A Wicked Pursuit (7 page)

“You’ve been bled, my lord, that is all,” Sir Randolph said with maddening calm. He held Harry’s arm before him so he could see the fresh wound from the knife and the bloodstained linen wrapped over it. “We wish to bring the fever down.”

“That is all, that is all,” Harry repeated darkly. “What of my leg, eh? What have you done to it?”

“Your leg remains in a perilous state, my lord,” Sir Randolph said, “though it is my every intention to preserve it, despite the increase of morbid matter around the break, which has brought on your fever. It is my belief that a course of bleeding will serve to correct the humors and restore you to health.”

“Mumbo jumbo, mumbo jumbo,” Harry muttered, shifting restlessly. The motion made his leg throb with pain, trapped as it was in the vise-like splint combined with the fracture-box: a good sign, for at least it meant his leg was still there, and the doctor wasn’t lying.

“I assure you, my lord, that what sounds like nonsense to you is the very key to your restoration,” Sir Randolph said. “You must trust me to do what is best for you.”

“Then open a window, Peterson, so I might breathe,” Harry said, impatiently shoving at the sheets and counterpane. “It’s hot as blazes in this room.”

“That is the fever, my lord,” Sir Randolph said as the nurse pulled the covers back over him. “The air from an open window could be fatal to you in your present state.”

Exhausted and frustrated, Harry stared up at the bed’s pleated canopy overhead, watching it spin before his eyes like a Catherine wheel. It made his head ache, yet he couldn’t force himself to look away.

Where the devil was Miss Augusta, anyway? She could make this infernal bed stop spinning. Why wasn’t she here?

“Here, my lord, this will help ease your discomfort,” Mrs. Patton said, pressing a warm, damp cloth over his eyes.

“The hell it will.” He reached up and snatched the cloth away. “Where’s Miss Augusta?”

Sir Randolph and the nurse exchanged glances in a way that did nothing to reassure Harry.

“Miss Augusta is not here, my lord,” Sir Randolph said carefully. “I’ve told you before that this is not the proper place for an unmarried lady—”

“When have you told me?” Harry demanded.

“Several times, my lord,” Sir Randolph said. “While this is the fourth day since your fall, the delirium of the fever may have disturbed your, ah, judgment.”

Four days
, thought Harry with increasing despair. That shocked him. It was bad enough that he felt weak as a puling baby and as helpless as one, too. His leg throbbed and his head ached and his entire body felt on fire. Could his life truly be in the danger that Peterson and the others claimed?

“Send for her,” he said wearily. “Now.”

“Perhaps it is rather Miss Wetherby you wish to see, my lord?” Sir Randolph asked delicately, as if Harry were too stupid to know the difference between the sisters.

“No,” he said bluntly. The last thing he wished was for Julia to see him in this ruinous state. It wouldn’t matter to Augusta, and he wouldn’t care even if it did. She was his lucky angel, her touch like soothing magic, and if he ever needed luck, good luck, it was now. “Miss Augusta.”

Again there was that ominous exchange of glances among Sir Randolph, his assistant, and Mrs. Patton. Did they think he was blind as well as ill?

“My lord,” Sir Randolph began again. “I do not believe it is appropriate for—”

“Now,”
Harry ordered, mustering what little strength he still possessed to sound like his customary, forceful self.

Sir Randolph hesitated, his lips pressed tightly together to show his disapproval. Then he nodded.

“Very well, my lord,” he said, gesturing to a footman near the door. “I shall respectfully request that Miss Augusta join us, although I cannot guarantee that she will come.”

Harry sank back against the pillows and closed his eyes. She’d come to him. He didn’t doubt that for an instant. If it had been up to her alone, he felt certain she would have been here all along. All those nightmares where she’d left him—they were because Peterson and the others had kept her away.

He must have drifted off again, because he awoke to the sound of her voice, and then she was sitting in the chair beside his bed, exactly where she belonged.

“Good day, my lord,” she said, leaning close with a rustling
shush
of silk. “How are you?”

She had newly returned from somewhere, and it gratified him to realize she’d come directly to him. She wore a silk gown splashed with flowers beneath a gauzy white perline, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with silk flowers. It was all pretty and fresh and somehow rather innocent, and while she didn’t dress with the same provocative French flair that her sister did, he would never have mistaken her for a servant if she’d dressed like this in the first place.

