Page 87 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
‘Fever?’
‘You burned with it for three days and nights.’
* * *
She had thought he would die as his temperature had soared. She imagined that a man could not last with such a sickness, the redness across his cheeks and his body building into rash.
She had been shocked by the scars he wore beneath his clothes for in the hard light of day they were far more extensive than she had thought them. Myriad injuries that crossed his back and his front, the worst of it being on the same thigh the bullet had passed through.
A history of violence written in flesh. She hated Nash Bowles with even more intensity than she had before. Sometimes she wondered just who she had become.
Were another threat to stalk Nicholas here in his vulnerable state she would have had no compunction but to squeeze out the life from any assailant. She wondered where the kindly polite sister of a duke had disappeared to in the face of all that had happened.
‘Where is... Bowles?’
‘In jail and he will be for a very long time. Oliver and Frederick took him to the constabulary after they had seen to you. Jacob stayed here and waited with me for the doctor.’
‘He is sick, I think...in the head.’
‘He wished he was like you. He wanted to run Vitium et Virtus. He kept yelling that out all the way across the park even as they took him away.’
When Nicholas nodded Eleanor thought he looked tired and she stopped speaking. He had been distant since the shooting, with an edge of anger. Did he blame her in some way for endangering Lucy?
As his eyes closed she brushed away the tears that had pooled in her eyes and threatened to fall down across her cheeks.
* * *
It was later the next day when Nick felt well enough to haul himself into a sitting position and dangle his legs off the side of the bed. At the beginning his heart hammered against his temples, but then it subsided. Perhaps he would not stand just yet, he thought, looking at the thick bandage wrapped tightly about his thigh.
A small noise at the doorway alerted him to the fact that he had a visitor.
‘Lucy?’
The child came further into the room. Not so close that she could not turn and run if she needed to, but closer than he held any right to expect.
‘Are you better?’ Her voice was tense. He could hear the vestige of fright from the incident at Hampstead Heath in what she said.
‘Nearly.’ His eyes went to the doll she carried and it had a sizeable bandage around its head.
‘Did your doll get hurt, too?’
‘Yes. By a speeding bullet. Mama says that for every three bullets that miss there is one that will find its mark.’
‘I am glad it didn’t find its mark with me, then.’
She smiled. ‘But it did.’
‘Not badly, at all,’ he replied, liking how she watched him, taking him in, tossing up whether or not he was worth the fuss as a father. ‘A leg is much better than a head or the chest to get hit in. Poor doll.’
At that she moved forward and set the doll down on his bed, removing the bandage deftly and retying it around a thin china leg.
‘Now she is just like you and getting better. Did you know Mama cries a lot when you are not looking?’
The truth of the words had him taking in breath.
‘I think she thought it was her fault that we were shot.’
‘I don’t think the fault was anyone’s except the man with the gun.’
