caroline, he thought, swallowing down a lump in his throat. True, it had been an honest mistake—on both their parts, he realised, despite what he had said to her at the time—but he had been unpardonably careless, leaving his notes, however briefly, to be so easily found. He felt badly for being so sharp with her on the matter. In hindsight, it was a relief to him that it had been Caroline who had stumbled across them rather than an inquisitive servant—or perhaps, he thought, remembering his wife's insistence that Horace had been poisoned, somebody with very ill intent indeed. He wondered perhaps if he should inform Cary of the incident, but just in that moment, the man let out a snort so fierce he was instantly discouraged.
“And you would do well to prove that by ensuring that nothing happens whilst my nephew is under your care to lead your...companions to dredge up certain truths,” he growled, and the look in his eyes was so piercing, so pointed that Dwight was halfway considering whether the man had read his thoughts before he came to his senses. “It would be a poor exchange for him to wake only to have that man poking his nose into old wounds.”
Dwight looked away, his attention drawn back to his patient. George seemed finally to be sleeping peacefully—or as peacefully as one could at least, when one was caught in the grip of such a fever. He let out a quiet sigh. He wished that he could say for sure that Ross would not act in any way detrimental to the man's health should he discover the truth, but, though he knew his friend would not act in malice, he feared that he might be inclined to be...indelicate at the very least, no matter how well-intentioned. But regardless of what Ross—or Demelza, or Prudie, or anybody else who might happen upon him in such a state—would do with such knowledge, he knew that it would be a breach of George's confidence to stand back and risk allowing any of them to discover it. His patient would hate them knowing, he knew, and it was his duty, he thought as he looked into the sleeping man's pain-filled face, to make sure that his secret was kept safe whilst he could not. He may not have guarded it closely enough once, but he would not fail again.
“For his sake,” he said, raising his eyes to meet Cary's gaze head-on. With a deep breath, he sent him a sharp nod. “For his sake, I shall do it.”
***
The sky was dark with clouds and rain was pattering against the windows as Caroline, freshly arrived from Killewarren, made her way up the stairs of Nampara with a trepidation that, had anyone been there to observe her progress, would have been called uncharacteristic by almost all who knew her. Had there been anyone watching her, she would surely have brushed off any concern over her uncertain steps with her usual flippancy—perhaps a remark about not wanting to disturb the ailing patient upstairs with what from such comments she could only presume to be her practically elephantine tread. But nobody was watching her, and she was not in the habit of attempting to deceive herself. She knew very well why she was so reluctant to make the journey up the stairs, and she would not hide from it, no matter how little she liked it.
Her intention when arriving at Nampara—accompanied once more by Geoffrey Charles for her protection—had simply been to discover how George was, and of course, to see her husband. She had been greatly disheartened to hear from Demelza that not only was George consumed with fever, but that Dwight refused to leave his side and, after another visit from Cary Warleggan, would not so much as countenance another taking over his duties for even a moment. That didn't surprise her—her stomach twisted unpleasantly at the thought—for she had been married to Dwight for too long not to understand that his dedication to his patients knew no bounds. But no amount of knowing would change that it saddened her sometimes, that in those times she wished...
But wishing, she thought, as the memory of a cold little body in her arms, of following along the path to the church garbed in black and so deep in grief that she had been beyond tears flashed before her eyes, rarely made something so.
“'Tis awful worrying 'ow he be treatin' 'imself,” Demelza had told her sadly, the shadows beneath her eyes too pronounced by the flickering of the fire she had bade Caroline warm herself in front of after the ride in the rain. “I'm a-feared he'll make 'imself ill. Please, Caroline, will ye talk t' him? At least get him t' come down an' eat? He'll listen t' ye.”
Will he? Caroline had thought, not nearly as sure of her supposed abilities as her friend. Of course, Demelza could not have spent so long by Ross' side without gaining some considerable experience of wrangling stubborn husbands, but Dwight was not stubborn in the same way that Ross was—for he was stubborn, despite his mild manner, when it came to his work. With the...difficulties they had been having recently, she wasn't nearly as confident that she possessed the ability to persuade him, even if it was just on the matter of keeping him from neglecting his own health for the sake of others'. Everything had changed now, and where she had once been so sure of her footing, she now felt as if she were floundering at sea with no oar and no sails.
