The day passed in a feverish haze. Aubrey had only intermittent impressions of the world around him—a damp flannel pressed against his forehead; a teacup against his lips, and the soothing sensation of tea with lemon flowing down his raw throat, its flavour not quite covering the bitter taste of laudanum; the sound of Lindsey’s voice telling Charles to send for Dr Pilkington.
Dr Pilkington arrived in the evening. Despite his efforts to warm his stethoscope through friction against his palm, the shock of cold metal against Aubrey’s burning skin prompted a gasp which became another coughing fit. Dr Pilkington listened throughout, and, after coaxing Aubrey to try breathing in again as deep as he could manage, made his grim diagnosis: pneumonia.
The cold prick of the thermometer under Aubrey’s tongue confirmed his fever had reached worrisome proportions. Next he knew, Lindsey had lifted him out of bed and half-carried him to the bath, filled with lukewarm water under Dr Pilkington’s direction. Immersion offered relief beyond expression. All too soon the tub was drained, and Aubrey stood, however briefly, naked and shivering, the blaze of fever chasing the cold draughts across his skin. Then flannel bandages soaked in cold water were wrapped snug around his ribcage—the stabbing pains of his ribs no less acute for their familiarity—and at last a robe was thrown over his shoulders before Lindsey guided him back to bed. Another dose of opium, this time in the form of morphine tablets for cough suppression, and Aubrey found himself almost able to drift off.
Dr Pilkington murmured to Lindsey some minutes later, apparently operating under the assumption Aubrey had already fallen asleep, “Has he done any strenuous activity since I saw him this morning?”
A moment’s hesitation passed before Lindsey replied, “He has modelled for a painting.”
Aubrey didn’t have the strength to open his eyes, but the pause following Lindsey’s answer bespoke surprise on the doctor’s part. He wished circumstances had not required Lindsey to give an honest answer. From what Aubrey knew of Dr Pilkington—that he came under recommendation from Graves, and that Graves had identified him as a fellow invert—he doubted anything he or Lindsey might do or say could shock him. Surely he had treated Graves and others for more bizarre afflictions, and under circumstances much more questionable than modelling for a painting. Still, Aubrey’s pride did not go down easy.
“At the risk of being indelicate,” Dr Pilkington said at last, “I’d like to know the particulars.”
Over the course of the next few excruciating minutes, Lindsey confirmed Aubrey had modelled in the nude, the makeshift studio was well-ventilated, and the pose was indeed a reclining one.
“Do you think it too vigorous?” Lindsey asked.
“On the contrary,” Dr Pilkington replied. “I’m afraid it’s not vigorous enough. While I would not have recommended Mr Warren spend the morning naked in a draughty room, it would have given me less concern had he performed some exercise whilst doing so—a brisk walk, or some more aerobic activity, something to keep himself active and warm. But to stay quite still for so long, and to recline whilst doing so… I’m afraid that is as bad as bed-rest. Worse, for the lack of anything to insulate him from the chill.”
Aubrey privately supposed he’d have been better off going straight back to the stables.
Lindsey remained with him well into the night, sitting beside the bed rather than climbing in beside Aubrey. Aubrey felt torn between wishing for Lindsey’s arms around him and knowing how the warmth radiating from Lindsey’s body would only make his fever more unbearable. Still, the clasp of Lindsey’s hand in his own, the gentle mopping of his brow, and the murmured reassurances from Lindsey’s lips made the hours pass far more comfortably than they would’ve otherwise. Aubrey only wished Lindsey could find rest of his own.
By morning, the combined efforts of Charles, Halloway, and Dr Pilkington convinced Lindsey to leave Aubrey’s side and go to bed in some other room, however briefly.
In the wake of Lindsey’s departure came the arrival of the oxygen.
It took considerable effort of Aubrey’s fever-addled brain to put together the scraps of the story he could overhear from the conversation above and around his bed, but from what he could gather, Dr Pilkington, upon diagnosing pneumonia the previous evening, had ordered several cylinders of compressed oxygen delivered to the Wiltshire house. Certain limitations, such as having to send away to a mining supplier for the oxygen, had delayed the delivery until morning. The moment Aubrey realised what Dr Pilkington had brought into his sickroom, he bolted upright—or rather, made a valiant attempt at doing so.
