Then for some unaccountable reason, she burst into tears.
Ash did not see Helena for the remainder of the night. She managed to elude him at every turn, and finally he stopped himself pursuing her. Guy already guessed something had happened between them, and Ash did not need to give his friend more fuel for gossip.
He moved through the rest of the ball in a haze, avoiding more dancing by securing himself in the card room. In his distracted state, he lost every game but paid over his losses without fuss.
When the interminable ball was over, and the final guests at last departed, Helena long gone, Ash threw himself into bed, but sleep eluded him. He did not so much relive the kiss as be submersed in it, feeling Helena’s warmth around him, her scent, the press of her body, the taste of her mouth. The sensations gripped him and would not let him go.
He rose early the next morning and groggily plunged into the business of the estate, taking himself to its far corners, inspecting cottages and farms. At one point Ash stripped off his coat to assist roofers hauling thatch into place.
His mind remained so full of Helena—the way her mouth softened to his kiss, her fingers pressing his shoulders, her body pliant in his arms—that he forgot the most basic things, like resuming his coat after the thatching, and riding off straight into the rain.
The result was, the next day, a very unromantic cold in the head that did not let him out of bed. Aunt Florence and Edwards, in great alarm, sent for a physician. The long-faced doctor examined him and proclaimed that the Duke of Ashford was very ill indeed and should make certain his affairs were in order.
Chapter 5
“Dying?” Helena stared at Millicent, her heart compressing into a cold knot of fear.
Millicent, her cap trimmed with so many ribbons they careened when she so much as breathed, nodded. “I had it from my lady’s maid, who had it from Ashford’s aunt’s maid, who says he’s flat in bed and cannot rise. A physician bled him and dosed him, and proclaimed there was nothing more to be done.”
Helena had been sipping tea with Millicent and fidgeting, unable to settle herself. Now she rose, hand on her throat.
“Nothing more to be done, my foot. I wager one of my concoctions will do the trick. I must go to him at once.”
Helena called for Evans and hurried to the kitchens and the old-fashioned still room, where herbs were dried and home remedies for everything from an annoying itch to croup were prepared.
She seized herbs, licorice, honey, and brandy willy-nilly, for a moment unable to remember what went into her mixtures and how much. Fortunately, Evans helped Helena shake together the correct ingredients and pour the results into clean bottles. All went into Helena’s basket, along with fresh baked bread and grapes—perfect foods for lightening the humors.
Helena bundled up against the cold that had engulfed Somerset and sent for Millicent’s landau to trundle her down the lane and across the park to Ashford’s mansion.
Ash pried open his eyes, wincing as the darkness of his bed was pierced by sudden daylight.
A large basket overflowing with grapes and dark bottles had been plunked to his writing table—the sound had awakened him. Now his bed curtains were wide open, as were the drapes at the window. Late autumn sunlight streamed through, the air clear, the sky very blue.
His head and eyes ached. “What …?”
“Shutting yourself up in a dark sick room is never good for you,” came Helena’s breezy voice. “Light and air is what you need, along with my remedies. No one in my house remains ill for long.”
“ … are you doing here?” Ash finished, voice rasping. “There is contagion …”
“Nonsense, I never take sick. Brisk walks and eating a hearty dinner is all that is required for good health. Now, what does the doctor believe it is? Consumption?”
Helena, her curves hugged by a light-blue cotton gown, bustled about the room, tying back drapes, poking up the fire. A lace cap covered her dark golden hair, its tapes flying as she moved. She opened the basket and proceeded to stand at least a dozen bottles across the writing table.
“No one has mentioned consumption,” Ash managed before he coughed, his body spasming.
“Smallpox? Yellow fever?”
“What are you going on about?” Ash dragged in a breath and lay back down. “A chill, Mrs. Courtland, nothing more.”
She turned in surprise. “Truly? I had it from your aunt—albeit in a roundabout manner—that you were at death’s door.”