He ignored her question regarding his health, which he thought was patently obvious. Instead he asked one of his own, and one he wished the answer to. “Where have you been?”

She hesitated just long enough for him to know for certain that she hadn’t stayed away from choice, but had been excluded.

“I’ve been to church, my lord,” she said, pulling off her kidskin gloves. “We all have. It’s Sunday.”

She smelled of new-cut grass and sunshine and green meadows, and at once he’d a pleasing image of her walking purposefully across a field in her flowered gown, her Book of Common Prayer clasped in her hand.

“Did you pray for me, Miss Augusta?” he asked, unable to keep from teasing her, no matter how ill he might be. “For my wicked old soul?”

“You were included in the minister’s list of those who were ill or infirm and in need of the congregation’s prayers, yes,” she said, deftly avoiding any reference to his wickedness. She lay her palm across his forehead, her hand refreshingly cool. “Oh, my, you are very warm.”

“It is as I said, Miss Augusta,” Sir Randolph intoned. “The fever has taken his lordship firmly into its grip, and we are taking the most aggressive course to combat it.”

“You’ve carved his lordship’s arms to bits with bleeding, I see,” she said, more tartly than Harry would have expected. “It’s a wonder he has any blood left in him to be feverish.”

“Miss Augusta,” Sir Randolph said sternly. “I assure you that I am treating his lordship according to the latest and most considered beliefs of the learned medical profession.”

“I’ve no doubt that you are, Sir Randolph,” she said, smiling sweetly as she turned back to Harry.

“Are you thirsty, my lord?” she asked softly. “Your lips are so dry.”

Automatically Harry licked his lips, which were in fact parched and cracked, most likely from the fever, and tried to swallow. “I am wickedly thirsty, yes.”

“If you are thirsty, then you must drink,” she said firmly, rising to go for the water herself.

“I must object, Miss Augusta,” Sir Randolph said sternly. “It is my belief that the sure way to deplete a fever is through vigorous bleeding and withholding excessive liquids, the better to draw away the morbid humors. The canary in which the laudanum is mixed is more than sufficient to supply his lordship’s base needs, and more fortifying than mere water as well.”

“Yet surely a patient’s comfort must be paramount to his recovery, Sir Randolph, mustn’t it?” she asked, pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on the near table. “The ancient monks who built their abbey here chose this spot for the purity of the water rising from a deep spring, and our water continues to this day to be famously restorative. I cannot help but think that his lordship might benefit from it as well.”

Harry agreed. The more she spoke of this miraculous water, the more thirsty he became, and he longingly watched the water splashing into the glass in her hand.

But Sir Randolph was not happy with her, not at all. “Miss Augusta,” he began irritably. “Miss Augusta, I must ask you not to interfere with the treatment of my patient, and I—”

“Damnation, Peterson, I am dry as the Sahara,” Harry interrupted, “and I want the water.”

Sir Randolph shook his head. “My lord, I cannot condone this, not when you are in such a delicate and perilous state.”

“I can,” Harry said. “And I will have the water.”

“My lord,” Sir Randolph said. “I have undertaken your care because of the acquaintance I have for His Grace your father, and if anything should go awry because of—”

“I’ll answer for my father,” Harry said, “and explain to him, too, if necessary. Miss Augusta, the water.”

Sir Randolph nodded curtly, admitting defeat, or at least admitting that the Duke of Breconridge would be more inclined to take the word of his son than that of his physician.

Gus didn’t gloat, but simply brought the glass around the bed to Harry. He struggled to sit up, mortified that he was too weak to do so. Without hesitation she slipped her arm around his shoulders to help him upright, then tipped the glass against his lips.

“There, my lord,” she murmured. “Slowly, now. I won’t have you drown and prove me wrong.”

She didn’t need to caution him. As thirsty as he was, he meant to take his time so that he had could have her close like this, her arm so gentle around his shoulders that he could almost pretend it was an embrace rather than a necessary support. Beneath the slanting brim of her flowered hat, her round face was solemn, concentrating on his swallowing.

