What an Earl Wants (24 page)

Lady Sinclair gave a small smile. “Your grandmother has experience in these things? Very well. If anything changes, anything at all, you will be sure to let me know.” She gave her son another worried look, then exited the room after a brief backward glance.

When she was sure they were alone again, with Jack stationed outside the door, Quincy spun around to face Sinclair. “What the devil was that about?”

He let go of her coat and fell back. “My youngest brother…perished from…an inflammation…of the lungs.”

“Oh.” She handed Sinclair another cloth to cough into. He had already soiled all his handkerchiefs, and they weren’t coming back with his laundry. Jill had told her the laundress had burned them. She cleared her throat. “You, my lord, are not going to die. Not after what you survived in France. You are going to live to torment your servants and tease your employees for many, many years to come. Now go to sleep.”

Sinclair’s mouth turned up at the corners as he burrowed under the blankets.

His endless coughing, through the day and another night, was torture. She felt his pain, frustration, and fatigue. As his fever climbed, Quincy bathed his face with a cool cloth. His rapid decline alarmed her, but she kept her panic tamped down. Someone had to remain strong and in charge. Perhaps his recovery would be equally swift.

The maids continued to bring meals on a tray. Except for a quick trip home to change clothes and retrieve her spectacles, Quincy hardly left Sinclair’s bedchamber or sitting room. Fortunately, no one seemed to think it odd for the secretary to be tending Sinclair in the absence of a valet.

“Daisy said you didn’t hardly touch dinner,” Thompson said, entering the room carrying a tray with bread, cheese and cold meats. He set it on the table by the window.

Quincy looked up, surprised to note how low the candles had burned. Sinclair had been restless all evening, muttering in French and English. Her touch no longer calmed him. She had been debating calling for the doctor.

“Let me do that, sir, while you eat.” Thompson took the cloth from her hands.

Nodding her thanks, Quincy stood and stretched stiff muscles. She had little appetite, but it would serve no one if she became ill as well. She made a sandwich and had barely taken a bite when the earl grabbed the cloth from the footman’s hand and flung it across the room. On its way into the fire, it knocked over the teakettle warming on the hearth, and sizzled on the coals.

Quincy started to mop up the spilled tea, but let it go when she heard grunts from Sinclair, and Thompson called out.

“Here, now, you can’t do that.” Thompson tried to catch the earl’s hands as Sinclair swung at the footman with his fist. Weakened from his illness, there was little strength behind his blows, but Thompson didn’t seem inclined to discover how strong he was or not.

“Stop!” Quincy said, rushing to the bed. “You’ll hurt him.”

“You talking to him or me?” Thompson grunted as Sinclair jabbed him in the ribs.

Still trying to be rid of Thompson, Sinclair pushed and shoved against the oversized footman. His eyes were open but glazed as he thrashed about on the bed, apparently seeing things from long ago and far away.

Quincy reached for one of the earl’s flailing arms, but caught his elbow against her nose. Her spectacles flew across the room. “Captain!” she shouted. “Cease and desist this instant!”

Sinclair stopped, stayed still, except for his harsh breathing.

Thompson backed away two steps. The ominous cracking sound beneath his left heel was Quincy’s spectacles. Ignoring Quincy’s look of dismay, he straightened his wig, which hung over one eye, and pulled his waistcoat down into its proper position.

Sinclair began coughing, the kind of fit Quincy was afraid he would never be able to stop again. He coughed into the cloth Quincy handed him, while she picked his bedclothes off the floor where they’d fallen during the scuffle, and covered him.

Her upper lip felt wet. She licked her lips and tasted the metallic tang of blood.

“Cor blimey, ’e’s done drawn your cork!” Thompson darted around the bed to her, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. He wrapped one arm around Quincy’s shoulders and held the handkerchief to her bleeding nose.

Quincy pushed his hand away from her face and looked at the soggy linen. “’Tis not so bad,” she said. She put it back against her nose as she felt another drop slide down her upper lip. Only then did she realize Thompson still held her in a one-armed embrace. She looked up, but could see only concern on his features.

And then something else flickered in his eyes. A chill chased up her spine.

Sinclair’s coughing had quieted, but now she realized it was more of a gurgling noise. The earl had curled up in a ball against the headboard, his face etched with pain as he fought for air. “He’s choking!” Quincy ducked under the footman’s arm, toward Sinclair. “Help me move him.”