As distressing as this all was, however, none of it was what had her hovering on the stairs, hanging back, uncertain of what she should do. Ever since she had heard the news that George Warleggan had saved Ross' life—that he had been shot whilst doing so—a horrible suspicion had been growing in her. None of them had the slightest inkling of why he would have risked so much for a man he hated—none except her. None except her, who had decided it had been a sensible and just course of action to blackmail a man who had been gravely ill into drastic measures that she had not intended but still feared may be her fault nonetheless, and in doing so—in doing so—
She feared to face him. She had yet to see George in the aftermath of the attack—only the effect it had had on her husband and friends—and she felt, somehow, that to lay eyes on him, white and wounded and feverish as Demelza had described him, would be to make that terrible truth that frightened her so all too real. But Caroline had never been in the habit of cowardice. She had done wrong and she had a duty to face that, to face him. And so, with no more pause than one long, deep breath to steel herself, she forced herself to make the rest of the journey up the stairs and to where her quarry lay without faltering.
No matter the resolve she had possessed moments before, as she laid eyes upon the man on the bed before her, what she saw was enough to stop her in her tracks. A man whom you may well have sent to his death, a nasty voice hissed in the back of her mind. Let us not forget what it was that brought you to your erstwhile friend's bedside. Even in the low candlelight, the distress on George's face was plain to see. Brows drawn tight together, eyes screwed firmly shut, and hands grasping at the warm quilt that had been draped over him like a frightened child caught in a nightmare as he flinched away from whatever imaginings were haunting his rest, he was a far cry from the man she had come to know. The sight—so horrible and alien—caused her breath to hitch, caught around a sudden lump in her throat that she could not hope to dispel. This was what she had feared—worse than she had feared, and now that she was unavoidably, inescapably faced with it, she couldn't—
You did this, that cruel voice whispered in her head again, refusing to be quieted. The fear that had been sitting with her roared up to the surface like a great monster in her chest, that nagging notion that she might have made him...that everyone had been so nonplussed by his actions because his actions had been a result of hers and— When Merceron had been targeting her and the others, all she had been thinking of was getting him and his brother away from them by any means necessary. She had put the notes she had discovered on Dwight's desk and George's influence together in her mind, and had contrived of what she had thought at the time to be a necessary evil. But now, facing the man whom she may well have threatened into putting himself in terrible danger, it seemed to her a very low thing to do. The fear of it—of what might still happen—was so strong within her that she half thought it might leap into her throat and choke the life out of her, and she knew that, should George die from his wound, she would never be able to forgive herself.
“Caroline.”
The soft voice of her husband, even quiet and kind and soothing as it was, jolted her as sharply and as suddenly from the depths of her own thoughts as a bullet fired from a pistol. Another glance at George's prone figure lying on the bed, and she instantly regretted the comparison.
“Caroline,” Dwight said again, and this time, she managed to wrench her gaze away from the bed and meet his eye. “We must trust that he will improve with time. It is still early days, and with proper care, he may yet rally.”
Caroline's tongue felt thick in her mouth, but nonetheless, a fleeting—though pained—smile flickered briefly across her lips upon hearing her husband's words. Despite all that had come between them—the stress and the tension, the loneliness and the grief—Dwight was always there to offer words of comfort when they were truly needed. Then, the smile slipped from her face as if it had never been. Would he have such comforts for her had he known the true reason behind her distress?
“Demelza has made some stew for you,” she said, in lieu of a response. “She asked me to fetch you.”
Dwight looked down, his gaze settling back to the restless George, shifting to and fro atop the rumpled pillows. There were dark circles under his eyes, she noticed, and she could see that dull, tired gleam shining from beneath his lashes with which she had become so familiar every time he came home from having treated a difficult case. It was the same look, it suddenly occurred to her, that he had worn staring into the fire at Killewarren after Elizabeth had died.
“That is kind of her,” he said, and though he tried to hide it, she knew him too well not to recognise the weariness in his voice. “But I cannot—”
“Dwight, you have not eaten all day,” she cut across him. She could feel a tight knot of concern twining itself in the cavity of her chest. It made her feel a little sick, but she clung to it as if her life depended on it, pushing away all other thoughts from her mind. Thinking of poor Elizabeth only made her feel all the more wretched, but at least she might be able to prevent her husband from making himself near as sick as the man in his care. “Come down for some supper, get some rest.”
Dwight shook his head.
“I cannot leave him,” he replied. “Perhaps if I were to eat here and then—”
“And then you shall make yourself ill, and what good would you be able to do him then?,” Caroline interjected pointedly, not quite able to keep a hint of frustration from her voice. “Why not let somebody else watch him through the night?”
