The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Dazed, Imogen trailed after Dr. Longhurst, surprised how reluctant she was to leave Trenwyth’s side, even to perform this little task. “The Ottomans?” He’d been the second one only this hour to deduce that. “Did you also read the American papers?”

  He gave her a queer sort of look. “No, but I’ve spent time among the Persians and the Turkish people, studying some of their chemical and medical advancements. While I respect and enjoyed them very much, I’ve also seen what they do to their enemies. Have you ever heard of Sharia law?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “If a man is considered a thief, it is the practice of certain sects to relieve him of the offending hand.”

  “How … barbaric.” She winced.

  “About as barbaric as what we Westerners do, believe you me.”

  Her own hand flew to her chest. Had Trenwyth run afoul of the Ottomans? Had he, indeed, been part of the April Uprising? Had he been a prisoner all this time? An entire year … She couldn’t bear the thought of so much suffering, only to end up like this.

  “Will Dr. Fowler mind the open windows, do you think?” she queried, desperate to inject some sense of normalcy into the conversation, lest he perceive her particular distress over Trenwyth’s condition. Crisp, spring air swirled in, carrying the sweet scent of puffed carameled corn and cinnamon pastries sold by street vendors. The aroma was underscored by the more pervasive, unpleasant odors of the city such as coal smoke, horses, and the preferably unidentifiable bouquet of the Thames.

  “Fowler can hang if he does,” Longhurst said evenly. “If the medical journals say this is best, then he should be paying them more mind than his backward traditions.”

  Imogen silently agreed, returning to Cole’s bedside and checking his chart. He’d been given every treatment possible to combat his condition. The ice baths, tinctures, teas, and so forth had produced little to no effect. “What else needs to be done for him, Dr. Longhurst?”

  To her utter surprise, the doctor rested a hand on her shoulder. “All we can do now is make him comfortable. And pray, if you do that sort of thing. Though his bandages may need changing in short order.”

  “I would be most anxious to assist while you—”

  “I don’t mean to seem … crude or unfeeling, Nurse Pritchard, but unlike you I’ve never had typhus. The less time I spend in here the better. For my patients and myself. If you could do as much on your own as necessary…”

  Suddenly the thought of being alone with Trenwyth appealed to her very much. “Of course, Doctor. If you would, please send William up with some marrow broth, bandages, ice, and water?”

  Longhurst nodded, assessing her with what she would call an earnest look before lowering his hand from her shoulder. “Do call me if—when his condition changes.”

  “Yes, sir.” Imogen barely noted his leaving as the gravity of his words struck her with new trepidation. Trenwyth couldn’t, indeed, remain in this limbo of fever and illness. He’d either recover eventually or …

  No. Shoving any grief-inducing words from her mind, she bent over him, resting a hand on his forehead. Touching him seemed surreal after all this time.

  He was so incredibly hot, it astonished her that his perspiration didn’t instantly turn to steam.

  Until she’d seen him, her greatest fear had been such a selfish one. That he would take one look at her, and remember who she was. That he would tell everyone that she’d been his prostitute, and she’d be dismissed on the spot. Now, a dread more insidious than that weaved its cold way through her as she hovered over him as though to shield him from the grim reaper.

  She feared for his life most of all.

  The man had been scoundrel and saint. Heathen and hero. A dangerous man and a deferential lover.

  And now …

  She brushed sweat-slicked hair away from his broad forehead, the most tender sentiment filling her chest nigh to bursting. Now he needed her again.

  “You are going to live, Cole,” she whispered to him. “I’ll make certain of it.”

  Typhus, a nasty disease they had called gaol fever in the not-too-distant past, preyed upon those that lived in squalor and drank putrid water. Then, the infection spread, like it had to those in the Pritchards’ close and dingy apartments so long ago when she’d battled the miserable disease.

  Rarely did someone like Trenwyth contract it. Someone healthy, adult, and well fed.

  How deplorable the conditions must have been in whatever hell he’d been rescued from.

