Free The Frost Fair by Elizabeth Mansfield Page A

want to drink anything .”
    â€œDo what the lad tells ye,” Mrs. Rhys urged. “It’s only a bit o’ laudanum, I expect.”
    â€œI’ve been doing what ‘the lad’ tells me all night, ” she said sourly. Then, looking at him questioningly, she asked, “ Is it laudanum?”
    â€œYes, merely enough for a mild, sedative effect. Try, just once, to do as I ask without argumentation. The night will be very long and painful for you if you don’t.”
    With ill grace, she accepted the glass from his hand and began to sip. He and Mrs. Rhys immediately turned then attention to her ankle. Mrs. Rhys turned back the comforter just enough to reveal the injury and lifted the leg to her lap again. Sir Geoffrey, with remarkable gentleness, began to wind the bandages around the bruise.
    By the time the job was done, the glass was empty and Meg was becoming pleasantly drowsy. The sharpness of the pain seemed considerably diminished, her vision was fuzzy, and her thoughts seemed unfocused and disjointed. The goodnight she uttered in response to theirs sounded drunkenly indistinct to her ears, and when the door closed behind them, she snuggled down into the pillows feeling whoozily content.
    Just before slipping into sleep, she found herself puzzling over the enigma of the strange females in the household and her even stranger host. Sir Geoffrey Carrier. He was completely odious—even in her present stupor, she was sure of that. He’d proven himself to be arrogant, disdainful, insolent and ungenerous. Yet during these last few minutes, he’d seemed quite different. Was it only the effect of the laudanum on her brain … or was the fellow, somewhere deep beneath the surface, actually kind? No , she thought before sleep enveloped her. No . Sir Geoffrey the Ungallant, kind? Impossible !

Chapter Six
    By the next afternoon she’d decided it must have been the laudanum—there was nothing kind about the man at all. The evidence had piled up by that time to prove that Sir Geoffrey Carrier was indeed the blackguard he’d seemed from the first. And this time the evidence came from his own family.
    The day had begun with the discouraging news (from a housemaid who’d come in to open the draperies) that the snow was still falling. There would be no visit from the doctor today, for the snow had considerably deepened during the night and the wind had whipped it into sizeable drifts. So much for Meg’s expectation that the mild autumn weather they’d experienced a day earlier would soon reassert itself. Winter had evidently decided to come early and to settle in to stay.
    Before she’d shaken herself fully awake, her aunt had tiptoed in. “Are you awake, dearest?” she’d asked timidly.
    â€œYes, love, do come in,” Meg greeted her, sitting up in stiff painfulness and trying to smile with sincerity.
    Isabel didn’t look much refreshed from her night’s sleep. Her wiry grey hair had been neatly brushed into a tight bun at the back of her head, and her traveling dress had been freshly pressed, but the color had not returned to her cheeks and her eyes were still underlined with weariness. Nevertheless, she perched on the bed beside her niece cheerily and examined her closely. “I hope I didn’t waken you. Are you feeling any better this morning?”
    â€œMuch better, Aunt Bel, and full of contrition for having embroiled you in so disastrous an adventure.”
    â€œOh, pooh, don’t trouble yourself about that, my dear. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve suffered an injury, I would be quite enjoying myself.”
    â€œEnjoying yourself? You can’t mean it! Marooned by an intense and unseasonal snowstorm in this great barn of a castle with only a crippled niece and a most peculiar family for company, and you call that enjoyment? ”
    â€œI can’t say I’m enjoying the fact that my niece is