Dwight did not look at her. There was a long, drawn-out pause before he spoke, filled only with the odd, faint murmur from George, just too quiet for her to make out. That ever-curious part of her yearned to know what he was saying, but the rest of her felt ashamed of the urge.
“He is...delirious,” Dwight finally spoke up after what felt like hours, but what she knew could only have been a matter of minutes. He spoke haltingly, as if the words were being drawn from him against his better judgement. “Cary visited earlier today, and he was...concerned—”
“Concerned?” Caroline echoed. She had expected to hear something about the man's condition being too delicate for him to be away from his side, that he did not dare leave his fate in the hands of another. This, however, was something entirely different.
Dwight nodded.
“About what might be overheard, or...revealed in his fevered state.”
He sent her a very pointed look, and tired and a little muddled though they all were, Caroline's mind was still sharp enough to put the pieces together with all possible speed. She thought of the notes she had seen on his desk, of the words “insanity” and “melancholia” springing out at her before he interrupted her, then of the confrontation at Trenwith, of the look of panic on Cary Warleggan's face as he had understood her meaning. She swallowed thickly.
“I see” she said.
Dwight glanced up at her.
“Then you see why it must be me that stays with him?” he asked her.
She thought back to his reaction when he had discovered her reading his notes. He had been so very angry, when he was usually so gentle and calm. Even when he had objected to her flippancy, back in the early days of their acquaintance, he had been measured in his disapproval. Then, however, there had been a sharpness, a defensiveness to him that she had never seen before. She could see well enough now, just as she had known then, beneath the hurt, that it had not been in defence of himself, but to protect his patient. It was the very same urge that had him wearing himself to the bone to protect that patient's confidence, and it was also, she was sure, the same urge that would lead him to be furious beyond compare should he ever discover what she had done.
“Let me sit with him” she blurted out, before she could stop herself.
Dwight blinked at her, surprised by the sudden outburst. The offer was hardly proper, but propriety, at least in private, had never been of great concern to her. Her gaze was drawn back to the figure on the bed, so very sick and frail. The more she stared, the more she thought she should do this. She needed to do this, for her own sake as much as her husband's.
“Let me stay with him through the night,” she repeated, her voice steadier, firmer than before. “There is nothing he might reveal to me that I do not already know.”
Even as she said it, she knew it was not quite true, and watching Dwight flinch a little at her words, his eyes dark in the firelight, only made her more sure of it. A glimpse of a piece of paper, after all, was hardly the same as being faced with the patient. She would endure it though. She owed him that much. Both of them.
“Caroline...”
“Please, Dwight,” she said, softly. “I...I should like to stay with him.”
The silence, heavy and loaded with things left unsaid, seemed to stretch out endlessly as Dwight stared up at her, weighing up the options in his mind. She met his gaze, unflinching and imploring, waiting for his answer.
“You must keep him cool,” he said eventually, getting up from the chair, the damp cloth which he had been using to mop his patient's forehead still clasped in his hand, and walking towards her on slightly unsteady legs. “If he wakes, make sure that he drinks. If he worsens—”
“Then I shall wake you” Caroline said. Reaching out, she took the cloth carefully from his hand. The tips of their fingers brushed against one another, so faint that in other circumstances she might barely have noticed it. As it was, however, the sensation shot through her, making her long for...oh, so many things as she met his tired gaze, for his warmth and kindness , without the half life she had been muddling through ever since their baby girl had slipped away, without the loneliness and this new horrid guilt at the thought of his trust in her—
“Thank you” he said, and despite his exhaustion, there was affection in his eyes as he pulled away. She half expected him to linger a little longer, but it was clear that, despite his best efforts, tiredness and hunger were beginning to overcome him, and so, with one last wan smile, he slipped past her and out into the corridor, closing the door behind him with a gentle click.