  William arrived with the items she’d requested, and Imogen instantly got to work. She knew the duke would find it uncomfortable, but in order to bring his temperature under control, she’d need to rub him down with the ice thoroughly and often.

  “Does he need use of the necessary, Nurse Pritchard? He hasn’t since he arrived.”

  Imogen checked, frowning. “No, I’ll ring for you if he does.”

  Refusing William’s offer of further assistance, she waited until the door clicked closed again, and peeled the sheet back from Trenwyth’s body, now damp with his sweat.

  Try as she might, it was difficult not to despair as she dipped her soft cloth in the icy water and began bathing his forehead with it. He flinched at first, but then his head turned toward her touch, as though it brought him relief.

  In her cherished memory, Trenwyth was such an imposing man, almost inhuman in the perfection of his physique and abilities. Often, on her days off, she’d stroll through Hyde Park, pausing to consider the statue of Achilles at the Wellington Monument, and appreciating the physical similarities between the Greek hero and her one-time lover.

  Now, his flesh hung from sinew that clung more tightly to his thick bones. He was so tall, so naturally powerful, that his malnourishment was all the more horrid and conspicuous. She ran her cloth behind his neck and then to the front, tracing a poorly healed scar that reached from his clavicle to his shoulder. It hadn’t been there a year ago. Nor had the strange cluster of round, puckered skin that looked like pebbles had lodged into his flesh and subsequently been dug out. What could have caused such a scar? Trenwyth would, no doubt, have many more once the gashes and cuts now marking him healed.

  If they had the chance to.

  His murmuring became more insistent, escaping his dry, cracked lips on tortured sighs and groans. He still wasn’t coherent, and what few words she did catch disturbed and chilled her. March. Bayonets. Dig …

  Babies.

  Deciphering the horrors locked in his mind seemed too dreadful to contemplate. Dipping the cloth in the ice water once more, she spread it over the long range of his torso, interrupted by his many visible ribs and the uneven knots of his abdominals. He contracted, groaned, and then relaxed as the jarring cold became comfortingly cool.

  “I’m sorry to cause you any distress, Cole,” she whispered to him, checking beneath a bandage on his bicep and deciding that it did need changing. Peeling it off, she spread iodine over the neat stitches, and redressed it with clean bandages from her tray. “I’m doing this to keep you alive. I know you must be tired, so very tired, but can you fight a little while longer? I’ll fight too. Whatever it takes.”

  “Ginny?”

  Her name—her Kitten name—on his lips startled her so much that she surged to her feet and glanced around the empty room. Elation that he spoke, that he recognized her voice even after so long, was quickly followed by a grave trepidation.

  He made a sound of distress, his head turning this way and that as though looking for a familiar face in a crowd. The limb from which his hand had been taken flailed out. The subsequent groan that escaped him could have almost been a whimper had it been produced by a smaller chest. It was the sound of one forsaken. Low and desperate.

  It broke her heart into gossamer pieces.

  “Ginny,” he called, louder this time, and she could do nothing but answer him.

  “I’m here, Cole,” she soothed, as she sat down beside him on the bed. “I’m here. Do you remember m
e?” She shouldn’t be touched but, bleeding heart that she was, she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  Leaning over him, she took an ice chip from a crystal glass, and pressed it against his lower lip, letting it melt into his mouth. Pleased that he swallowed, she lifted the cloth warmed by his torso and submerged it back into the basin.

  “Ginny.” His right hand burrowed into the rough folds of her uniform skirt and clung there with astonishing force for one so ill. “The world was on fire, Ginny,” he moaned. “The world was on fire, and I thought I was in hell.”

  “I know,” she whispered, again wiping his unruly hair from where it was plastered to his burning forehead. She didn’t know—couldn’t comprehend—but desperately wanted to lend him some comfort. Some understanding.

  “But it was the snow. The snow…” He pulled at her skirts, becoming more agitated. “Hell isn’t fire, Ginny. It’s ice.”

