Page 80 of The Captive
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Gilly refused to let the duke die. For hours, she bathed every inch of him when he was fevered, wrapped him in blankets when he shivered, held the basin while he suffered dry heaves, and let him nigh break the bones of her hand while he cramped and groaned and shook and cursed.
In his lucid intervals, he made her swear not to open the door to anyone, not to allow another to see him in his weakened state. So she sent their excuses down to the kitchen for dinner, locked the door behind her, and prepared to lay siege to his illness.
“I’m not sick,” he rasped shortly after midnight. “This is poison, I tell you.”
“You aren’t fevered anymore,” she said, laying the back of one hand against his forehead. “You haven’t had the heaves for more than an hour. Whatever it is, it’s subsiding.”
“Pray God you speak the truth. And don’t you dare drink that water.”
“I’m thirsty, for feathers’ sake!” But she put the glass down without sipping. “What if I fetch the carafe from my room?”
“Did you drink from it earlier?”
“I did,” she said, thinking back. “Immediately before you fell ill, and I have no symptoms.”
“Then fetch it, but be quick and quiet.”
“Dawn is still several hours off, Christian. Who’s to see me?” She retied the sash of her night robe and did a tired version of flouncing out of the room, again locking the door behind her.
What if Christian were right, and he’d been poisoned? What if somebody resented the Lost Duke being found and had taken measures to return him to the land of the dead?
Or what if he’d caught some dread malady while in captivity, and it was only now manifesting?
She hurried across the hall, careful not to wake the footman dozing at his post at the end of the corridor. When she returned to the ducal suite, Christian was sitting up on his bed, wearing only his knee-length drawers.
“Either you’re feeling better, or you’re in want of a scolding.”
“Maybe both.” He pushed to his feet, keeping a hand on the bedpost. She remained silent while he doddered along the perimeter of the room to the privacy screen. “I feel like old Wellie marched his entire infantry through my mouth in the middle of high summer.”
“You’ll want some water.” She set the carafe on a vanity that held his shaving kit, hairbrush, comb, and a hand mirror, then left him to his own devices.
“I’ll want my tooth powder.” At a careful totter, he disappeared behind the screen, leaving Gilly to survey the bed.
“I’m changing your sheets.” Something garbled came back that sounded like assent, which was fortunate. The linens needed changing. She opened the French doors leading to his balcony to let in the night breeze, and set the covered chamber pot in the next room.
He emerged from his ablutions looking pale but tidier, his hair caught back in its queue, his face scrubbed. He grabbed one side of the sheet and helped her strip the bed, a skill any public-school boy—or soldier—would have acquired.
“You don’t think it was poison,” he said.
“I don’t know what to think. I was accused of poisoning my late spouse. I would hate to be accused of poisoning you.”
He balled up the rumpled sheets and tossed them over the screen while Gilly retrieved fresh ones from the chest at the foot of the bed.
“We eat most of our meals together,” she said, unfurling the sheet over the mattress. “You’re the only one with symptoms.”
“The only one in the entire household?” He caught a corner of the sheet and tucked it under the mattress while Gilly did likewise on the opposite side of the bed.
“Yes, in the entire house, and in the neighborhood, as far as George knew.”
“You trust George?”
“He’s one of the footmen you set to guarding me, so yes. Moreover, he’s a young man who hopes you’ll look on him favorably when your house steward retires this fall. I doubt George is trying to do you in.”
Across from her, the duke stared at the half-made-up bed as if it were a chessboard and the game well advanced. “Not me. They were trying to do you in.”
“Not this again. I’m in fine fettle.” And too tired to humor His Grace’s queer starts.
