The Ruin of a Rake

by Cat Sebastian

  Julian was half conscious, opening his eyes only long enough for Courtenay to see how glassy they were. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead despite the chill of the evening. Courtenay untied Julian’s cravat and attempted to remove his coat, but it was too closely tailored for Courtenay to manage on his own, so he settled for unbuttoning both coat and waistcoat. He had never touched flesh so alarmingly warm, not even Isabella during her final illness.

  “Mr. Medlock has taken ill,” he told Eleanor’s butler after half carrying, half coaxing Julian out of the carriage. Tilbury was regarding him with a degree of suspicion unusual even for him. “He needs a bed. Now!” he added when Tilbury didn’t move immediately.

  A footman—the same one who he recalled not wanting to help the opera girl into her cloak—materialized to help carry Medlock up the stairs and through the door. Every time they moved one of Julian’s limbs, he moaned. “Never mind a bed,” Courtenay barked. “I’m taking him to the back parlor.” It was the room he had once told Julian was Eleanor’s cat room. God, that felt like a hundred years ago.

  “Call for the doctor,” Courtenay called over his shoulder in his most commanding tones.

  “Stop touching me,” Julian moaned as Courtenay and the footman undressed him. “My skin is prickly.”

  “Too bad,” Courtenay said. Now, in the well-lit parlor, he could see how badly Julian was. His cheeks were livid with fever, his pupils dilated so much that his gray eyes were entirely black. This was how Isabella had looked in the days before her death. Courtenay gritted his teeth.

  “Vinegar,” he said to the footman after they had eased Julian onto the sofa and covered him with a thin sheet. He wracked his brain but couldn’t think of the name for the tea that was good for fevers. “And . . . goddamn it, I don’t know any of these things in English.” He cursed himself for not knowing.

  “I’ll ask the cook,” the footman said on his way out the door. “She’ll know.”

  The doctor came while Courtenay was bathing Julian’s head with the vinegar the footman had brought. He nearly collapsed with relief to see the man, but his relief was short-lived when the medical man ordered that the windows Courtenay had opened be closed immediately.

  “Nonsense,” Courtenay argued. “Feel him. He’s hot. He needs to cool off.”

  “The night air is unwholesome,” the doctor insisted. “Besides, Mr. Medlock is shivering. He needs warmth.”

  He was shivering because he had sweat through the sheets. Even Courtenay understood that. He felt a rising sense of panic at what he felt was the doctor’s potential incompetence. If this doctor couldn’t save Julian, then that would be another death on Courtenay’s conscience. He watched the doctor rummage in his bag, finally producing a lancet and a cup from his bag. “In order for the fever to break, he needs to have one of his veins breathed.”

  Courtenay wrinkled his brow in confusion. Did the doctor mean bloodletting? Because there was no way Courtenay was letting this doctor put a knife to Julian’s arm.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said a voice from the door. It was Eleanor, still wearing her ball gown, with Standish just behind. Courtenay nearly sagged with relief to see her. She would know what to do. She always did. “It was so kind of you to come to us so late, Dr. Abernathy, but I’ll see to things from here. Tilbury will pay your fee on your way out.”

  “Thank God you’re here,” Courtenay said.

  Eleanor approached the bed and put her hand to her brother’s head. She frowned.

  “Is this a recurrence . . .” Standish’s voice trailed off.

  “I can’t be sure. We don’t use Dr. Abernathy for these instances, so he wouldn’t have known.”

  Courtenay had no idea what they were talking about. “What instances?”

  Eleanor unwrapped her shawl and absently held it out. Standish promptly took it from her. “You did right to cool him down with vinegar. Bloodletting,” she added. “In my own house. I think not.” She spoke with a degree of venom that reminded Courtenay of Julian. A fresh wave of panic swept over him at the idea that he might never hear Julian complain about Courtenay’s cravat or hair or anything else.

  “The cook sent this tea up,” Courtenay said, gesturing to a cup on the bedside table. “But I didn’t want to give it to him without knowing if it was right.”