  “Shhhhh,” she soothed, swallowing the lump in her throat that threatened to restrict her breath. She couldn’t think of a thing to say but, “You’re safe now,” which seemed like a tired and overused consolation.

  And wasn’t entirely true.

  If he’d had a terrible experience with ice, then her ministrations must be akin to torture, but how else could she keep his dangerous temperature from cooking him alive?

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered through eyes blurred with tears as she took the frigid cloth and, this time, wrapped his feet with it, attempting to draw the heat from his head.

  He hissed and repeated her name. Then his breath caught, and every one of his muscles seemed to tighten. Imogen watched helplessly as his bruised, pale body convulsed for a moment, and was glad that he was too weak to kick out at her. Thank God the typhus hadn’t produced the rash that most often accompanied the fever. When she’d been afflicted, she remembered her skin feeling like little beastly ants were slowly eating her flesh away. It had been unspeakably miserable.

  Trenwyth had been spared that, at least.

  She crooned soft things to him as she melted another ice chip on his mouth, painting his lips with it, and allowing the water to trickle inside. This he seemed to tolerate well, and even sighed when she produced another.

  “I dreamed of you,” he rasped through a throat abraded by desert sand and pain. “I dreamed of blood. And you.”

  “I dreamed of you too,” she confessed, pressing her hand to his forehead once more. She’d thought it impossible, but he felt even warmer than before.

  “Bugger,” she muttered, and stood.

  “No.” He pulled her back to the bed with surprising strength.

  “Hush, Cole, hush now,” she soothed, reaching down to uncurl his fingers from her skirts. It seemed that her voice lowered to a whisper every time she said his name; the intimacy of it felt wicked on her tongue. She should be calling him Your Grace, even in private, but the familiarity seemed a nominal sin considering the circumstances. “I’m going to change your bandage.” She kept talking, as it seemed to appease him and calm his increasingly shallow breaths. “Then we’ll see if you can keep down some bone broth and tea.”

  Settling herself on the other side of him, she stretched his left arm out so his wrist hung over the edge of the bed. She intended to use the flat-sided scissors to cut the bandage off, but the moment the scissors touched the edge of the bandage he groaned and flinched expansively. Had Imogen worse reflexes, he could have been cut.

  She decided to unwrap it, instead, the chore taking her extra long because of his severe reaction each time she exerted even the smallest amount of pressure.

  Imogen liked to think of herself as a seasoned and stouthearted nurse by now, incapable of disgust, but she gasped when she uncovered Trenwyth’s mangled wrist. The wound was not fresh, indeed, it was more healed than not. It became apparent from the haphazard stitching of the skin, and the misshapen form, that it hadn’t been properly cared for at all.

  Battling her temper along with a fresh wave of pity, she reached for the iodine, applying it to the wound.

  She barely ducked a vicious strike as he screamed in pain. Imogen stared down at him in helpless frustration as a suspicion began to form.

  Fever, pallidness, delirium, and muscle contractions … all symptoms of typhus. But so was a rash that covered the entire body, and there was generally a dry and hacking cough, which Trenwyth didn’t have. Granted, his breathing was shallow, and his pulse weak … but didn’t William say he hadn’t released any water since he’d arrived?

  Dropping the iodine, Imogen ran from the room in search of Dr. Fowler. Trenwyth didn’t have typhus but something just as deadly, if not worse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Nurse Pritchard, I shouldn’t think you prone to such ridiculous bouts of female hysteria.” Dr. Fowler was a rather jowly man for one so thin. The extra skin drooped from his cheeks, punctuating his supercilious frown. “The diagnosis is typhus. Every medical professional who’s cared for Lord Trenwyth from India to here has agreed that this is a textbook case.”

  That was assuming Trenwyth actually traveled from India and not Bulgaria or Constantinople like the evidence might suggest.

  “So you didn’t make the initial diagnosis yourself?” Imogen pressed.

  “Careful, Nurse Pritchard, you are on dangerous ground.” Displeasure snapped from eyes also afflicted with loose skin.

