Douglas: Lord of Heartache (15 page)

Douglas did not argue, it being exclusively Guinevere’s decision whether to seek reinforcements from family. “Perhaps a note would be appropriate?”

“If you wouldn’t mind writing one?” She sank into the rocker, weariness in her every gesture.

“Certainly.” Douglas crossed the room to stand before her chair, wanting nothing so much as to scoop her into his arms and carry her to her own bed, there to stand guard over her while she enjoyed some decent rest. “I can post a note for you, and I shall at least find the local physician and some more of that tea. Is there anything else I can do, Guinevere?”

She rose and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Not for now, but Douglas, I cannot thank you enough.”

“No thanks are needed. I would not see you distressed for anything.”

“Nor I, you,” she said, stepping back and looking pleased with the exchange—daft woman. “When you’ve dispatched your errands, you’ll get some sleep, please?”

Douglas did not reply other than to kiss her cheek before he left her to entertain her sick, grouchy, bored child for several more hours, may God have mercy upon his dear Guinevere.

Outside, the weather went from sunny, if cold, to wet, windy, and bitingly chilly as the morning progressed. Riding fourteen miles round-trip to the nearest apothecary was not a pleasant undertaking, but Douglas at least returned with a goodly supply of the willow bark tea. He’d also learned on his travels that the area’s only physician had expired the year before, and the local herbalist was herself ill with the flu.

He’d posted a short note to Fairly, informing him of Rose’s impaired health, and one to Greymoor, reiterating that news and updating him regarding the steward’s continued absence.

By the time he’d completed his errands, Douglas admitted to both exhaustion and gnawing hunger, but when he returned to Linden, he went directly to the nursery, not bothering even to change out of his wet riding attire.

“Hullo, Cousin Douglas.” Rose smiled up at him from the daybed, the picture of pale innocence as she played cards with Hester.

Douglas bowed slightly. “Miss Hester. Miss Rose. How are you feeling?”

“I’m sick. Hester has to play with me ’cause I have the flu.”

“I
get
to play with you,” Hester interjected. “Ma’am went to her rooms, your lordship.”

He left the nursery and rapped softly on Guinevere’s door but received no reply; when he peeked past the door, she was nowhere to be seen. He reined in his mild sense of distress and decided to change his clothes before searching for her.

Douglas sailed into his own room, knowing he was running on false energy, and had his cravat off and one cuff undone before he noticed his bed was rumpled.

His bed was, in fact, occupied.

Guinevere lay curled on her side, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling in the breathing pattern of sleep. Her eyes looked bruised and her face pale, but to Douglas, the sight of her at peace in his bed was more dear than words could say. He let her slumber on, stripping off his wet clothing as quietly as he could. Shrugging into a dressing gown, he sat in the chair by his hearth and beheld the woman in his bed.

He could not trust himself to simply cuddle up with her now. Despite fatigue and misgivings of the spirit, his desire for her was unabated, and his self-restraint not improved by exhaustion. Something had passed between them during the night, something precious. Seeing Guinevere with her child, seeing the concern and bottomless wealth of love she bore for that little girl had left Douglas… defenseless, vulnerable somehow, and beyond sense.

He had told himself and even told Guinevere that what he sought with her was a brief, exclusive, intimate affair, but what he’d done was fall in love with a woman whom he could never deserve—one who wasn’t interested in marrying him, besides.

So, this is love.

Love was the farthest emotion from duty, he mused, scooping her up against his chest. No one saw him carry her to her room, tuck her into bed, and kiss her cheek, but she stirred when he would have left her in peace.

“Douglas?”

He propped a hip on the bed, ready to tie her to the posts if she tried to rise. “Here, love.”

“Why didn’t you join me?” She was confused, half-asleep, and not pleased with him.

He brushed her hair back off her brow, unable to keep his hand to himself. “I couldn’t trust myself not to fall asleep beside you and risk us being discovered in the same bed when we failed to appear for dinner or at Rose’s bedside.”

“Go sleep,” she said, caressing his jaw. “Bring me your pillow first.”

“My pillow? If you wish.” He’d bring her his heart on a silver tray if she’d ask it of him.