“You needn’t be alarmed, Mr Warren,” Dr Pilkington reassured him, laying gentle-yet-firm hands upon his shoulders to push him back down into a reclining position. “It will assist your breathing.”
“I know,” Aubrey wheezed. He’d read all about the new and life-saving use of compressed oxygen in The Engineer, particularly in rescuing miners overcome by pockets of suffocating gas deep beneath the earth. “I only want to see the mechanism.”
His difficulty in gathering breath rather muted the enthusiasm he wished to express, but Dr Pilkington seemed to understand his intentions nonetheless.
Aubrey, his eyes bright with excitement as well as fever, watched as Dr Pilkington raised the oxygen to his field of vision and began laying out the pieces required for its administration, briefly explaining the function of each in turn; the cylinder of compressed oxygen itself, its outlet controlled by a key; the small rubber bag; the quart wash-bottle; the supple rubber hose and the hard-rubber nose-piece. Dr Pilkington then filled the wash-bottle one-third of the way with water, assembled all the disparate pieces into the singular apparatus, and inserted the nose-piece into Aubrey’s nostrils. This last could not be called comfortable under any circumstances, but Aubrey found his discomfort tempered by his own fascination as the oxygen, released from the cylinder, bubbled its way across the water in the wash-bottle to the rubber hose and into Aubrey’s lungs, providing no small measure of relief to his laboured breathing. At long last, as the light of dawn spread across the room from between the fluttering curtains at the open window, Aubrey found something like sleep.
When he next awoke, daylight remained, and Lindsey had returned, sitting beside his bed looking haggard.
Aubrey smiled to see him despite his worry at his appearance. “Did Dr Pilkington show you the oxygen?”
Lindsey didn’t seem quite so elated as Aubrey felt at the mention of the intriguing new mechanism. “He did. Is it helping?”
Aubrey noted how Lindsey’s concerned gaze traced over the rubber tubing from the iron cylinder to his nose and back again. He tempered some of his enthusiasm. “I feel much better rested already. Perhaps we should have some for you as well.”
Lindsey chuckled and gave Aubrey’s hand a brief yet heartfelt squeeze. “If the doctor prescribes it, I suppose I shall have to submit.”
Even with his mind addled by fever and exhaustion, Aubrey knew his illness had robbed Lindsey of his bed, and his respite along with it. He pushed down his guilt to ask, “Where have you been sleeping?”
“One of the guest rooms. It’s not far,” Lindsey hurried to reassure him—unnecessarily so, but Aubrey appreciated it nonetheless. He liked to know Lindsey hadn’t flown too far off, despite his worries that his coughing carried through the walls and kept Lindsey awake. “Dr Pilkington wouldn’t let me stay.”
“You need to sleep, too,” Aubrey reminded him, though his tremulous voice weakened his argument.
“I have,” Lindsey promised him. “Though I’ll sleep far better when I’m beside you again.”
Aubrey, already exhausted even by such brief conversation, concentrated all he wished to say of his gratitude and his affections into a strong clasp of Lindsey’s hand. Lindsey kissed his knuckles, and Aubrey knew he’d been heard.
“Go back to sleep,” Lindsey murmured.
Aubrey, too weak to do otherwise, obeyed.
He awoke to dusk, and a tray laden with tea-things a
nd a bowl of beef broth. Lindsey laid out the invalid’s dinner as smartly as a table-setting at one of Rowena’s parties, smoothing a napkin like a tablecloth over Aubrey’s bared collar and breastbone. His strong arm wound its way around Aubrey’s shoulders and lifted him ever-so-gently into a sitting position. One soft palm cupped the back of Aubrey’s head whilst the other supported Aubrey’s own trembling grip on the spoon and raised it to his fever-cracked lips. The warm, rich broth soothed Aubrey’s sore throat as it flowed down. Still, he could only manage two-thirds of the bowl before exhaustion overtook him again, and with another dose of morphine tablets, he drifted off.
When next he opened his eyes, daylight had returned—mid-morning, by his guess. Lindsey had gone, and in his place, Aubrey found Dr Pilkington. The usual battery of stethoscope and thermometer occurred, along with a renewal of the oxygen.
“Your fever has reduced,” Dr Pilkington informed him conversationally. “With any luck, you’ll shake this off in a few days, so long as you continue to rest.”
