Web of Love (15 page)

The surgeon shook his head when he looked at Lord Eden. He removed the bandage gently enough and peered closely at the wound.

“Abscess forming,” he said, and shook his head again. “Well, we can't amputate this one, can we, ma'am? So we have no cause to quarrel.” He laughed heartily at his own joke. “Nasty fever. I'll have to bleed him.”

“Has he not lost enough blood?” she asked.

“Apparently not,” he said. “Or he wouldn't have such a raging fever. Here, you can hold the bowl for me.”

Lord Eden did indeed seem more restful after the bleeding was finished. But it was a rest of extreme weakness, Ellen thought. She had no time to worry about it. She had performed her task so unflinchingly, it appeared, that the surgeon soon sent for her from the other part of the house to take the bowl from a trembling maid's hands while he bled most of his patients there.

He would be back the next day if he could, he said as he left the house and hurried along to another. He would bleed those patients again and see how that arm was looking.

The boy was calling for her as she reached the doorway into her own rooms.

 

L
ORD
E
DEN CLUNG
to life. Sometimes it would have been easier to let go. Sometimes he wanted to claw at the heat and the pain, to climb outside them, to run away, to be free. Something in his chest felt as if it were swelling and swelling until it must burst and fling him in a thousand directions. And sometimes he forgot who he was and where he was and why he was there.

Only one thing kept him pinned to life. Only one person. Sometimes when he came to himself she was not there. He would try to close his eyes, to lie quietly until she came. Sometimes he lost himself again while he waited. Sometimes she came hurrying, a look of concern on her face, and he knew that he must have called out. Sometimes he could not remember who she was.

In fact, most of the time he could not remember who she was. He could not put a name to her face. But it did not matter. He was safe when she was there. He was at peace. Sometimes when he came back to himself she was sitting beside the bed sewing or holding his hand. And always smiling. Not with merriment. But with gentle affection, as if he were someone very special.

Was he special? To her? Who was she? He could not remember. But it did not matter.

The ceiling did not move down toward him when she was there. The furniture did not move about.

“Everything will stay still now,” she assured him, her cool fingers smoothing through his hair. “I am here. I am going to stay with you for a time.”

He could close his eyes and perhaps sleep for a while. If only someone would lift the great weight from his chest. Was it too heavy for her to remove? She was only a slender woman. It was hard for him to breathe with that weight on him. He was going to suffocate.

“I will wash you off with a cool cloth above and below the bandage,” she said, folding back the blanket. “That will help lessen the weight. Does that feel better?”

And it always did. The weight was still there—it must be too heavy for her—but some of the heat had gone. He thought he might sleep.

Sometimes there was a lamp burning in the room. It must be nighttime. He listened. There was no sound at all except for a clock ticking somewhere. She was asleep in the chair beside his bed, her head fallen awkwardly to the side. She should be lying in a bed. She must be tired. He was thirsty. But he must say nothing. She would jump up and fetch him a drink. But she was sleeping. He lay and watched her. He was comforted by her presence. Was it a live coal that was on his chest?

Sometimes he knew who she was. She was Madeline. She was telling him that he would be proud of her if he could only see her all day long nursing the wounded.

“And I haven't had a fit of the vapors even once, Dom,” she said. “Poor Lieutenant Penworth does not have the will to live, I think. But I will nurse him back to health despite himself. You have the will to live, Dom. I can see it. And you are going to win too. I know. Oh, I know, you horrid pestiliential man, you! How dare you put me through this! I hate you.”

He felt a grin, but there was too much effort involved in transferring it to his face.

Nursing what wounded?

Sometimes she wasn't Madeline. And he didn't always want her to be. She was more peaceful than Madeline. She never cried, as his sister had cried when raging against him. She soothed him. She fed him cold water and…What? Toast? And she came with the cooling cloths and the comforting words and the gentle hands. Even when she hurt his chest, he learned to grit his teeth and endure. For he always felt better afterward.