“If my physician is putting that rumor about …”
“Surely he ought to know.” Helena opened a bottle and poured a dark, thick liquid into a glass. “He is a doctor.”
“A quack, you mean. He barely looked at me before he was opening my vein.” Ash coughed again, his sides aching with it. “If I die, then Lewis is duke. A physician can pry many fees out of those who’ll pay to keep the boy healthy.”
“Very cynical.” Helena brought the glass to him in bright determination. “On your part, and on the physician’s. Drink this, and you’ll be right as rain.”
Ash clutched the bedcovers, holding them to his chin. He wore a nightshirt and nothing else, and already felt his blush rising.
“What is that?” He eyed the glass in suspicion.
“All sorts of good things. Plus plenty of brandy to make it slip down well. I know how to dose a gentleman.”
“Oh? How many gentlemen have you dosed?” He felt a twinge of irritated jealousy.
“My father, gardener, butler, footmen, friends’ fathers and brothers and their servants. They all swear by my remedies.”
“Or swear at them,” Ash muttered.
“What was that?” Helena leaned closer. “I beg your pardon—I did not hear you.”
She should not bend over him so. Ash’s already unsteady heartbeat sped as her bodice sagged to show a sweet round of bosom. She smelled of mint with a touch of honey, making Ash want to pull her down to him and discover if she tasted of those things as well.
He had to have been mad to kiss her in the garden. And yet … The warmth of her lips, the brush of breath on his skin, the way she fit into his arms … The sensations had never left him.
Helena shoved the glass under his chin. The bite of brandy, mint, and whatever else she’d included burst through his clogged nose and made him wince.
“Drink up,” she said. “You’ll feel so much better.”
Ash doubted it. The physician had given him a purge after bleeding him, which had made him even more weak. His aunt had then shoved broth down his throat, followed by an extremely bitter tea. Ash had drunk all to be polite, but he balked now.
“Take that away,” he ordered. “And go. I truly do not wish to make you ill.”
“I told you, I never take sick. Don’t be such a stick, Ash. My remedies are far better than what a physician will give you. My patients get well.”
It was clear that Helena had great confidence in her potion. It was also clear she’d not leave the room until he drank it.
Suppressing a sigh, Ash raised himself on his elbows and reached for the glass.
“You are ever so pale,” Helena said, studying him. “Except for your red nose. I have another physic to fix that.”
Ash clenched the glass, held his breath, and drank.
She was right about the brandy, which made up about two-thirds of the concoction, sweetened with honey to take out the sting. Ash tasted more herbs under the mint, though he wasn’t certain what.
All in all, it was far more pleasant than what Aunt Florence or the physician had given him. More like a brandy punch, but Ash decided not to say that. The liquid soothed his throat—he decided to keep that to himself as well.
Helena plucked the empty glass from his hand and carried it to the writing table, before returning to shake out the bedcovers.
Ash jerked the blankets up again. “Have a care for your modesty, madam.”
Helena looked surprised. “My modesty? I am completely dressed. You are
the one in your nightshirt. You are also flat on your back with illness—I doubt anyone would believe you’d leap up and ravish me on the spot.”
Ash went hotter than the fever had ever climbed. He was more awake now, and feeling stronger. If she continued to lean over him, smoothing the bedclothes, he might just drag her down to him and forget he was a gentleman.
He stopped himself because of his sickness—he truly did not want to pass it to her. Ash remembered how quickly Olivia had caught her fever, how she’d taken to her bed, still weak from bringing Lily into the world not a month before that.
“Please go,” Ash said, gritting his teeth. “These things happen rapidly—I was fine one moment, the next, quite ill.”
“You worry so, Ash. Perhaps that is why you are adamant about your schedules, fearing you’ll forget something if you don’t mark it down.”
More warmth flooded him as he realized she called him by the name his friends did: Ash. Not Your Grace or even Ashford. No one had ever used his given name, Augustine, not even his mother. Before he’d become duke, he’d had Lewis’s title, Marquess of Wilsdon, and had been called Wils.