Aubrey reluctantly acquiesced to this prescription. He did feel stronger, until he made a fool’s effort to lift not only his head but also his shoulders from the pillow, at which point his cracked ribs gave him a sharp reminder to lie still.
The oxygen tube made his limited breathing more productive, and the morphine tablets reduced his cough, but the grinding of bones and the crackling in his lungs remained. Aubrey slept away most of the next few days, rejoicing any moment he opened his eyes to Lindsey beside him. Otherwise his visitors were limited to Dr Pilkington, with assistance from Charles—Aubrey supposed allowances had to be made for when one couldn’t move for fractures and fevers, and he didn’t protest Charles stepping in whilst Lindsey caught some much-needed rest.
On one occasion, however, he woke to the sound of a woman’s voice. At first, his muddled mind protested that Rowena and Emmeline remained in Paris, and thus the sound of a woman’s voice in the Wiltshire house made no sense at all. Yet as Dr Pilkington’s sober tones answered her, and she spoke on in halting syllables, he caught enough of her speech to recognise the Welsh accent of Miss Owen.
Aubrey struggled against the laudanum to open his eyes and managed at last a glimpse from under his lashes. Both Dr Pilkington and Miss Owen stood by his bedside, the former instructing the latter in nursing duties for the invalid. Dr Pilkington held one of the oxygen canisters, and Miss Owen had said something which gave him evident pause.
“You are familiar with the mechanism?” Dr Pilkington asked her at last.
“I’ve seen it used,” Miss Owen admitted. “My family all work in the mines.”
She didn’t need to elaborate which mines. Given her knowledge of the canisters and her Welsh accent, Aubrey felt safe to assume her kin worked in coal. He wondered, then, what had brought her to such a house as this, in a far different career, but he hadn’t the energy to open his eyes, much less the breath to voice such questions. And so he slipped back down into sleep with his mysteries.
Many days passed in the patchwork sleeping-and-waking cycle before it occurred to Aubrey to wonder what became of Halloway. He did so to himself at first, then aloud to Lindsey at the first opportunity.
“He’s still here,” Lindsey assured him. “He wishes you a rapid recovery. Dr Pilkington says you’re not strong enough for visitors just yet—he’s hardly letting me in as it is—but the moment you’re feeling more yourself, you may see him.”
“How long before I’m permitted to model for him again?” Aubrey joked.
His humour didn’t quite hit the mark, judging by the flicker of alarm across Lindsey’s features. But Lindsey recovered himself with a handsome, if somewhat forced, smile. “Another month at least, I’m afraid. Likely two.”
Aubrey promised Lindsey he was content to wait.
As it turned out, he had to wait ten whole days before Dr Pilkington felt confident enough in his continued survival to leave the Wiltshire house.
“Keep him in bed,” Dr Pilkington urged Lindsey for the fourth time as he made his good-byes. “And if any symptom should grow in the least bit worse, do not hesitate to send for me again. I will return without delay.”
Lindsey swore a solemn oath to do so, over Aubrey’s silent protest that such a thing would probably not prove necessary.
Later that afternoon, when Lindsey nodded off in his chair at Aubrey’s bedside, Charles and Aubrey combined forces to coax Lindsey to go rest elsewhere. Not a quarter-hour after Lindsey reluctantly departed, Halloway sidled into the room.
Aubrey sat up—he could do so at last, with his fever broken, and the shooting pains in his side muffled by a combination of morphine tablets and strategic pillows—all eagerness to see him. Yet Halloway remained muted, settling into the chair beside Aubrey’s bed with some unknown shadow dulling his smile.
“How are you getting on, then?” Aubrey asked him. His voice remained thin and reedy, but he could get through a whole sentence without coughing.
Halloway’s reply—“Well enough.”—sounded a far cry from the ebullient-if-dry raconteur Aubrey had come to know over the course of their collaboration.
Aubrey tried again. “Have you got much painting done?”
At the mention of his craft, a spark came into Halloway’s eyes. “A little. Some watercolour sketches of the house and grounds.”
“Any progress on Icarus Fallen?”
The stricken look on Halloway’s face made Aubrey think some dreadful accident had destroyed the potential masterpiece.
