Page 91 of Ne'er Duke Well
She thought about Lu over at Rowland House and hoped someone would have thought to leave her plenty of candles.
Thomasin would have thought of it. She hoped Thomasin had thought of it.
She’d convinced Peter to leave long enough to wash andchange his clothes. When he came back, he’d brought her tea, too hot and too sweet, as she liked it.
She’d left them only when she had to. Belvoir’s—she could not forget about the looming threat of Belvoir’s, and the rumors that had begun to swirl about her family. Her banker had revealed that it was awomanwho had investigated the ownership of the property, and Selina had cross-referenced her membership rolls and her brother’s parliamentary opposition until her eyes crossed. Was it the wife of one of Nicholas’s political enemies? The daughter?
She did not know.
On the afternoon of the third day, her family came: Nicholas and Daphne, Lu pale and grim between Aunt Judith and Thomasin. Selina made Daphne and Nicholas stay belowstairs—if there was contagion, she would not have them bring it to her nephews.
Lu wanted to see Freddie, and Selina thought that perhaps she wanted to see Peter as well. When they made it to Freddie’s room, Lu stood in the threshold, motionless and silent.
“The doctor’s seen him,” Peter said. Selina’s heart broke a little. It had been the only thing he’d wanted for his brother when he was a boy. It was the first thing he said to Lucinda.
Lu’s throat worked, but she didn’t speak. Her green eyes were wet. Peter moved suddenly toward her, as if to fold her into his arms, but she darted back from him, then fled for the stairs.
Thomasin started to move after the child, but Aunt Judith laid her hand on Thomasin’s arm. “Let me.”
Selina felt for a moment that what Lu needed was Thomasin’s gentleness, her sweeping acceptance—but then, perhaps that wasn’t it. Perhaps what Lu needed was Aunt Judith, stern and forbidding, tomakeher believe that everything would be all right.
Instead Thomasin went to the bed, and somehow persuadedFreddie to take a full cup of yarrow tea, when none of the rest of them had managed more than a sip or two. He slept easier after that, for hours after Lu and the Ravenscrofts had gone.
When Gabe Hope-Wallace returned, he looked at Freddie’s drawn face, then briskly performed the same examination he had the day prior.
“Be patient,” he said finally, flattening the tube of paper and sliding it into his pocket. “Give him time to heal.”
It was hard for her to be patient, with Freddie thin and drawn in the bed, Lu belowstairs, and Peter frozen and terrified at her side. But she bit back her fear and walked Hope-Wallace to the door. He instructed her what to do if Freddie’s fever were to break and told her he would come back again the next day.
She brought Peter supper on a tray, coaxed him to sit and eat. When he fell asleep with his head bent onto Freddie’s sheets, she kept watch over the boy, and when Peter woke around dawn, she took herself to their bedchamber alone to write to Jean Laventille again and then, eventually, to try to sleep.
When she woke, the sun was high, and she sat bolt upright, alarm flooding her.
Why had no one woken her? She wrapped herself in her dressing gown, raking her fingers through her hair and not stopping to clean her teeth. Freddie’s bedroom was a floor below the ducal chamber, and she darted down the stairs barefoot, clutching the smooth dark banister.
At the end of the hall, past the doors that opened onto Freddie’s and Lu’s chambers, she saw Emmie, wrapped in the embrace of Humphrey, Peter’s tall, slender valet. She was crying.
Selina’s fingers went nerveless. “Emmie?”
The maid and valet leapt apart. Humphrey looked the very picture of guilty alarm, but Emmie’s face broke into a dampgrin. “Oh, my lady—that is, Your Grace—” Tears threatened her words. “All’s well! All’s well with the boy.”
Selina turned and pulled open the door to Freddie’s chamber with still-numb hands.
Sunlight poured through the open casement window, and caught in the beam of light lay Freddie, burrowed beneath the coverlet that had earlier been tossed aside. Peter lay stretched out beside him in the big bed, fully dressed, one arm thrown across his own face, and the other hand resting on Freddie’s head. At the foot of the bed, eyeing her scornfully, was the gray kitten.
Cautiously, she approached the bed. Freddie’s face was thin, but no hectic spots of color burned on his cheeks. She laid a hand across his forehead, very gently.
Cool. His skin felt cool. He moved a little, his eyelashes fluttering and a cough breaking free—but less racking than it had been. As she watched, he slipped back into a deeper sleep. The corner of his mouth quirked up.
She gave a little gasping half sob, and sat down hard in the chair beside the bed. Peter stirred, then lifted his hand from Freddie’s hair and sat up. His curls tumbled over his forehead.
“He’s going to be all right,” she whispered.
Peter’s warm brown eyes—his beloved grin—
“Yes,” he said.
She was lost. She couldn’t break her gaze from his, couldn’t stop searching his face. Relief, she saw there. Exhaustion, elation. Something else.