“I want the scent of you on me as I sleep,” she murmured as she closed her eyes.

What an erotic, revealing thing to say. Douglas retrieved the top pillow from his bed and brought it to his lady. He traded it for her top pillow, kissed her cheek, and sought his own bed.

As he drifted off, he allowed that Guinevere had been right: with her pillow beneath his head, the scent of her was on him as he slept.

How
lovely. How very lovely.

***

“This is worse than last night,” Douglas said as Guinevere poured more bitter tea down Rose’s throat. Rose was apparently too uncomfortable and hot to protest, merely lying against her mother’s chest, weak and whimpery. “What can I do?”

“She has to fight through it, Douglas. We’re doing what we can to keep her safe and comfortable, and she’s sturdy.”

She
is
not
, Douglas wanted to shout back.
She’s only five years old and tiny and dear and too sick.
But even in his fatigue, frustration, and inexperience, he knew panic and tantrums would help neither Guinevere nor Rose.

Guinevere sang lullabies as she rocked her child, and when her voice fell silent, Douglas offered a half-dozen verses of “O Waly, Waly” in a quiet baritone.

When he finished, Guinevere gave him another soft, tired smile. “What a lovely voice you have.”

As if a lullaby could cure the flu? “I enjoy music, though in my family, the arts were generally considered unmanly.”

“Did you at least sing in the chorus at university?”

“No, I did not. Because I was only eleven months younger than Herbert, he was there for the first two years of my matriculation. And by the final year, I was more focused on my studies than on any social activities.”

“No wenching and gambling for you?”

If only Rose were well, Douglas might use this exchange to ask her mother some questions of his own. “No gambling. I did make the acquaintance of a rather sweet, tolerant tavern maid named Dorcas in my final year. When she realized how little experience I had, she took it upon herself to educate me lest I go out into the world unprepared.”

“And I’ll just bet you hated attending her classes.” This smile was knowing, female, and every bit as precious to Douglas as the softer versions.

They put Rose to bed then, and Guinevere repaired to the daybed, but Douglas could barely allow her an hour’s rest before he was shaking her shoulder again.

“Guinevere?”

“I’m awake.” She sounded anything but, though her eyes were open.

“Rose is uncomfortable, and she feels very hot to me.”

He’d avoided touching the child since she’d taken ill, but a brush of the back of his hand against her forehead had told him the fever was spiking again.

“I’ll need a basin, rags, and cool water.” Guinevere slipped on a pair of Douglas’s wool stockings as she issued orders. “Some towels as well, and I’ll need you to lift Rose so I can get some of the towels under her.”

Douglas located the basin and towels, poured cool water into the basin, and joined Guinevere in Rose’s room.

“She’s never had a fever this high before.” Guinevere’s voice held a thread of terror. “She’ll go into convulsions if I can’t bring her fever down. Lift Rose up,
please
.” As if to emphasize Guinevere’s fears, a tremor passed through Rose, shivering over her arms, legs, hands, and feet.

Douglas lifted Rose up in his arms, and gently replaced her on the bed once the towels were spread. Guinevere dipped a flannel in the water and handed it to Douglas.

“You take that side.”

And so they worked together, bathing Rose from head to toe repeatedly in an effort to control her fever. She did not go into convulsions, but her temperature remained high. At three in the morning, Douglas suggested immersing her in cool water, and hauled six buckets as well as the small copper bath up two flights of stairs.

The house boasted only two footmen, and Douglas could not see Guinevere allowing them in the nursery. Hester needed her rest, and Mrs. Kitts could not risk falling ill herself.

When Rose had been drowsing in the tub for about fifteen minutes, Guinevere put a hand to her forehead. “I think she’s cooler.”

Douglas laid the back of his hand where Guinevere’s had been. “She is. For now.”

He changed the linens on Rose’s bed and hung the damp towels up to dry while Guinevere dried Rose off and tugged another nightgown over her head.

Douglas considered mother and child, unable to decide which of the two was more pale. “I’m thinking the tub should stay up here until we know her fever’s broken.”

“It helped more than the sponge baths,” Guinevere agreed tiredly.

“Lie down. I’ll fetch us some tea and sustenance.”