With him gone, her attention was drawn inexorably back to the patient she had been left in charge of. Letting out a shaky sigh, she gathered her skirts together with one hand, the damp cloth still clutched in the other, and lowered herself into the vacant chair beside the bed, tracing every shift, every change in the man's expression with her eyes. George was clearly dreaming, and of something highly unpleasant at that. It was strange, she thought, seeing him so open, so expressive. He had always been so stoic in all the time she had known him, the very same aristocratic features that were now twisted and crumpled in pain and distress carefully aloof and haughty, forbidding anybody to try and look beyond. She had made something of a sport of trying when they first met. She'd enjoyed teasing him, trying to rattle him into showing glimpses of something hiding underneath that prim composure, to have him be shocked and baffled and bemused by her boldness (bemused—that was how he had looked when she had last confronted him, as if he couldn't quite grasp her point, though she had barely noticed it amid Cary's barely concealed alarm at the time). They had been friends of sorts—in some peculiar, not quite easy way—until her marriage and her growing connections with the Poldarks had had them crossing paths less and less. But in all that time, with all that poking and prodding, what had she ever managed to truly discover? It made her wonder if she knew him at all. If any of them did.
“Hush, George, it is alright” she murmured as he let out another soft whimper, trying to still his restless shifting with a gentle hand against his shoulder. It was a lie if she had ever told one, a scornful part of her thought. Dipping the wet cloth in the basin of cool water at his bedside, she pressed it carefully to his forehead. His skin was burning underneath her palm.
You did this, the voice whispered. You did this, and now you must live with it.
“I'm sorry,” she murmured, for all she knew that he could not hear her. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry...”
***
It was early the next morning that Ross awoke to the light of the morning sun streaming in through the window of his bedchamber, too harsh and bright after the rain and storms of the previous day. With a groan, he threw an arm over his face in an attempt to shield his tightly shut eyes, a frown of discomfort marring his brow. The other hand quested blindly in search of Demelza, only to find the space beside him cold and unoccupied. His frown deepened. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he propped himself slowly up on his elbows, searching about the room for his wife. She was nowhere to be seen.
That in itself wasn't so unusual, he supposed. They were both early risers, with so much to do around Nampara and the mine to keep them occupied, not to mention a very lively son and daughter to look after. Demelza could well have gone to tend to the children, deciding to leave him to his rest after the past sleepless nights that had left him feeling worn to the bone. But after the discord there had been between them—and he knew it still lingered, buried beneath the urgency of George's situation, despite the truth behind his actions having come to light—her absence sat ill in his heart, no matter what his head might tell him.
With a groan, he pulled the sheets aside and got up from the bed, shivering slightly against the cool bite of the air as he dressed himself in his day clothes. He was just buttoning up his waistcoat and wondering what best to do that morning—he thought, perhaps, that he should relieve Caroline of her vigil at George's bedside; surely she would be more reasonable on the matter than her husband had been last night—when his attention was caught by the faint sounds of laughter coming from outside. Heading over to the window, he saw Demelza standing in the courtyard, hanging out the sheets, and close behind her, Jeremy and Clowance running about in circles, giggling and smiling. Well, that answers one question, at least, he thought. He felt a deep ache in his chest at the sight, and for a moment, he longed to head downstairs and join them. But...but they too had been affected by his deception and perhaps... Perhaps they would need a little more time before...
It took a monumental effort to tear himself away from the window and towards the door to the bedchamber, but he forced himself to nonetheless. He decided to forego his neckcloth—it wasn't as if there were anybody lurking about to accuse him of grave impropriety in his own home the moment a chance presented itself, and even if there were, he would not have paid them a lick of attention. Caroline would see him, of course, he considered as he made his way along the corridor to the room where George was resting, but she was hardly the sort of woman who was easily shocked, especially in regards to something so minor.
As it turned out, the lady in question was hardly in a position to judge him for his less than immaculate appearance, had she ever been inclined to do so at all. Of the two inhabitants of the room, it was definitely George who looked the worse for wear, but it seemed that Caroline had made a valiant effort to provide him with competition for the title. She was drawn and pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and several pale blonde curls tumbling out of her elegant knot as she stooped, head bowed, over the object of her vigil, a cool damp cloth pressed carefully to his forehead. Ross thought that she might have been whispering something to him when he opened the door, but she cut herself off abruptly as he stepped into the room, turning, startled, to face him. Her eyes, usually so bright and sparkling and full of wit, were worn and tired.
“How is he?” Ross asked. A small, laconic part of him wondered how often he would ask that question, and how often—if at all—that the answer would satisfy him, before this was all over.
The corners of Caroline's tightly pursed lips curved into an unhappy downturn, and she gave—without quite realising it, it seemed to him—the tiniest of shakes of her head.
“As far as I can tell, he doesn't seem worse than he was yesterday,” she said lowly, mindful to keep quiet. “He is sleeping at the moment.”
“Right.”
