Page 14 of The Duke
Imogen smiled. “He was a good boy, then?”
“Cole? Good? Not at all! But my Sarah always did have a soft spot for us rakes and ne’er-do-wells.” His eyes sparkled at her. “We never did have children, I suppose she enjoyed her time with the boy. Even wept a bit when he went into Her Majesty’s Service. She was mighty proud of him.”
“They say he contracted the disease in the Indies,” Imogen prompted, drinking in every detail.
True to his nature, Anstruther took the bait. “My valet, Cheever, got his hands on an American paper,” he bragged. “Januarius MacGahan wrote that he witnessed a man fitting Trenwyth’s description fighting like the very devil during the April Uprising in Bulgaria. Claims to have seen him dragged off by the Ottomans, he did.”
“But… the Ottomans deny that the April Uprising even happened,” Imogen speculated. “Surely they would have killed Trenwyth if he was witness to it, wouldn’t they?”
“Perhaps not if he’s a royal.” He shrugged. “Maybe they were paid his weight in gold for ransom.” The excitement and the conversation had the earl dissolving into a fit of coughs. The cancer was now in his lungs and there was naught to be done but make him comfortable. Only God knew when it would take him.
Checking her watch, Imogen stood. “I’ll send Gwen in with a compress and your tonic,” she said, hoping her bright tone would smother the grief already welling in her chest. “I vow to bring you my rendering just as soon as… as I can.
“Give us a kiss then.” He offered his cheek, and she complied. His skin was cool, dry, and thin beneath her lips.
“And take good care our boy Trenwyth,” Anstruther admonished. “Does the realm no good to lose that entire family. They are among the few noble families that deserved that designation.”
“As are you, my lord.”
***
Imogen stood in front of the closed door to Trenwyth’s room paralyzed by indecision. Dr. Longhurst’s voice filtered through the wall as he labored over the duke, likely assisted by a male orderly, and Imogen thanked her stars that she had more time to stall.
She burned to see Trenwyth for herself. And she dreaded it.
A delicately pretty, fair-haired nurse bustled past her with an armful of linen that, by the smell, had more on them than merely blood. If the girl was going to the laundry, she’d be passing right by Gwen’s station. Imogen struggled to remember her name, as the nurse had only recently been hired. She knew they’d been introduced, but this nurse worked on the third floor in the more crowded wards. Her name started with anM,didn’t it? Maggie, Mary…
“Molly,” she remembered aloud. “Your nameisMolly, am I right?”
Startled, the girl whirled in surprise, and dropped the linens. “Look what you made me do!” Her brashness, as much as her accent, pegged her as being born no farther south than Yorkshire. She knelt to carefully gather up the linens, her face scrunched in a grimace of disgust. “If these stain the carpets, I’ll be sure that you clean them, not I. Though why they put carpets in a hospital where blood is the least despicable of the substances that might stain them, I’ll never guess. Some idiot toff wot thinks he knows something likely demanded it beneath his lofty feet. And don’twealways have to cow to whattheysay?”
Imogen blinked, taken aback by the woman’s vitriolic outburst.
“I—I do apologize, let me help.” She started for the bundle, but was shooed away.
“Stay where you are,” Molly demanded. “I’ll not be getting typhus along with a reprimand should the Dragon come by.”
Imogen softened a bit for the girl, who must have had a run-in with Brenda Gibby, the head nurse of the fourth floor. In truth, Imogen feared the woman dubbed “the Dragon” more than she did Ezio del Toro, and that fear was mighty.
“I haven’t been in His Grace’s room yet, you’re not in any danger of contracting—”
“I can’t lollygag about, I’ve work to do,yourwork now that you’ll be locked up in there,” Molly quipped shortly, eyeing her with wary gray mistrust as she stood with her bundle. “You weren’t about to add to it, were you?”
Imogen gave her a conciliatory look. “I was going to ask if you’d send Nurse Gwen Fitzgibbon to Lord Anstruther’s room on your way to the laundry. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the North Wing and back in time.”
“Might as well,” Molly said acerbically after a moment, and Imogen was almost surprised she agreed. “Those other of us always used to envy you fourth-floor girls, you know, working up here with your betters. But now that I’ve a taste of what it’s like, I’ll never complain again.”
Imogen very much doubted that, as complaining seemed to be a particular talent of Molly’s. Though it was nice to hear that someone appreciated the stressors that came with treating the rich and demanding, not to mention living up to the impossibly high standards of conduct expected of the fourth floor.
It was, in a word, exhausting.
As Molly departed without another acid remark, Imogen turned back to the closed door, on the other side of which was a man she’d dreamed about every night for the better part of a year.
Collin Talmage. Or, as she still referred to him in her private thoughts,Cole.
She raised her hand to tap softly on the door when it was wrenched open, nearly startling her to death.
“Dr. Longhurst.” Imogen gasped at the young doctor, who did likewise, as though she’d surprised him in equal measure. She’d heard Dr. Fowler say that Albert Longhurst was the most brilliant medical mind of the century, and she heartily believed it. Imogen pitied him, though, as it seemed that Dr. Longhurst often lived within that brilliant mind, and rarely glanced out to detect the rest of the world. A young, enthusiastic man, he spoke in quick, clipped sentences, eschewing rhetoric in the extreme. At times, he left out entire words altogether.