Guinevere didn’t argue, which was vaguely alarming. Douglas was surprised she was still awake when he arrived back to the nursery, bringing sliced apples, cheese, hot cider, and buttered bread with him. And he was more intensely relieved than he could say to see Rose sleeping peacefully.

“How do you manage to forage so effectively?” Guinevere mused, sipping her cider.

“Growing boys,” Douglas replied, taking a loud bite of apple, “learn to scavenge.”

“I am so glad I had a daughter.”

Douglas paused in mid-reach toward his mug of cider. “Should I be insulted?”

“Of course not. I would not know how to go on with a son, but with a daughter I at least have a little relevant knowledge. As I grew up, there was nobody to pass along certain things to me. That caused no little upset, I can tell you.”

“What sorts of things will you tell her?”

“That it’s normal to bleed, for one thing,” Guinevere said, considering an apple slice.

Perhaps it was shared fatigue, or the nature of the care they’d provided Rose, but Douglas felt only curiosity at Guinevere’s reply, and regret—for her. “No one told you that?”

“I was still living with my father.” She glared ferociously at her apple slice. “Douglas, I thought I was dying. Just when I gathered my courage to ask the vicar’s wife what was killing me, it stopped. A few weeks later, it started again. It went on like that for six months, until I went to live with Grandmother, who at least passed along the rudiments and a stack of cloths.”

“You have been too much alone with the burdens females usually share. Was your grandmother at least a help when Rose was born?”
Please, God, let her say yes.

Guinevere shook her head. “She had just died, and the midwife was a nasty old crone who believed the suffering of childbirth was a woman’s penance for tempting Adam to sin. She wouldn’t even change my sheets, and for two days…”

She shook her head again, something about the gesture reminiscent of a fighter shaking off a stout blow.

Douglas stopped rocking. “Guinevere?”

“It does not matter now.”

“It matters to me.”

“Childbirth is a messy business. If my grandfather hadn’t told the woman a foaling stall smelled better than my bedchamber, she would probably have left me to die in my own filth. That, and the housekeeper eventually stepped in out of sheer Christian duty. But you mustn’t breathe a word of this to Andrew or Gareth.”

“I would not betray your confidences, Guinevere.” Though he’d lecture both her wealthy, titled cousins at length about their neglect of her, and damn the consequences. For good measure, Fairly—a physician, no less—would get the rough edge of Douglas’s tongue too.

“I don’t suppose you would betray anybody’s confidences, but if you did mention to Heathgate and Greymoor that Rose’s birth was not well attended, they’d probably wonder first how you came by the knowledge, and draw some accurate conclusions.”

“So how did I come by the knowledge?”

“I trusted you with it.”

“Will you also trust me with some details about her father?” Douglas asked the question in the most casual tone, prepared to be gently rebuffed. He’d rebuffed his own curiosity on this topic repeatedly, until seeking information seemed the easier course.

“It wasn’t complicated,” she said in a low, humorless voice. She’d resumed rocking, and that allowed Douglas to relax a bit too. “He was a dashing young lordling, though he held only a courtesy title. I was in my first season, nineteen unworldly years old. Grandmama had wanted to bring me out, but she was elderly, and then Grandpapa went through a bad spell.”

Her rocking slowed. “In hindsight, I’ve concluded Rose’s father believed me to be more sophisticated than I was, and when he proposed an elopement, I thought it romantic and adventurous. I was in love, you see, but had told the fellow firmly he would be granted no liberties outside of wedlock.”

She paused to consider a pale slice of cheddar. “To my mind, suggesting we elope meant he truly, truly valued me above all others and wanted desperately to have me for his own, though my immediate family was little better than gentry and his so very exalted.”

Douglas said nothing, though he was fiercely glad the man was titled, for it meant Douglas could call him out.

Guinevere popped the cheese in her mouth and chewed for a moment. “I was an idiot, but a clever idiot. I concocted a credible tale of going to stay with a friend, dodged my aunt, left Town with my so-called fiancé, participated in a wedding that was so ramshackle and clandestine that now I don’t understand why I thought it was real. The ‘church’ was some shabby little chapel north of Richmond, and the vicar was not much older than my betrothed.”