  Eleanor sniffed it. “Willow bark. It won’t do any harm but what he needs is the Peruvian bark tincture. I have some in my study in case he has an attack while he’s with me. You can spoon some into his mouth if he’ll take it.”

  “An attack?” Courtenay still didn’t understand. “I thought it was influenza.”

  “Eleanor,” Standish said. “Why don’t you get changed and have someone send up the tincture? And we may as well send for your brother’s valet. We’ll need help tending to him. How long did his last attack last?”

  “I don’t know. He’s always very cagey about it. We’ll ask Briggs when he gets here.”

  “Could somebody tell me what is going on here?” Courtenay’s voice came out too high, panicked, all wrong.

  “Get changed, Eleanor,” Standish said firmly with a pointed look at his wife which apparently she knew how to interpret. She shut the door quietly behind her on her way out.

  “He has malaria,” Standish said calmly. “He fell ill when he was a child, and it comes back from time to time.” Standish must have read something of Courtenay’s shock on his face because he added, “He’s healthy, though.”

  “Healthy?” Courtenay gestured at the sofa where Medlock was fitfully turning, his breathing labored. “Evidently not. Why was he at that blasted ball? He oughtn’t to have been out of bed.”

  “Had to go.” Julian’s eyes were wide open but vacant. “Otherwise you’d think I stayed away to avoid you.”

  “You’re fucking daft,” Courtenay said, and only after he had spoke them did he realize that this insult and obscenity might be the last words he ever spoke to the man he loved. “I’m furious with you,” he added, as if that were better.

  “I ruin everything,” Julian said. “I’m not good at people.”

  “Were you under the impression that letting me believe I killed you would improve things?” Courtenay knew he only felt guilty because he was tired, too tired to separate the strands of death and guilt and shame that became so easily knotted in his mind. He hadn’t made Julian write that godforsaken book. He had been entirely within his rights to end their friendship because of it. But if that was what had made Julian venture out when he should have been in bed, and then he died, how could Courtenay not feel responsible?

  “I’m not dying, you pillock,” Julian croaked. “Haven’t died of this yet.”

  “It looks like you’re trying your damnedest to make an exception.” The door was shut and Standish was trustworthy, so Courtenay squeezed Julian’s hand.

  Standish cleared his throat. “He’s always been damned healthy, despite the malaria.”

  “He looks the picture of blooming health,” Courtenay said dryly.

  Julian laughed, and it sounded like a death rattle.

  “In India he suffered from recurrences several times a year, each much worse than this. Eleanor wanted him to go to England on the chance that a different climate would make him less vulnerable, and she seems to have been right. It’s a very good sign that he’s so coherent.”

  There was a soft tapping at the door and Standish rose to answer it, returning a moment later with a goblet filled with dark liquid. This, Courtenay gathered, was the tincture.

  “If you’ll make sure he takes that, I’ll have somebody set up a bed for the valet when he arrives.” Standish slipped from the room, closing the door behind him.

  Julian’s eyes were closed again, but Courtenay wasn’t letting him fall back asleep before taking his medicine. He slipped a hand behind Julian’s sweat-damp head and lifted him to a half-sitting position. Julian winced.

  “I’m sorry,” Courtenay said, bringing the cup to Julian’s lips. “T
ake this and I’ll let you be.”

  Julian drank the tincture. It must have tasted terrible, because his entire body was wracked with a shudder as he swallowed.

  “I’m sorry,” Courtenay repeated as Julian collapsed onto the pillow. “So sorry.”

  Julian drifted in and out of alertness. He couldn’t manage to properly sleep, not when his head was filled with jagged rocks and his body was on fire. But whenever he opened his eyes, Courtenay was there. Sometimes Eleanor was in the room too, poking and prodding him as she always did during these episodes.

  “I’m reminding myself that you mean well,” Julian croaked. His mouth was dry and it was taking all his effort to speak. He couldn’t quite be sure—his mind wasn’t right—but he thought this was the first time he and Eleanor had seen one another since that awful garden party. “But please stop touching me.”