“I will be finished in a moment,” she would say quietly. “One minute more, and then you can rest again.”

And it was always true. He could trust her word. And everything stayed still around him when she was there.

“Put out the fire.”

“I will open the door wider,” she would say, “and bathe your forehead. You will feel cooler.”

“Take off some blankets.”

“I will fold it back to your waist,” she would say. “Is that better, my dear?”

“Can't you find someone to lift this weight off me?”

“I will bathe your shoulders and your arms with cool water,” she would say. “Perhaps that will help.”

“You are tired. Do you never sleep? Do I keep you up? Is it nighttime? You should go to bed.”

“I shall sit beside you here and rest,” she would say. “The chair is very comfortable. Don't worry about me, my dear. Try to sleep.”

He was on fire. It must be a red-hot coal. But he would not say anything to her. She was doing too much. Always busy. Always cheerful. Always smiling.

Who was she? He could not remember.

He clung to life for her. She made life bearable despite all. Despite the heat and the weight and the feeling that his chest must explode.

And sometimes there was Madeline.

But always there was her.

The surgeon bled him four times in ten days despite Ellen's tight-lipped disapproval. The fever raged and he weakened. He was almost constantly delirious. All he had eaten was toast dipped in weak tea.

After two weeks the abscess burst and the matter within it flowed. Ellen was with him at the time. She called to one of the servants in the house and sent him running for the surgeon—if only the man could be found. And she bit hard on her lower lip as she cleaned the wound. He was moaning with each breath.

It had happened at last. His chest had exploded, and the pain knifed and knifed at him, robbing him of breath and of all power to think or even to see.

But the weight was lifting too. She was bending over him, and she was taking the weight away. And she must have put out the fire and taken off all the smothering blankets. He felt light and cool, pinned in place only by the searing pain.

“Mrs. Simpson?” he said.

She lifted her head sharply from what she was doing and looked into his face. “You know me?” she said. She put a cool hand against his brow. “The fever has broken. It has gone with the abscess.”

“I was wounded,” he said. “How did I get here?”

“You rode here,” she said. “With some help.”

“How long ago?” Where had he been? The last thing he could remember was trudging along a muddy road with his men. There had been jokes about Hyde Park soldiers.

“You have been here for two weeks,” she said.

Two weeks? The pain was like a knife. But such a lightness. He could breathe despite the pain.

“There was a weight,” he said, “on my chest.”

“It has gone,” she said. “You will feel better now.”

“Am I going to die?” he asked. He could not keep his eyes open. He was falling into deep soft darkness. He did not hear her reply, but her hand on his brow again was part of the softness. It was not a darkness to be feared.

“Hm,” the surgeon said, probing around the area of the burst abscess with a finger that Ellen would dearly have liked to dip in her washtub. “He is a fortunate young man, I would say. It looks as if he might live after all. And the fever has gone. It is the fever that has been the great killer. So many good men in the last two weeks, ma'am.”

“He will live?” she asked.

He shrugged. “He is young,” he said, “and big and strong. He will live if he wants to live, I would reckon. Not that I am God, ma'am. I have seen worse cases recover. Keep him on toast and tea. I will come back tomorrow and bleed him again.”

Ellen swallowed. “Is he unconscious or sleeping?” she asked.

The surgeon pursed his lips. “Perhaps a bit of both,” he said. “Men don't sleep properly when they have the fever. He will probably be dead to the world for a few days. Figuratively speaking, we hope.” He laughed heartily so that Ellen glanced anxiously down at Lord Eden.

“Yes, he needs sleep,” she said.

“And so do you, ma'am, if you don't mind my saying so,” the doctor said, his manner suddenly kindly. “And you won in the case of the boy, didn't you? A nasty blow, that, to my professional pride, you know. So the lad will march home with two arms. What happened to him?”

“Someone came for him,” she said. “A lieutenant in his regiment. Apparently the boy had been a stable lad at his father's house. The lieutenant was taking him back home again. He had been wounded too. A nice happy ending, was it not?”