The word was murmured more to himself than to Caroline, so quiet that she would barely have been able to hear him had she been listening for it. Even had he wished her to take note of his answer, however, he was not sure she would have marked it. Her attention had already turned away from him and back towards her charge, and Ross could not help but follow the direction of her gaze towards the figure on the bed. George at least seemed still and quiet now, save for the slight shivers racking through his thin frame from the heat of the fever. By comparison to the gruelling sights of the day before, he seemed almost calm, settled, but Ross knew it would not last for long. Unbidden, the memory of Demelza battling the putrid throat swam to the front of his thoughts, of waiting, hoping for her to wake up better, only to spend hour upon nightmarish hour watching her toss and turn, too hot, caught in the grip of her own feverish imaginings. He swallowed.
“You should get some rest,” he said, suddenly. It occurred to him that Dwight would not have liked for his wife to wear herself out tending to his patient, and Caroline really did look exhausted. “You look—,” he floundered for a word that did not seem overly unflattering, for all he knew that Caroline would be unlikely to mind it, “—tired.”
That had a ghost of one of Caroline's usual wry smiles flitting across her face, but it was there and gone so quickly that, had he blinked, he might have missed it.
“It is no wonder you wooed Demelza so thoroughly with such charms as your disposal,” she said with an attempt at humour, but just like her smiles, the tiredness in her tone served only to blunt the edge of her wit. “Do I really look so frightful?”
Ross smiled a smile of his own, small and a little self-depreciating. Even worn and overwrought as she was, it was Caroline's particular talent to draw such feelings out of him.
“Get some rest, Caroline,” he repeated. “I shall sit with him for a while.”
She looked so tired that he'd no thought of her refusing, but the moment the words left his mouth, a decidedly odd look flickered across her face—something which might have been worry, or alarm—before she shook her head, lips pursed tight together, as if she were forcing back some ill thought out remark on the tip of her tongue.
“Dwight will want to sit with him,” she said. “You know how he is with his patients, especially when their condition is so severe. I doubt either of us could persuade him otherwise, and in any case, I think it would be best for our peace of mind as well as his to allow it. He will recognise any signs of his condition worsening far more readily than either you or I.”
“I—” There was nothing in her words that was untrue, per say, but there was some peculiar undertone in her voice that he could not put his finger on, but nonetheless made him wonder whether she was being entirely sincere, in aim if not in sentiment. He frowned. Surely he must be imagining such a thing, for what could Caroline possibly wish to hide in a statement such as that?
“Perhaps you might fetch him?,” Caroline said, her tone strangely pointed. Despite the inflection in her voice, it was not exactly a question. “I shall get some rest afterwards.”
There was part of him—the part that was wondering exactly why he was being chivvied out of the room on an errand when nobody had protested to him sitting with George before—that dearly wanted to protest, but the rest of him was not quite foolish enough to dare argue with a worn out Caroline, and so, with a brief nod, he backed out of the room and out into the corridor, striding off in search of Dwight. Nevertheless, he couldn't quite shake off the lingering sense of unease that the odd interaction had left him with. He tried to push it out of his mind—everyone was overwrought, and understandably so, with everything that had happened, so he supposed it would be natural that some of them would be acting a little strangely—but no matter how he tried, that nebulous disquiet would not leave him alone, itching at him like a gnat flying about his head that he longed to swat.
So bothersome were his thoughts that, by the time he reached the study, he was too tangled up in them to be mindful to be quiet. As such, the sight that greeted him when he swung the door open with a sharp bang was that of Dwight bolting upright from the makeshift bed they had set up for him, hair rumpled and a wild look of one pulled abruptly from the world of sleep in his eyes as he searched about for the cause of the disruption. His eyes falling on an apologetic and rather sheepish Ross in the doorway, he instantly relaxed, flopping back down on the mattress with a soft groan, passing a slightly shaking hand over forehead.
“You look terrible.” Though it was a poor substitute for an apology for waking him so rudely, the slight measure of tact that Ross had managed to employ with Caroline seemed to have eluded him when it came to her husband. Still, Dwight would have struggled to remain friends with him for long if he were inclined to balk at bluntness, and really, it was true. The man was fast on the way to regaining every inch of that unpleasant grey pallor that had come upon him after the surgery, and the shadows around his eyes were becoming so deep and dark that it seemed as if they were fast sinking into his skull.
“I slept ill last night” came the faint reply, slightly dazed from waking so suddenly.