  She wrote something in that damned book. “You’re not as sick as you were the last time. At least not the last time I heard about.” She was annoyed, which was probably a sign that she didn’t think Julian would die. At least not this time.

  After she left, Julian painfully turned his head to see Courtenay. He was leaning against the wall near the empty grate.

  “Your valet arrived,” Courtenay said. “I can leave . . .”

  Julian felt the gears of his mind turning despite the illness and the pain. Courtenay could have left hours ago. Either he was here because he wanted to be, which was good, or because he felt guilty, which was intolerable.

  “None of this is your fault. I know you find it convenient to wallow in guilt and self-recrimination.” He took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice normal, tried not to fall back into the non-sleep of delirium. “It’s impossible for you to imagine that you aren’t responsible for the misfortunes of anyone . . .” He grasped for a word that wouldn’t imply more than Courtenay might feel. “Of anyone in emotional proximity to you. But my illness has nothing to do with you, and I didn’t go to that blasted ball just to show you up. I wanted to go because my fevered brain wasn’t working right.”

  Courtenay said something, but Julian couldn’t follow. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Courtenay was sitting by the bed, holding another glass of that god-awful tincture. Julian reached out but his hands were still too shaky. The shivers had started. He couldn’t even force his body to sit up. Courtenay brought the glass to his mouth and Julian drank, only wincing slightly from the taste. This experience was nightmarishly familiar: the ache in his head, the fire on his skin, the bone-deep sense of wrongness in his body. Even the taste of the tincture was something that had been with him for almost his entire life. The only unfamiliar element was Courtenay.

  “You can leave if you want,” Julian said as Courtenay plumped the pillow under Julian’s head.

  “I don’t know what I want,” Courtenay said after a while.

  Julian shut his eyes when the edges of his vision dissolved into emptiness.

  When he woke he felt a warmth on his arm. He opened his eyes and saw a jet-black kitten curled in the bend of his elbow.

  “I tried to get rid of them,” Courtenay said. He was still sitting by the bed, still wearing evening clothes despite the faint light coming in through the open windows. “But every time I shut the door another kitten crawls out from under a cushion.”

  “That’s how kittens work.” Julian’s mouth was dry. He was dreadfully thirsty and didn’t complain when Courtenay held the cup of tincture to his lips. This time Julian was able to half sit up, and Courtenay put a hand to the back of his head to steady him. The touch was startlingly intimate, but not the embarrassing bodily intimacy he usually associated with the sickroom. He sipped from the glass, and was surprised to find that the tincture tasted different, the bitterness of the root slightly masked not only by the usual wine but by something sweet. “Oh,” he said. “That’s not bad.”

  “Cook added treacle.” He took the empty glass and eased his hand away from Julian’s head. “I remembered you had a sweet tooth and suggested that she do something . . .”

  “Thank you.” Julian tried not to read too much into the gesture. Sugar syrup in one’s medicine did not constitute a declaration of love, or even a truce. He lifted a feeble hand to pet the sleeping kitten. It was still at the fragile stage of early kittenhood, all bones and fluff.

  “Do you want me to take the cat away?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because the two of you look adorable, and besides, there are two other kittens hiding in the bookcase, waiting for their chance to stake their claim.”

  Julian squirmed. He knew he didn’t look anything close to adorable. He was sweaty and disheveled and wearing nothing but one of Standish’s borrowed nightshirts. He could smell himself, which was never a good sign. Courtenay, meanwhile, was reprehensibly handsome in his evening clothes, even after a night of sitting in a sickroom. Julian thought he’d never get used to the stark fact of Courtenay’s beauty. Or, rather, he never would have, in a world where he was given the chance to find out.

  “The kitten was probably cold,” he said, stroking one of the cat’s impossibly tiny ears. “And I’m the warmest thing in the room. It would be mean-spirited for me to send him away.”

  Courtenay touched Julian’s brow. “Not as hot as you were when I brought you here. Perhaps you’re recovering?”

  “Or perhaps the fever will return tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after.”