“Aye,” the surgeon said with a sigh. “There have been precious few of those in these last days, ma'am. Good day to you. I'll call again tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She felt bone-weary. She leaned over Lord Eden to observe that he was still in a sleep so deep that it frightened her. And then she went to fetch blankets and a pillow from another room and curled up on the floor beside his bed. She was asleep long before her body could make any protest against the hardness of the floor.

 

T
HE
E
ARL OF
A
MBERLEY
met his wife and children and his mother in the hallway of his London home. They were returning from an early-afternoon walk in Hyde Park.

“Well, tiger,” he said, scooping up his son, who hurtled toward him across the tiled floor, “did you have a good walk?”

“Horsies!” the child cried excitedly.

“Were there?” his father said. “Lots of them? And how is my princess? A big smile for Papa again? I am in favor these days. And here is Nanny Rey to take you both back to the nursery. Are you sleepy, tiger? No, that was a silly question, wasn't it? Why would a big man like you be sleepy in the middle of the day? I tell you what. You pretend to sleep for Nanny while she rocks Caroline. See how long you can keep up the game. All right?”

The child giggled and squirmed to be put down. He was soon laboriously climbing the stairs ahead of his nanny and the baby.

Lord Amberley turned to his wife and his mother with a smile. The latter was looking thin and drawn, he noticed not for the first time in the month since he had been home. And even Alex had lost some of her bloom.

“Would you like to step into the library for a moment?” he said. “Was the park crowded?”

The two women exchanged glances as they followed him across the hall to the library. Neither answered his question. Edmund only ever smiled like that when he was troubled.

“Dominic?” the dowager Countess of Amberley asked as a footman closed the door behind them.

“Sit down, Mama,” the earl said quietly. “I have just had a letter from Madeline. It was written three weeks ago, if you would believe. Dominic is in Brussels. He has a quite severe chest wound and broken ribs and was in a high fever when she wrote.”

The countess crossed the room to his side and laid a hand on his arm.

“So he is not on his way to Paris with the rest of the army,” the dowager said brightly. “And we have been wrong to blame him for being thoughtless and not writing.”

“And Madeline's silence is explained too,” her daughter-in-law said. “Everything has been chaos. She must have written immediately. So she is with him, Edmund?”

“Apparently not,” he said. “He is at the Rue de la Montagne with Mrs. Simpson. Madeline cannot leave Lady Andrea's. It seems the house has been turned into a hospital, and Madeline is being rushed off her feet.”

“But he is in good hands,” the countess said. “You would like her, Mama. She is quite charming and very calm and sensible. Did Madeline say if Captain Simpson is well, Edmund?”

“Killed, I am afraid,” he said.

“Oh.” His wife looked, stricken, up into his face. “How dreadful. They were so devoted.”

The dowager countess rose restlessly on her feet. “The news is three weeks old, Edmund?” she said. “And he was badly hurt. And fevered. The news is so old.”

“Will you go to him, Edmund?” his wife asked. “Oh, I wish now that I had insisted that you stay.”

“The chances are that he is better by now and on his way home,” the earl said, covering her hand with his own. “But, yes, I think I will go, my love, if you will not mind being left.”

“Foolish!” she said.

“I am going too,” the older lady said, her voice trembling quite noticeably. “I should have gone earlier in the spring and stayed. It just seemed that if I remained in the sanity of London, everything would be all right. You must take me to Brussels, Edmund.”

“It is a long and tiring journey to make just to find that perhaps he has gone already, Mama,” the earl said.

“Gone!” she said. “But he is my boy, Edmund. My son. I am going to him even if I have to go alone. I must go home immediately to get ready.”

The earl crossed the room to her and put an arm firmly about her shoulders. “We will leave in the morning, Mama,” he said. “You and I together. There will be plenty of time to have your bags packed. I shall order the carriage in a little while to take you home. But first you must sit down and have tea with us. You see? Alex has rung the bell for it already. And that is an order from the head of the family, my dear.”