They rolled Sinclair away from the headboard, onto his left side. He did not resist. Quincy climbed up and knelt on the bed beside him. “Grandmère warned me this might happen,” she said. “He’s drowning inside. Pull the chamber pot out from under the bed.”

Thompson did as she bid, and watched in horror as she began hitting Sinclair on his back. “She told you to beat him?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” With each word, she hit Sinclair between his shoulder blades with her cupped hand. Sinclair did not move. His eyes remained closed. Panic rose in her throat. “I don’t understand. She said this would help dislodge the fluid in his lungs.”

“Is he supposed to be sitting up, or lying down?” Thompson lit another candle on the bedside table. “Should I hang him upside down over the pot?”

“I don’t know!” Quincy blinked back tears of frustration.

“Should I fetch Dr. Kimball?”

“There is no time.” Quincy bent close to the earl’s face. “Cough, Benjamin,” she whispered in his ear, still hitting him with her cupped hand. “You must cough. Please, Benjamin, cough for me.”

Interminable moments later, Sinclair started to cough. Weakly at first, but he began clearing out his lungs, drawing deeper breaths. He pulled himself closer to the edge of the bed and spit into the chamber pot.

Quincy patted him on the shoulder and sat back on her heels, releasing a sigh of relief. Sinclair, his breathing now almost normal, squinted up at her in the candlelight, and relaxed. “My angel,” he murmured. He clutched her hand to his heart, before his eyes fluttered shut.

Thompson’s mouth fell open as he stared back and forth between Quincy and Sinclair. “I knew it!” He slapped his palm against his thigh. “I was right all along. Grimshaw owes me a shilling!”

Oh, dear heaven. “Beg pardon?” Kneeling on the bed beside Sinclair wasn’t helping her case. She slid to the floor and gave Thompson a wide-eyed stare. “Right about what?”

He stared right back, looking insanely happy. “You. Being a girl.”

Her first instinct was to refute his statement, but how would that reflect on Sinclair? And she’d never actively lied—only by omission. “What makes you think that?”

Thompson looked perplexed for a moment, but then his chin came up. “Lord Sinclair ain’t the sort to hold another man’s hand.”

Quincy slumped in the chair pulled close to the bed. “When did you wager with Grimshaw?”

“After the warehouse by the docks, when I carried you out to the coach and into the house. You looked the part and all, but something just weren’t right. And you should’ve seen the earl’s face when he saw you conked out on the sofa. Turned whiter than his cravat.”

Quincy felt lightheaded. She had gone without sleep too long to deal with this now.

Sinclair moaned. He was still lying sideways across the bed. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his nightshirt clung to him, soaked with sweat.

Quincy got up and flung open the door of Sinclair’s wardrobe. “Do you know where his nightshirts are kept? He must have more than one. Ah, here they are.” She pulled one out, closed the door, and headed back to the bed.

“You going to dress ’im?”

Already reaching for the buttons at Sinclair’s collar, Quincy paused. Right. Help was at hand this time, and no need to add fuel to the servants’ gossip. “
You’re
going to help him into a clean shirt. I’m going to get fresh bed linens. We have to keep him dry until his fever breaks.”

Out in the hall, Quincy found what she needed in the linen closet. Her arms full, she sagged against the neatly piled sheets, wishing it was Sinclair she leaned against, and closed her eyes.

Someone else knew.

Damn, damn, double damn.

What would it take to persuade Thompson to keep his knowledge to himself? Could she trust him not to tell? The scandal she had tried to avoid was poised to erupt.

This was all her fault. She should never have come to work for Sinclair in the first place, never put him in such an untenable position. And his mother! The tabbies would have Lady Sinclair back in mourning, a recluse again. Lady Fitzwater, who had been so kind, and Sinclair’s friends…So many people close to Sinclair were about to be hurt, and it was all her fault.

She shuffled back into Sinclair’s bedchamber. “Thompson, I…” She trailed off, not knowing what words should come next.

The footman held his finger to his lips. “I’ll roll him over,” he whispered, “and you tuck in the sheet.”

She complied, and they soon had Sinclair settled with so many pillows propping him he appeared to be sitting up. Thompson gathered up the laundry and headed for the door.

