Free My Sweet Folly by Laura Kinsale

recognized and some that he didn’t. Phillippa had been there—but Phillippa was dead. She had murdered his dog; someone whose face he could not see had held Folie’s letters over a fire and threatened to kill her.
    He leaned his head into his hands. Even at his most rational, he was not certain what had been real and what delusion. It was all dream-like, horrific. He did not even know how he had gotten out of Delhi to the coast.
    On the ship he had been safe and sober. He thought he had escaped to England, to sanity—but at Solinger, Phillippa and distraction had found him again.
    No doubt demons preferred the overland route, he thought blackly.
    And now his father. He was certain it had been his father’s voice. He reached abruptly for the bell rope and rang it.
    After several long minutes, he rang it again. This time he got an answer, a breathless footman, his coat pocket half torn away. “Beg pardon, sir!” he said. “We just had to give old Sparkett the heave; he’d somehow got himself all the way inside the front hall! Mr. Lander’s on his way up directly to speak to you.”
    “Sparkett?” Robert asked warily.
    “He’s harmless, sir,” the pink-cheeked servant confided. “Has spells, you know.”  
    “You know him?”
    “Oh, aye, he’s been on the village charity since me mother was a girl. Mad as a March hare, she always says, and feeds him the odd potato pie. We don’t like to handle him rough, sir, but in his bad spells there’s not much else can be done.”
    “You are certain it was him?” Robert asked sharply.
    The young man gave a shrug and slight laugh. “Oh, aye, sir, I’d never mistake old Sparkett! Known him my life long.”
    Relief and mortification surged inside Robert, bleeding into an unreasoning anger. He held it checked, turning away to the window. “He must be kept off the grounds. He’ll frighten the ladies.”
    “Aye, sir!” the footman agreed vigorously. At a scratch on the door, he added, “That’ll be Mr. Lander.”
    Robert scowled. “Let him in,” he said coldly.
    He turned back as the butler was dismissing his subordinate with a jerk of the chin. The door closed.
    “You’re to see to the security of the place!” Robert took a quick step toward Lander, and the butler almost imperceptibly drew himself up and back.
    “I beg your pardon for this incident, Mr. Cambourne!” he said tightly. “It will not happen again, you have my word.”
    “My God, this Sparkett devil was inside the door.” Robert stood still, willing the anger into coolness, into control.
    Lander watched him; they faced one another like vigilant mongrels.
    “Do you understand the danger?” Robert demanded. “No one is to come into the grounds, no one is to come through the gates. No one!”
    Lander’s jaw was stiff. “Perhaps if you would give me a fixed idea of the nature of this danger, sir.”
    Robert glared at him. He turned suddenly away. “It is not a fixed danger,” he exclaimed. “You must watch for it from any quarter!”
    “But you expect someone to attempt the grounds, Mr. Cambourne?”
    “I am not—” He swung back again. “I don’t know.” Lander gave him a steady look, a look that filled Robert with shame and fury. “Just do the job I employed you to do,” he exclaimed in a low voice. “Watch!”
    “Yes, sir,” Lander said.
     

     
    Robert wanted to warn Folie to take care, even here under his protection. But he could no more explain to her what to fear than he could to his servants. He should not have brought her here at all; he saw that now. What use was his protection? He himself was the danger. Lunatic—he had thought for a while that he was sane, that in England all was well, that he could bring her near—then just as she had arrived, he had fallen again into this abyss.
    He should send her away. If there was a real menace, he had only brought her to the center of it. He must tell her to go. Already he had avoided her for days, avoided food and drunk