  “Is that what usually happens?”

  “When I was a child, yes. But since coming to England it’s been mild.” Or, as mild as these things ever were. He remembered entire summers with fevers coming nightly. Then, he had thought it would kill him. Now, he still thought it might kill him, but likely not for decades, perhaps not until he was already old and infirm.

  “Do you want me here, Julian?”

  “Yes, please,” he answered, too quickly, but he didn’t care. “You’re the only one I want here.” You’re the only one I could stand to have here, he wanted to say.

  “Then I’ll stay.”

  Relief washed over Julian. He didn’t know whether he was still delirious or whether the illness had weakened his resolve, but he had never before wanted anyone with him when he was sick. He had always tried his hardest to send even Briggs and Eleanor away. He remembered what Courtenay had said about fighting desire being like tethering a balloon, and wondered if he had always wanted a companion, somebody he could turn to when he was at his most miserable, somebody to whom he could expose this most secret part of himself.

  “Until you’re well,” Courtenay added.

  That brought Julian crashing back to earth. Courtenay wasn’t here out of any affection for Julian, but out of some misguided sense of obligation. “No, damn it, please go if you’re going to be a martyr about it. I’d rather have Briggs, in that case.” He knew he sounded peevish and ungrateful but that was better than sounding pathetically disappointed.

  “Of course I want to be here. When I thought you were . . .” He gestured as if he couldn’t come up with the word, but the word was dying and they both knew it. “There wasn’t anywhere else I could have been.”

  He didn’t say that he wanted to be here. He said that he couldn’t have been anywhere else, and Julian didn’t know if that was better or worse. Before he could puzzle it out, he shut his eyes and fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Julian woke to the sound of Standish’s voice and the bizarre feeling of not knowing where or even when he was. He cracked open an eye just enough to see that he was in Eleanor’s drawing room. At some point, Julian couldn’t quite be sure when, he had graduated from the sofa in the back parlor to a chair in the drawing room. This was supposed to be a sign of improvement, it was supposed to be heartening. The dangerous part of the episode was over, but now Julian was a wrung-out rag, a dried husk of a man. This was the worst part, the weariness and weakness, the bodily stiffness, the bone-deep sense of bored uselessness. It was in this
state of mind that he had written The Brigand Prince.

  “You’re good at this,” he heard Standish say.

  “I’ve had practice.” It was Courtenay, somewhere behind Julian’s chair. Judging by the sounds of silver clinking against china, he was stirring something. Over the last day—two days, three days, however long it had been—the tincture had grown decreasingly noxious. “I like making sick people comfortable.”

  “He’s a terrible patient, though. Once he threw a dish at a wall. Broke the dish and a window.” Julian had been ten bloody years old and so fucking tired of being sick in bed.

  A pause stretched out. Would Courtenay laugh with Standish about Julian’s peevishness, his bad temperament? “But he must have been a child,” Courtenay said with a mildness Julian knew to be deceptive.

  “I suppose he must have been. It’s funny, but I don’t remember him being a child. I mean, not a proper child.”

  Julian wasn’t sure if he could actually hear Courtenay grind his teeth or if he just knew that it had to be happening.

  “I find it hard to imagine Julian being a less than proper anything,” Courtenay said.

  “What I mean to say is that he was never climbing trees or stealing sweets from the kitchens.”

  “You know more about those days than I do, but my understanding is that old Mr. Medlock gave Julian a good deal of responsibility as a way of sticking it to Julian’s father. Julian didn’t have much opportunity to steal sweets.” He paused, and when he spoke again he had resumed his customary charm. “Besides, I have it on good authority that he used to harbor wounded animals in the library. I believe Eleanor specifically told me of a mongoose.”

  Standish cracked a laugh. “Good God, I had forgotten about that. But even then, he acted as if the mongoose had to be given quarter in the library as a matter of course, and anyone who had the temerity to suggest otherwise was out of line. As if the mongoose had to be in the library, not because Julian wanted it, but because it was written in some book of household management. He’s always been like that.”