“I’ll be at my post if you need anything.” He winked at her, and left.

Quincy stared at the closed door, speechless.

With one crisis past and another one inevitable, she could think of nothing but how close she’d come to losing Sinclair this night. She began to shake. Before her knees gave out, and before she could think through her actions, she crawled up onto the bed beside Sinclair.

She needed to touch him, hold him, needed tactile proof that he still breathed. Sitting with her back against the headboard, legs stretched out, she cupped his cheek and smoothed his hair back from his fevered brow.

His eyes closed, Sinclair reached for her, wrapping his arms around her middle, pillowing his head on her chest. With hot tears coursing down her cheeks, she curled one arm around his shoulders and cradled him to her. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” she whispered. “Do you hear me, Benjamin?”

He snuggled deeper into her embrace, snoring. She kissed the top of his head.

She held him well into the wee hours, as frightened by the surge of affection she felt for this man as for his brush with death. She’d wanted to remain aloof, but that part of her plan was a spectacular failure. Leaving him would cause a huge void in her life, a gaping hole in her heart, but at least she would know that he still walked this earth. And she’d had a hand in that.

It wasn’t much. But it would have to do.

She dried her eyes with a corner of the sheet, and tightened her hold on Sinclair.

A scratch on the door woke Quincy. She scrambled out of bed just before Matilda entered the chamber, bearing a breakfast tray.

“I thought you must be hungry by now, sir,” she said softly, setting the tray on the table. “I also brung you more lemonade and honey. Cook says as how you asked for lots of it yesterday.”

“Thank you, Matilda.” Quincy tried to rub the grit from her eyes. They burned as though she’d been out in a fierce windstorm. While the maid knelt at the hearth to build up the fire, Quincy checked on Sinclair. His breathing seemed easier, and his forehead felt cool to her touch. She let out a sigh of relief and said a quick prayer of thanks.

Removing the cover from the plate on the breakfast tray, she took a deep breath of the enticing aromas. Her stomach growled.

“Sir, is Lord Sinclair going to die?”

Quincy glanced at Matilda, who now stood only a few feet away, her hands clasped before her. “No. He may feel like death warmed over when he awakens, but he will soon make a full recovery.”

Matilda’s face brightened. “I’m glad, that I am.” With a last look at the sleeping earl, Matilda bobbed a curtsy and headed for the door.

Quincy halted her with a question. “Where is Jill this morning?”

“She’s fitting Lady Sinclair for a new gown, sir. I think it’s the one she plans to wear to the wedding.”

“Wedding?”

“Lord Sinclair’s. We was worried the gown might be for a funeral,” she glanced at her feet, “but now we’re sure it’s for his wedding. Will you be needing anything else, sir?”

“No, thank you. You may go.” Quincy barely heard the door close. Her heart hammered in her ears. Who could Lady Sinclair think her son was marrying? Surely she would know before his mother if Sinclair had decided on a bride.

She suddenly felt icy cold, ready to shatter into a thousand tiny shards. No, Lady Sinclair must be mistaken. Or premature. Yes, that was it. Premature. Sinclair could not have chosen a bride so soon.

The only sounds Quincy heard were the ticking clock and crackle of the fire. She stared down at Sinclair. His chest hardly lifted with each breath. He
was
still breathing, wasn’t he? She rested her hand over his heart.

“My angel,” Sinclair murmured. His mouth curved in a sleepy smile, and his fingers curled around her own in a firm grip.

“My lord?” she whispered.

He didn’t respond. She looked at their entwined fingers, his strong hand holding hers. Her heart contracted painfully. This would never do. She was supposed to leave him, not fall deeper in love with him.

Love. Tears pressed at her eyes again, a distressing development in itself at how frequently they appeared these days. She stared down at this man she loved, this sweaty, phlegmy, unshaven…beautiful, generous, caring man. The man she had to leave.

She pressed a quick kiss to the back of Sinclair’s hand and set it down on the blanket beside him. His smile faded, but he did not awaken.

She wondered if Thompson had collected his shilling from Grimshaw yet. Matilda had behaved as usual, so perhaps she had a few hours yet before word spread. Quincy returned to her now cold breakfast, to contemplate her cold future.