“They are going to begin,” he muttered. “I must help them hold her still. But Cissy… truly, you have my deepest gratitude. I love you for it.”
She smiled, encouraging him to go to his wife’s bedside, where their parents were beginning the process of removing the dagger in Elle’s chest. As she watched, Curtis knelt down next to his wife’s head, holding her left arm still while Myles got in behind their father and held her right arm. The entire de Lohr family was pulling together to save the young woman who had become Curtis’ all for living. Perhaps they didn’t know her very well, but that didn’t matter. She was precious to Curtis, and that made her precious to the rest of them. Like a pride of lions, the House of de Lohr banded together. When one was hurt, they were all hurt.
This was their way of preventing any more hurt to one of their own.
Elle was going to live.
The de Lohr family would make sure of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He’d been toolate to warn them.
Jeffrey had arrived about a day after Amaro’s chaos. He quickly discovered that Amaro had moved through Brython like a tempest, injuring Lady Leominster and killing her cousin. But he hadn’t made it out alive, thanks to Asa and Sean de Lara, who had disposed of the pieces of Amaro’s body in a manner they wouldn’t disclose. Hugo, who had known of Amaro’s vendetta, had been so distressed about the situation that Christopher sent him back to Lioncross. The man had been a wreck. But no one felt guiltier about the situation than Jeffrey. He felt as if he’d failed the entire family by letting Amaro slip away from under his watchful eye, even when Christopher had assured him that it wasn’t his fault.
But Jeffrey didn’t see it that way.
The day after he’d arrived, word was that Lady Leominster was doing well. She was eating and arguing with her husband about getting out of bed, which was a good sign. Everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. She’d been told about Melusine and, quite naturally, she was grieving it deeply. Her desire to get out of bed was because Curtis had sent word to the priests at St. Nicholas because they needed to bury Melusine,and Elle was adamant that she attend the burial. Unfortunately, Curtis would not let her go, and that only compounded her grief. She was angry and upset, and he’d spent two days trying to comfort her.
Meanwhile, the guests who had come for Curtis’ celebratory feast had all departed for home. This included Caius, Sean, Wolverhampton, Wrexham, and even Peter and Alexander. Although Christin in particular was loath to leave, the truth was that she had young children who needed her, as did Liora. Dustin had Christin take her son as well as her younger sisters with her, removing Andrew and Rebecca and Olivia Charlotte from the madness, while Dustin and Christopher remained behind. It was with great sadness that Curtis bade everyone farewell, promising to see them at a more favorable time.
Jeffery had watched the departures from the wall, unable to shake the feeling of doom that had settled on him. His guilt was endless. But his arrival was fortuitous, because the de Lohrs seemed to be consumed with Elle and the situation at hand, so Jeffery took command of the castle when Tristan de Royans headed home. Perhaps he didn’t feel so much like a failure when he could do something useful. But as he, and everyone else, prayed for Lady Leominster’s recovery, dark forces were seemingly at work. Two days after surviving the attack on her life, Elle began showing signs of a fever.
By nightfall, she was on fire.
The hope that had so recently been present as Elle’s healing began was dashed when a poison took hold. Hugo’s men, the ones sent to find a physic, had gone into England looking for such a man, and every qualified individual they found refused to go that far into Wales. Realizing the difficulty of convincing an English physic to enter Wales, the men shifted tactics and headed to Rhayader, the closest village, and were referred toPliny, who knew Elle and agreed to come. But what he saw upon his arrival did not please him.
He was in for a fight.
Elle slept fitfully most of the time as the first day of fever stretched into the second and the third. She was worried for her baby, not for her own life, as Pliny forced a willow bark potion down her lips every few hours whilst working to create something he called rotten tea, an ancient recipe for healing those with poison in their bodies. Unfortunately, it took time to produce what he needed, so all he could do in the meanwhile was give Elle what he had and hope that was enough.
But fevers were unpredictable things.
The fever would ease, only to come back more strongly than before. On the sixth day, Curtis could barely rouse Elle, who slept heavily and sweated profusely. Her wound was festering, and although Dustin had washed the wound out as best she could with wine before stitching it, Pliny was convinced that some bit of fabric or another foreign body was causing the poison to rage.
That meant opening the stitches and cleaning out the wound again.
It was with a heavy heart that Curtis, Christopher, and Dustin held Elle down as Pliny removed the stitches and began to probe a wound that didn’t seem to want to heal. Elle’s lungs hadn’t been compromised by the puncture, which was good news, but she screamed in pain as Pliny probed the wound, cleaning out clots and pus until he finally came to a small bit of linen from Elle’s shift that had been shoved deep into the wound when the blade made contact. Elle had finally passed out from the pain, and Pliny quickly removed the fabric, cleaning the wound once more and stitching it up. Bandaging it tightly, he told a very pale-faced Curtis that all they could do at that point was wait.
Wait to live.
Or wait to die.
Only time would tell.
So, they waited.
On the seventh day, Christopher was in the bailey with his sons, getting some much-needed fresh air. Elle had slipped into unconsciousness at that point, and had been for over a day, so the mood was solemn. No one wanted to voice what they were thinking, which was the fact that Elle was going to die. The fever was going to kill her. Myles had even sent word to Gruffydd the day before to let the man know what had happened. But no one would speak the words aloud, even if that was the general consensus.
Christopher had to seriously wonder what her death was going to do to Curtis.
“Papa!” Douglas shouted, sitting atop a very big horse with shaggy hair. “What do you think of him?”
Distracted from his morose thoughts, Christopher caught sight of his son as he emerged from the stable yard. “Think of what?” he said. “It looks like you are riding a haystack with legs.”
Douglas frowned. “This is a very fine animal,” he told his father as he drew close. “The man I bought him from says that he has seen many a battle. He is big and tough. See?”
Christopher could only see a very beaten-down nag of a horse. Westley came up behind Douglas, stick in hand, and began to poke at the horse, hoping to annoy it enough so it would dump his brother. As Christopher stood there, a dubious expression on his face, Myles walked up beside him.
