feared.
“Hm,” the surgeon said, probing around the area of the burst abscess with a finger that Ellen would dearly have liked to dip in her washtub. “He is a fortunate young man, I would say. It looks as if he might live after all. And the fever has gone. It is the fever that has been the great killer. So many good men in the last two weeks, ma’am.”
“He will live?” she asked.
He shrugged. “He is young,” he said, “and big and strong. He will live if he wants to live, I would reckon. Not that I am God, ma’am. I have seen worse cases recover. Keep him on toast and tea. I will come back tomorrow and bleed him again.”
Ellen swallowed. “Is he unconscious or sleeping?” she asked.
The surgeon pursed his lips. “Perhaps a bit of both,” he said. “Men don’t sleep properly when they have the fever. He will probably be dead to the world for a few days. Figuratively speaking, we hope.” He laughed heartily so that Ellen glanced anxiously down at Lord Eden.
“Yes, he needs sleep,” she said.
“And so do you, ma’am, if you don’t mind my saying so,” the doctor said, his manner suddenly kindly. “And you won in the case of the boy, didn’t you? A nasty blow, that, to my professional pride, you know. So the lad will march home with two arms. What happened to him?”
“Someone came for him,” she said. “A lieutenant in his regiment. Apparently the boy had been a stable lad at his father’s house. The lieutenant was taking him back home again. He had been wounded too. A nice happy ending, was it not?”
“Aye,” the surgeon said with a sigh. “There have been precious few of those in these last days, ma’am. Good day to you. I’ll call again tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She felt bone-weary. She leaned over Lord Eden to observe that he was still in a sleep so deep that it frightened her. And then she went to fetch blankets and a pillow from another room and curled up on the floor beside his bed. She was asleep long before her body could make any protest against the hardness of the floor.
THE EARL OF AMBERLEY met his wife and children and his mother in the hallway of his London home. They were returning from an early-afternoon walk in Hyde Park.
“Well, tiger,” he said, scooping up his son, who hurtled toward him across the tiled floor, “did you have a good walk?”
“Horsies!” the child cried excitedly.
“Were there?” his father said. “Lots of them? And how is my princess? A big smile for Papa again? I am in favor these days. And here is Nanny Rey to take you both back to the nursery. Are you sleepy, tiger? No, that was a silly question, wasn’t it? Why would a big man like you be sleepy in the middle of the day? I tell you what. You pretend to sleep for Nanny while she rocks Caroline. See how long you can keep up the game. All right?”
The child giggled and squirmed to be put down. He was soon laboriously climbing the stairs ahead of his nanny and the baby.
Lord Amberley turned to his wife and his mother with a smile. The latter was looking thin and drawn, he noticed not for the first time in the month since he had been home. And even Alex had lost some of her bloom.
“Would you like to step into the library for a moment?” he said. “Was the park crowded?”
The two women exchanged glances as they followed him across the hall to the library. Neither answered his question. Edmund only ever smiled like that when he was troubled.
“Dominic?” the dowager Countess of Amberley asked as a footman closed the door behind them.
“Sit down, Mama,” the earl said quietly. “I have just had a letter from Madeline. It was written three weeks ago, if you would believe. Dominic is in Brussels. He has a quite severe chest wound and broken ribs and was in a high fever when she wrote.”
The countess crossed the room to his side and laid a hand on his arm.
“So he is not on his way to Paris with the rest of the army,” the dowager said brightly. “And we have been wrong to blame him for being thoughtless and not writing.”
“And Madeline’s silence is explained too,” her daughter-in-law said. “Everything has been chaos. She must have written immediately. So she is with him, Edmund?”
“Apparently not,” he said. “He is at the Rue de la Montagne with Mrs. Simpson. Madeline cannot leave Lady Andrea’s. It seems the house has been turned into a hospital, and Madeline is being rushed off her feet.”
“But he is in good hands,” the countess said. “You would like her, Mama. She is quite charming and very calm and sensible. Did Madeline say if Captain Simpson is well, Edmund?”
“Killed, I am afraid,” he said.
“Oh.” His wife looked, stricken, up into his face. “How dreadful. They were so devoted.”
The dowager countess rose restlessly on her feet. “The news is three weeks old, Edmund?” she said. “And he was badly hurt. And fevered. The news is so old.”
“Will you go to him, Edmund?” his wife asked. “Oh, I wish now that I had insisted that you stay.”
“The chances are that he is better by now and on his way home,” the earl said, covering her hand with his own. “But, yes, I think I will go, my love, if you will not mind being left.”
“Foolish!” she said.
“I am going too,” the older lady said, her voice trembling quite noticeably. “I should have gone earlier in the spring and stayed. It just seemed that if I remained in the sanity of London, everything would be all right. You must take me to Brussels, Edmund.”
“It is a long and tiring journey to make just to find that perhaps he has gone already, Mama,” the earl said.
“Gone!” she said. “But he is my boy, Edmund. My son. I am going to him even if I have to go alone. I must go home immediately to get ready.”
The earl crossed the room to her and put an arm firmly about her shoulders. “We will leave in the morning, Mama,” he said. “You and I together. There will be plenty of time to have your bags packed. I shall order the carriage in a little while to take you home. But first you must sit down and have tea with us. You see? Alex has rung the bell for it already. And that is an order from the head of the family, my dear.”
His mother collapsed against him. “I thought I would be relieved once I heard,” she said. “No matter what the news was. As long as I knew, I thought. But I still do not know. Three weeks, Edmund. And he had a high fever.”
He kissed her forehead and held her to him. “No, don’t choke back your tears, Mama,” he said. “I shall feel remarkably foolish for my own if you succeed in controlling yours. Tomorrow we will be on our way. Then at least we will be doing something. And soon enough we will know.”
He looked at his wife through his tears as he held his mother’s head to his shoulder and rocked her against him.
Chapter 10
HE WAS STILL SLEEPING WHEN SHE WOKE UP. It was a deep and peaceful sleep. There was none of the tossing and turning of his head and the heightened color and the mutterings that she had become used to in two weeks of nursing him. He was sleeping. He was going to get well again.
Ellen was feeling cramped from lying on the hard floor. But she did not move for a while. She lay still and looked at him. Would she even call him handsome if she were to see him now for the first time? His normally fair wavy hair had not been washed in two weeks, except at the forehead and temples with the damp cloths she had used so often to cool his face. He had a two-week growth of beard. And his face was thinner than it had been. Even his arm and hand, flung out on top of the covers, were thinner.
But he had come home, and she had fought for his life. And he was going to live. The question of whether he looked handsome or not was supremely irrelevant.