“That doesn't surprise me. That thing is hardly comfortable” Ross said lightly, with a nod toward the bed, as if he did not know full well that if Dwight spent the night tossing and turning, it had little to do with the lumps in the mattress. It was hardly pleasant to sleep in the study, and his own memories of it from when he had been barred from their bedchamber by Demelza, after he had— But no. That made him think of Elizabeth, and of Valentine, and then of George and Dwight's strange accusation, almost as if he had known and—
“I have experienced far worse” Dwight said. It might have been wry had an odd, dark expression not flickered across his tired features as he made to sit up with a slight grimace. Ross' thoughts, which had fast been spiralling into deeply unwelcome territory, turned all of a sudden to sleeping on sodden earth in Virginia, ready to be set upon by both birds and beasts and enemy men. But perhaps his old friend were thinking of somewhere else, of lying on cold hard ground, surrounded by rats and wounded prisoners and horrors that, for all Dwight had never spoken of them in full, he could well imagine.
“Caroline asked me to fetch you,” he said, as much to distract himself from his own dark thoughts as anybody else. “I offered to watch over George whilst she rested, but she said you would want to sit with him.”
Dwight nodded.
“Yes, it would be best if I—” It were almost as if he were speaking to himself, but a glance at Ross and he stopped abruptly, shaking himself. “I think it best for me to stay with him as much as possible. He is in a...delicate state at the moment, and the slightest change, if not properly dealt with...”
He trailed off. Ross swallowed. That was not something he wanted to think about.
“Then surely it would be best for you to have help,” he returned, thinking of how haggard he looked, and how Demelza had complained of trying to persuade him to eat the night before. “You dealt with it alone for a fair portion of yesterday, even though the rest of us were available to you.”
“Cary was there.” Dwight replied, slightly muted. He was hunched over on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Ross scoffed. Perhaps sleep—or lack thereof—had addled his friend's wits. There would, he thought, be something decidedly at fault with his own character if a rational man could come to the conclusion that he was a worse presence at the bedside of a sick presence than Cary Warleggan.
“He was barely there,” he retorted, stepping fully into the room from where he had been lingering in the doorway. “He was here and gone so quick that he might as well not have come at all.”
And really, the man had hardly stayed long. If one of Ross' family had been shot, battling with fever and on the brink of death, it would have been all anyone could have done to pry him from their bedside, but Cary... He had barged into their home at one time, demanding to see his nephew and all in a rage that they had failed to inform him of his injury quick enough to his liking, and in another, he could not get away from the sight of him fast enough. Ross could barely understand it, and if that endeavour were to involve parsing the mind and soul of such a man for answers, he was quite happy to remain without.
“He had to look after Valentine and Ursula” Dwight said, his hands still over his eyes. Ross fought back another scoff.
“More pity to them” he muttered to himself. He was under no illusion that the man gave the slightest damn about his nephew's children. Indeed, many of the complaints he had heard from Valentine had been about his “horrid Uncle Cary” whom he wished would go back to Cardew as he had when his mama had still been alive. Having said that, by all accounts, Valentine gave as good as he got, and it gave Ross at least a little satisfaction to think of the sour old man being driven to distraction by the spirited child who may or may not be—
He thought he could hear something outside—some commotion, faint and muffled from the other side of the glass. Frowning, he strode over to the window, glancing out to see what was happening. He could just make out a flash of red and two small curly mops of hair just within the stretch of his vision—what he presumed was Demelza leading the two children into the house. Well, that wasn't so unusual. Even when in low spirits Jeremy and Clowance could be difficult to harangue into sitting to the table to eat, or to bathe, or to go to bed when expected should they feel they had better things to do. Letting out a sigh, Ross allowed his gaze to trail across the grounds before him, barely taking any of it in. Then he stopped. He froze. Beside the lone tree which grew a little way from the yard, there stood a man, dressed in black with a tricorn upon his head, and staring straight, unwaveringly, back at the house.
He had barely noticed the man before he heard the clattering of a door closing and the sound of alarmed voices in the hallway. Behind him, Dwight looked up, startled. A moment later, Demelza appeared in the doorway to the study in a whirlwind of red hair. Her beautiful face was white and afraid.
“Ross!,” she cried. “Have ye seen 'im?”
“The man outside?” Ross asked. Demelza nodded, and he saw Dwight tense up, suddenly alert, in the corner of his eye.