“I tried,” Halloway said. “It’s mostly done on your end—all but the finer details of the portraiture—and I started in on the wings—but—”
He broke off and looked out the window. His hand, its fingers still stained with smears of paint, ran through his hair, then on down his face. He smoothed down his moustache three times, only to then begin worrying one side of it between two fingers, creating a lopsided curl. At last, he met Aubrey’s gaze again.
“Rather hard to concentrate,” Halloway admitted. “Knowing it nearly killed you.”
Aubrey stared. He hadn’t expected such concern from one so carefree and Bohemian. It touched him, certainly. Still, some facts had to be corrected. “It’s not the painting’s fault that I misinterpreted doctor’s orders. Will you agree to share the blame, at least?”
Halloway stared at him—then a second smile, broader and more sincere than the first, broke through his overcast expression. “Only if you let me apologise properly.”
Aubrey conceded to this condition with a nod.
Halloway clasped Aubrey’s hand and leaned in. “I’m sorry for my part in all this. I never meant to make you ill, and it was foolish of me not to foresee the obvious conclusion of such a business.”
“You’re forgiven,” Aubrey blurted the instant he’d finished.
Halloway released his hand with a laugh and leaned back in the bedside chair, almost as carefree as he’d appeared before. “Fair enough.”
A sudden suspicion occurred to Aubrey, preventing him from sharing in Halloway’s good humour for the moment. “Lindsey hasn’t given you any trouble over the matter, has he?”
“Not in the least,” Halloway scoffed. “Though I wouldn’t blame him if he did. Truth told, he’s been far too preoccupied looking after you to bother me or anyone else.” He paused, a wistful smile ghosting over his face. “He’s a damned good man, is your Lindsey.”
Aubrey, choked by something more than his illness, took a moment to make his reply. “I’ve often thought so.” Thinking of Lindsey sparked a reminder in his mind, and he sat up a hair further in bed. “Halloway—you said you’re nearly done with the painting? Would you be willing to take on a commission? Or a pair of them, I suppose.”
Halloway raised an eager eyebrow. “I’m always interested in commissions. What did you have in mind?”
With a looseness of tongue he would later blame on the laudanum, Aubrey described the theoretical commissions. Halloway’s curious smile became a cons
piratorial one.
~
That evening, after ten whole wretched nights apart, Lindsey finally slid into bed beside Aubrey, with an embrace none the less enthusiastic for all its tender care. Aubrey returned it with the desperation of a drowning man clasping his rescuer. Without the damned rubber tubing between them, he breathed in Lindsey’s masculine scent, its familiar notes soothing his heartache better than the morphine soothed the ache in his ribs.
“I’ve missed you,” Lindsey whispered into his hair, echoing Aubrey’s own thoughts.
Aubrey answered him with a kiss before nestling his head into the hollow of Lindsey’s collar, precisely where he belonged.
~
Chapter Eight
The relief Lindsey felt in that moment—to have his Aubrey safe again in his arms at last—could hardly be expressed in words. He fell asleep cradling his frail form and awoke better-rested than he’d felt in almost a fortnight.
Charles brought up breakfast—a proper breakfast, with toast and bacon and eggs and scones and muffins and ham and every other sundry the cook could dream up, all of which Dr Pilkington had at last given permission to re-introduce to the invalid’s diet. Lindsey watched with satisfaction as Aubrey joined him in devouring it.
Alongside the breakfast-tray came a silver salver of correspondence. Lindsey set aside the latest issue of the Strand and flipped through the letters. A particular pair of envelopes caught his attention—one addressed to himself, in his sister’s hand, and one addressed to Aubrey, in his fiancée’s. He handed over Aubrey’s letter with a knowing smile and opened his own with a deft slash.
Dearest Lindsey,
Emmeline’s trousseau is coming along slowly but surely. I have tried thus far in vain to convince her to give up the notion of a chartreuse wedding gown. To the hue itself I have no real objection, apart from a sense of taste, but the chemical composition is known for its detrimental effect upon the health of the wearer, which must give one pause. If she insists on garbing herself in Parisian green every day, I fear she will make you a widower within a year of your marriage. Or perhaps a grain or two will drop from her skirts into your tea and leave her with a handsome inheritance. Regardless, I promise you I will redouble my efforts to make her a less literal “killing creature.”
Throw His Heart Over Page 11