“My schedule has gone to the devil with this illness.” Ash coughed again, but it didn’t hurt as much this time. “Pardon my language.”
“Well, the devil can enjoy it.” Helena busied herself at the table, and Ash heard another clink of glass and trickling liquid.
“There is nothing wrong with a timetable,” he argued. “I prefer it to chaos.”
Helena brought the refilled glass to the bed. “A little chaos now and then is not a bad thing. I admit I have a timetable as well, my dear Ash. During the Season, I must remember what invitations I have accepted and to what place I am going and when. But constant rigidness is not good for you. You’d never have taken sick if you were less unbending.”
Ash listened to the last in incredulity. “I am in this bed because I did not adhere to my schedule. I let my aunt talk me into hosting a ball, at which I grew frustrated and tramped about the garden in the freezing cold. This weakened my constitution so that when I went about without my coat the next day, I had no defenses. I’d have noticed it was cold in the garden and gone back inside if you hadn’t followed me …”
He trailed off. He knew good and well he’d not noticed the icy air because he’d taken Helena into his arms and kissed her.
Helena flushed. “I worried about you wandering in the dark …”
She too trailed off, her cheeks pretty with her rosy blush. Ash found himself reaching to stroke one.
Helena jumped. She mistook the reason he’d lifted his hand and pushed the glass into it. “This will ease your stuffed nose.”
She turned quickly away, agitation in every line.
Should Ash speak of the kiss? Or continue to pretend it hadn’t happened? That he hadn’t realized what a beautiful woman she was?
Helena, at the table, moved glasses and bottles purposefully, her movements graceful. The tapes on her cap caught in her golden curls.
Ash closed his eyes and sipped the next concoction. This one was not as sweet, but pleasantly mellow. Again, it soothed his throat, and its aroma drifted into his nose, clearing it a bit.
“What is in this?” he asked.
“Nothing exotic. Drink it all.”
Ash complied. He swallowed the final drops and thumped the glass to the bedside table. “I am not cured yet.”
Helena gave him an exasperated look over her shoulder. “Of course not, silly. You must take all my doses over the course of several days. Then you’ll be fine.”
She returned to the bed, more composed after this exchange, and set a plate of grapes next to the empty glass. “These will fill your stomach and lighten the humors.”
Ash ate a few grapes after she turned away, depositing the seeds on a clean dish she’d left for the purpose.
“I’ll not marry any of those ladies, Helena,” he said quietly. His voice sounded almost normal, without the scratch of the last two days.
Helena continued to fuss about the table. “We’ll talk of that when you’re well.”
“It is unfair to the young ladies. From the looks I caught, everyone at that ball believed I’d hosted it to search for my next duchess.”
Helena faced him, resting her hands on the table behind her. “Because everyone knows you need a wife. Including your children, which was why they went to such lengths to compose that letter to you.”
“Lewis’s doing.” Ash couldn’t help a surge of pride. “He is growing up faster than I realize.”
“That is why this time with them is so precious. Lewis will go to school soon, and find his own friends, his own interests. Gracious, my husband barely knew his father and mother, only seeing them from afar until he was quite grown up.”
Helena rarely spoke of her husband, a good-for-nothing fop. If Courtland hadn’t managed to break his neck, he’d have broken her heart with mistresses, gambling debts, and duels.
“He was never good enough for you,” Ash heard himself say.
She stilled. “Pardon?”
“I know I should not speak ill of the dead, but your husband was not a good match for you. You need someone who will listen when you rattle on, who will match you in wits and sense.” And passion, he added silently. He’d sensed much of it in her when he’d kissed her.
Helena moved her gaze to the window, sunlight catching in her dark eyes. “Many felt he was the perfect match for my wit—as in, between the two of us, we had little.”