“I'm a-feared 'tis one of Merceron's men,” she said, panicked and breathless. “I saw th' same man from the townhouse when Ned were stayin' with us, an' I'm sure 'twere he tha' came 'ere fer Cecily too.”
Ross' eyes widened. He glanced back towards the shadowy figure beside the tree, so close to his family, to his wife and children. He could feel a familiar fury roaring into life inside him. How dare this man come here? Well, he would soon make him regret whatever nefarious plan he was thinking of concocting. He would.
“Ross!”
He barely realised that he was already heading for the door before he felt a firm hand place itself on his chest, stopping him in his tracks. Dwight had stood from the bed and had planted himself firmly in his way. Ross glared at him, but all he got in return was a stern stare that held a surprising amount of force for a man so tired and wan.
“Ross, please, do not act in haste” he said.
Ross scowled.
“If you think I shall allow one of that man's men to lurk about my house plotting God knows what—”
“I did not say that,” Dwight interrupted, and rather than the weary patience that he was used to hearing from his friend, there was a note of terseness in his voice that spoke of a man near his wit's end, and that had become all the more common since Ned had reappeared in their lives. “I understand your anger, and believe me, I sympathise. But I implore you to act sensibly. Hanson and Merceron are dangerous men—even more so now that they have backed themselves into a corner with their actions. A gentleman has been shot—”
Ross couldn't quite help it. He snorted. For a second, he could feel a familiar disdain rise in his chest, that which he had reserved for his worst enemy, who had clawed his way tooth and nail into the ranks of the gentry and stuck himself there like a barnacle to a rock. Then, the image of George crumpling to the ground, white and bloody, flashed before his eyes, and the sensation plummeted down just as quickly as it had risen, squirming uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach.
“A gentleman has been shot,” Dwight repeated, pointedly, and more than a little coldly, his eyes narrowed, and from his friend's disapproving expression, Ross thought that he must have guessed exactly where his thoughts had led. “George is a magistrate, a member of parliament, and a baronet. To attack such a man...it has put them in a very difficult position, and I fear that they will be all the more dangerous for it. You cannot afford to act rashly, not after what happened to Ned.”
Ross frowned.
“You think Ned to blame...” He began, but he could not quite finish the thought. Thinking of Ned and George in turn had doused the flames of his temper, and in its place came a strange feeling of sickness, a tight knot lodged in his gut. He swallowed thickly.
“Ned did not deserve what happened to him,” Dwight sighed. He looked away, his jaw clenched. “Nobody deserves that. But you cannot deny that he was reckless, and incautious, and that his conduct made it far easier for Hanson and Merceron to manipulate events in their favour than it ought to have been. I beg of you, Ross, be careful. For all you know, by acting in anger, you may be playing straight into their hands.”
Ross glanced down towards the floor, then to Demelza. Her face drawn and pale with worry, she had been watching them with a gaze so intense that it was almost painful. He met her wide, imploring blue eyes, questioning, and she gave him one small, barely perceptible nod.
“Jeremy and Clowance?” he asked her.
“With Geoffrey Charles.”
“Right.” Ross drew in a deep steadying breath, then stepped around Dwight, heading purposefully out towards the back door. “Right.”
The cold when he stepped out into the yard was biting against the bare skin of his forearms, but he paid it no mind as he strode, determined, across the frost-covered ground towards the old tree against which the dark figure was leaning, unmoving as he observed his approach with cold, dispassionate eyes. He was not a man of any particular remarkable features, he noted as he came to a stop before him. Sporting two deep-set pale blue eyes and hair which might at a passing glance have been either grey or mousy brown, he was the sort of figure one might encounter on the street and come away thinking very little on, if at all. An admirable trait if he were a spy of Merceron's, Ross supposed.
“Good morning, Captain Poldark” the man spoke. His voice, Ross thought, struck some chord of familiarity in him that his appearance didn't, but though he searched and searched his memory for a reason as to why, the answer eluded him. Despite this, the sound of it came accompanied by a deep sense of unease which he did not at all like—all the more for his being not quite able to identify the cause.
“Good morning, sir,” he replied tersely, mindful enough of Dwight's entreaties to reign in his temper enough to get his answers. “Might I ask why you are lingering outside my house? I trust that, had you some business with me, you would at least know to use the front door.”
The man smiled sharply, unfazed by Ross' rudeness. It reminded him of a wild dog bearing its teeth.
“I come bearing compliments,” he said, “from Mr Merceron.”