The sheer foolishness of that hat with its jaunty pink silk blossoms cheered him enormously, a bit of frivolity in his present grim circumstances. He could see her freckles, too, scattered across her full cheeks and over the bridge of her nose like dappled sunshine. He’d never thought of grown women having freckles; he supposed other ladies must cover them with powder, yet apparently Miss Augusta didn’t bother, or care. He was glad she didn’t.

He held her gaze after he was done, long enough that her cheeks pinked and she quickly looked away.

“That’s enough for now,” she said, beginning to lower him back against the pillows.

“Excuse me, Miss Augusta,” Mrs. Patton said with the usual medical sternness, “but it’s time for his lordship’s draft.”

She stepped forward with the now-familiar invalid’s dose of canary ready in her hand. She’d thoroughly ruined canary for him forever. It wasn’t just the association with pain and laudanum, but her officious manner as she loomed over him, like some overbearing female raptor in an apron swooping down upon him. Having her appear now in place of Miss Augusta was worse still, and he realized he’d had enough. He’d spoken up against Sir Randolph. Now it was Mrs. Patton’s turn.

“Give the glass to Miss Augusta,” he said. “I’d rather take it from her.”

Mrs. Patton scowled and looked to Sir Randolph for reinforcement—reinforcement that did not come.

“Please, if Miss Augusta would be so kind as to assist,” Sir Randolph said, swallowing his pride for the sake of his fashionable practice. “While my first concern is for his lordship’s health, I wouldn’t wish to offend either his lordship or His Grace. I desire only to be amenable to his lordship’s wishes.”

Reluctantly Mrs. Patton handed the cup with the draft to Gus. Harry had won again, but even this minor drama had exhausted him, and laudanum or not, he was already struggling to stay awake.

“Wait,” he said, shaking his head as Gus held the draft for him. He reached for her free hand, linking his fingers into hers so she couldn’t escape.

“I—I want you to know that I am happy you are here,” he said, exhaustion turning the words clumsy on his tongue. Damnation, why did this keep happening when he’d important things to tell her? Why couldn’t he focus? “I’m—I’m glad you came back, and I do not wish you to leave.
There
.”

She smiled, a quirky, tight-lipped little smile. “There, my lord?”

Could she really be teasing him as he’d teased her earlier, or were his fever-addled wits playing tricks on him?

“Here,” he said as firmly as he could. “Stay here. You bring me luck, and I—I need luck.”

“Then luck you shall have,” she said softly, holding the glass to his lips. “Because when you wake again, I’ll be here still.”

“Miss Augusta?”

Gus hung on the edge of her dreams, not yet ready to wake, and burrowed back against the pillow and away from the gentleman’s voice that was rudely trying to wake her.

“Miss Augusta, if you please,” the gentleman said again, and reluctantly Gus turned toward him and opened her eyes. It took her a moment to remember that she wasn’t in her own bed, but sleeping curled beneath a shawl in an old-fashioned wing chair that had been pulled beside Lord Hargreave’s bed. The gentleman’s voice belonged to his lordship’s surgeon, and when she opened her eyes Sir Randolph’s long, serious face beneath his elaborate wig was gazing directly at her.

“Miss Augusta,” he said softly as soon as he was certain she was awake. “There has been a change in Lord Hargreave’s condition, and I thought you would wish to know of it.”

Her heart racing, Gus threw off the shawl at once and rushed to the side of the bed. He’d been so sick already that she dreaded the thought of him having worsened.

But as soon as she leaned over him, she saw that the change was only for the good. His face was relaxed, his forehead dry and no longer sheened with sweat, his breathing deep and regular.

“His lordship’s fever broke during the night,” Sir Randolph said, keeping his voice low. “I believe when he wakes and we dress his leg, we shall see an improvement there as well.”

“Do you believe him out of danger?” she asked anxiously.

Sir Randolph smiled. “If his lordship continues in this state through this evening, then I will be willing to pronounce him so, Miss Augusta.”

Gus pressed her hands to her cheeks, overwhelmed. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been fearing the worst until this moment. The earl wasn’t out of danger yet, and he’d have a long recovery before he could hope to regain even a fraction of the use of his leg. He’d lost a great deal of weight while he’d been ill, and his face beneath his dark beard was gaunt, his cheeks hollowed. Gus suspected he’d lost much of his strength with it, more than he likely realized. In her experience, gentlemen made particularly poor convalescents, and she pitied whomever would be overseeing the earl for the next months.