Ash grew indignant. “They were wrong. You can certainly talk, but you aren’t a featherhead. You have much good sense, which you disguise by hedging around it. You hide your intelligence, though I cannot fathom why.”
“No one wants a clever lady,” Helena said. “Quite irritating, is a woman who claims to be intelligent.”
“Well, it does not irritate me.”
The smile she gave him lit fires in his heart. “How kind of you. But I’ve always said you were kind.”
Kind? The formidable Duke of Ashford, who demanded perfection of the entire world, was kind?
He wasn’t. He knew full well that Merrivale had suggested Ash retreat to Somerset because he was making everyone in the ministry spare with his meticulousness. His expectations were high, his disapproval swift.
“Very good of you to say so,” Ash said stiffly.
“You do not believe me, I see, but it is true. You adore your children and take every sort of care for them. Your servants are well treated and paid a good wage. You indulge your friend, Mr. Lovell, though he is as unlike you as another gentleman can be. And you’ve allowed me to come and nurse you without bodily showing me the door.”
“I couldn’t at the moment if I wanted to.” Ash cleared his throat. “I’m pathetically weak.”
“Indeed, no. Laid up, yes, but weak, never. You are the strongest man I know.”
They shared another look, Helena’s deep brown eyes lightened with flecks of gold. If Ash had been well, he’d have already pulled her into the bed with him to kiss her, drowning in her softness. Perhaps boldly rolling her over to the mattress and showing her what he’d dreamed of in the night.
If he’d been a well man, however, she would not be in his bedchamber at all. She’d only entered because at this instant, he was harmless.
Helena returned to him and smoothed the covers once more. Ash liked the warmth of her hands through the sheets, comforting and arousing at the same time.
She patted his arm, unaware of the incandescence she stirred within him. “Now then, you take four of these draughts a day—morning, afternoon, evening, and before you sleep—and that nasty chill will be gone in no time. I’ll tell Edwards.”
Ash suppressed a shudder. Edwards, who had a soft spot for Helena, would obey her instructions to the letter. Then again, the concoctions weren’t so bad. They were sweet yet with underlying vigor, like Helena herself.
“Sleep now, dear Ash.” Helena pressed a kiss to his forehead, her
lips cool on his hot skin.
“Are you returning home?” Ash asked, trying to make the question casual. “At least, to the cottage of your friend?”
“Do you wish me to?” Helena also pretended nonchalance, but Ash caught the trepidation in her voice.
“No.” Ash realized the word was brusque, and softened his tone. “No. The children would love to see you.”
Her answering smile held relief. “Then I’ll stay. Give me a shout if you need me.”
She held his gaze a moment longer, then turned away, straightened the bottles on the table one last time, and breezed out.
Ash imagined himself, well and strong once more, standing on the landing of the great hall and calling her name. Helena! Darling. I need you. Her answering voice, as natural as breathing. I’ll be there directly, dear Ash.
The picture was so heady he closed his eyes tightly to shut it out.
Helena remained at Middlebrook Castle for two days, at Lady Florence’s insistence. So good for the children to have her about, Florence said. Helena agreed and promised to stay until Ash grew better.
He healed in a remarkably short time. Ash spent only one more day in bed. The next, he was up and bellowing for Edwards to help him dress. He remained in indoor clothes—light suit covered with a banyan and slippers, and shut himself into his library.
Edwards assured Helena that Ash was taking the remedies as instructed, which the valet believed led to his quick recovery.
Ash ordered that Lewis, Evie, and Lily be kept from him until the danger of contagion had passed. The children were not happy about that, but Helena kept them busy writing Ash letters expressing good wishes for his health.
Lily showed Helena her finished letter, executed in stilted handwriting.
Dearest Papa, Please grow well so you can read to us again, and do not leave the exciting bits out anymore. I am old enough for them now. The very best wishes and tender feelings from your dearest Lily.
“If you married Papa, he’d never be ill,” Lily declared after Helena had praised the letter.
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