Ross' eyes widened. A sudden flash of memory came to him. That voice, a pain in his head, waking up in a dark hole and a figure far above him— No. He felt a sudden burst of anger uncoil in his chest, as if some great slumbering beast had awoken within him.
“You!,” he snarled. “It was you who threw me down the mine!”
Rather than being affected by the display of temper, the man simply raised one cool eyebrow at him from under the brim of his tricorn.
“Have you any proof of that?,” he returned smoothly. “In any case, it may well have served you better to stay there.”
Ross' eyes narrowed, fighting to get his temper under control. It was becoming clear very quickly that this man was dangerous, and that—having him so close to his family, his friends, even George, lying sick upstairs, so close to death—set his teeth on edge.
“And that is your opinion, is it?” he growled, folding his arms tight across his chest.
The man shrugged.
“Some may hold it” he replied indifferently.
Before he could quite stop himself, Ross let out a sound which was halfway between a scoff and a snort, a crooked smile entirely devoid of humour flashing across his lips as he shook his head in disbelief. He had lived long enough to know how that sort of game was played, but the sheer nerve of it never failed to amaze him.
“What do you want?” he asked, not caring about the bluntness in his tone. He was entirely too tired and overwrought to indulge in the man's denials and half-statements. He wanted to know what he was there for, and then he wanted him gone.
“I bring a message from my employer,” the man returned. If Ross' abruptness bothered him at all, he did not show it. “It would behove you to be careful, Captain Poldark. Your...involvement in the wounding of not one , but two respectable businessmen is unlikely to be looked upon favourably in the current climate, especially considering your known association with a traitor to the Crown.”
It took a moment for Ross to quite understand what the man was saying, and when he did, he could not suppress a snarl of outrage. He could not mean—? Surely he did not mean to imply that—? Not even Merceron and his foul brother would have the gall to pass off their own crime as his. He could not believe it. Not when he had witnesses at his side who could so easily disprove such a claim.
“So that is your ploy?,” he growled. “You may find it harder to spread such tall tales should Sir George wake to contradict you.”
The man smirked.
“If he wakes” he said.
It was Ross' first instinct, after several days of worrying and wondering and fearing the worst, to lose his temper, but there was something—perhaps the memory of Dwight's warning, or perhaps the strange expression on the man's face, one eyebrow raised as if he had made an enquiry and was waiting for an answer—that stilled his tongue. It occurred to him, suddenly, that there was no reason that this man's employer should be abreast of George's condition, and that any news on that front was information that Merceron would very much like to possess. Information, he realised, that he did not dare give him, unwittingly or no.
“Leave,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Now. Or I shall make you.”
He thought he saw something change in the man's expression—some flash of anger or frustration masked so swiftly he might have thought he had imagined it. Then the man's face twisted into a sneer, ugly and mocking, his eyes like two hard chips of granite set deep in his skull. Ross felt his hackles rise, but he stood his ground.
“Tell me, Captain,” the man said, and there was a decided edge to the coolness in his voice which had not been there before, “how old are your children?”
“My—?” Every part of him, every corner of his mind that had been dulled by the exhausting events of the past few days was instantly alert. Alarm and rage shot through him in equal measure, rising in him like the rush of the tide.
“Too young, I think,” the man continued, as if he were oblivious to the effects of his words, but the nasty glint in his eyes told Ross otherwise, “to be caught up in such matters. No doubt you should not like them to pay the price for their father's foolishness.”
Before he could stop himself, before he could even think, Ross' hands had shot out and grabbed thee man roughly by the fabric of his coat, pulling him in until they were nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball. There was a tiny part of him telling him that the man was trying to rile him, that he was likely provoking him so that he might be distracted from his true aim in coming here, but it was buried too deep beneath the hot fury that had overcome him. This man had come to his home, had threatened his family, and he had no intention of allowing that to pass unchallenged.
“If you harm them,” he snarled. “If you so much as touch a single hair on their heads—”
“I am just the messenger, sir” the man cut him off, coolly. He seemed infuriatingly unfazed by Ross' aggression. With an angry growl, he pushed the man away, feeling a flash of satisfaction upon seeing him stumble. The man sent him a sharp glare in return, straightening out the lapels of his coat with as much dignity as he could muster.
“In that case, sir,” Ross retorted with a sneer of his own, “you might send Mr Merceron and his brother a message from me. Take care to repeat it verbatim.”
And with that, before he had the chance to think better of it, he drew back his fist and punched the man square in the face.