  “I wouldn’t dream of meaning any disrespect, Dr. Fowler,” Imogen began, “but I believe I’ve made a strong case for septicemia. If you’d only witnessed how His Grace reacted when I touched his wrist—”

  “The poor man had his hand hacked off,” Fowler interrupted impatiently. “Or sawed off, judging by the sight of it, of course it still causes him pain.”

  “Yes, but his pain seemed rather extreme and—”

  “Is the site swollen, Nurse Pritchard?” He regarded her with such obvious disdain, she could have been a rodent in need of extermination.

  “Not that I can tell, but it’s so poorly healed that—”

  “Is it visibly quite red or extraordinarily warm to the touch?”

  “His entire body is quite warm to the touch.” She’d not actually been hysterical when he’d accused her of it, but Imogen could now hear the desperation creeping into her voice.

  “But the wound is not red, is it? There is no abscess or evident swelling.”

  She didn’t want to cede the point, but she dare not lie. “If you’d only take a moment to come with me so that I can show you, I might be able to better express—”

  “You’re treating me as though I didn’t examine the wound for myself.” The director put undue emphasis on the word. “Are you insinuating that I have been somehow derelict in my assessment?”

  “I would never presume, but could we not at least perform a procedure to fix the damaged wrist and create a smoother limb? Then we’d know for certain, and if I’m mistaken, then at least His Grace lives more comfortably.”

  “Nonsense! I cannot in good conscience submit such an ailing patient to the risks of the surgical theater,” he blustered. “I’d lose all credibility, and the ability to practice medicine. No, no, dear girl. Besides, the aesthetics of what’s left of Trenwyth’s arm are the least of his problems. He’ll likely not live long enough to notice—”

  Impassioned, Imogen slapped her hands on his grand mahogany desk and splayed them open, leaning low over his seated form. “He cannot be allowed to die, Dr. Fowler. It is our duty to do all that we can. To explore every angle and at least consider alternate diagnoses and treatment. What if I’m right? Isn’t it at least worth looking again?”

  “I believe I know what is going on here,” Dr. Fowler said after regarding her for an uncomfortably long time. He rose from his desk, and Imogen had to stop herself from taking a step back. She stood to face him, like David squaring off with Goliath. Only without a slingshot. Or an army. Or any real expertise.

  Bugger.

  “I understand our beloved Majesty tasked you with Trenwyth’s surv
ival. She is an imposing and powerful woman, but even she cannot control the course of disease. The duke is in God’s hands now. The odds of him enduring this illness are insignificant at best.” Fowler crossed his extravagant office to open the door, dismissing her entirely. “Don’t take this so hard, my dear. Your concern and enthusiasm do you credit, and I promise there will be no reprisal on you should the duke expire. Your job is to keep him clean and comfortable, and to leave the diagnoses to the doctors.”

  Imogen didn’t trust herself to move. Her entire body shook with equal measures of fear and rage. She abhorred conflict, was petrified of it. But worse than that, she despised ignorant, egotistical men who’d rather see someone die than have their opinions questioned by someone of inferior rank.

  By a woman.

  God’s hands, indeed. Cole was in their hands, in her hands, and they should be doing everything they could. How did Dr. Fowler not comprehend that?

  “Good day, Nurse Pritchard.”

  Imogen fled the room, not trusting herself to reply.

  By the time she found Dr. Longhurst in the laboratory, her lungs fought for every breath impeded by her corset and a band of desperation.

  “You have to do something, or he’s going to die!” she demanded.

  “Nurse Pritchard?” Longhurst blinked at her from behind goggles that turned his dark green eyes positively owlish with astonishment and caused his unruly chocolate curls to gather comically high on his crown. “Say what?”

  “Col—His Grace, I believe his affliction is septicemia, not typhus. I think his wrist is infected and making him ill and that no one has noticed until now.”

  Carefully, as though handling something volatile, Longhurst set the beaker he’d been inspecting on one of the many workbenches strewn about the room. Imogen navigated them like a maze.