Soothcoor nodded silently.
James stared at him, wanting more.
“A little,” Soothcoor finally said. “I used my cravat to wrap around it to stop the bleeding.”
“Which hasn’t been changed in the week you’ve been here, has it?” James said, leaning across the table.
Soothcoor looked down at his hands, but not before James caught the faint smile pulling on his friend’s lips.
“Yes, I’m taking charge,” James said, fighting against an answering smile for he knew what caused Soothcoor’s humor. James maintained a phlegmatic manner in society, unless his friends or family were in distress or danger, then the commanding Peninsular War army colonel returned.
The warden walked back to the door. “I be breakin’ me own rules as it is to ’ave you here. I’ll give you one ’our,” he said. He closed the door behind him.
James heard the key turning in the lock, securing him inside. He wouldn’t be able to leave until the warden returned.
CHAPTER 8
ILLNESS SPREADS
“You look the healthiest I have seen you look in over a month,” Sarah critically told Cecilia as she removed her breakfast tray from Cecilia’s lap.
“Two days ago, I would have celebrated that observation,” Cecilia said with a wry smile.
“I remember how pale you looked and the circles under your eyes. Perhaps…” Her words trailed off. She set the tray on the table beside the bed and went to the small coal stove. She swiped her fingertips in the hearth where the stove sat. Bits of coal and ash dust colored her fingertips. She wiped the heaviest off on the underside of her apron then crossed back to the bed.
Cecilia nodded appreciatively and tilted her face toward her maid.
Sarah lightly wiped the gray residue on her fingers below Cecilia’s eyes and a little on her eyelids. Using a handkerchief, she gently blended the gray in. “Too dark would be suspect,” she said to Cecilia. “You want just a bit of a wan look.”
“It is too bad we don’t have any rice powder for my complexion,” Cecilia murmured as she stayed still beneath Sarah’s ministrations.
“Yes, but I think this will do. You are supposedly over being sick, just slow to recover, right?”
“I have been slow to recover,” Cecilia agreed. She turned her head away a moment to cough.
“As sick as you were, the staff thinks you are doing well since you rose from your sick bed. And you do still have that cough,” Sarah pointed out.
“That is the only thing, and Dr. Patterson said that is what lingers with everyone who’s come down with this wretched illness.”
“That is the reminder you are not totally well yet and to take it easy. Let me fetch the hand mirror so you may see what I’ve done.” She brought back the mirror and handed it to Cecilia.
Cecilia looked at her face from one angle and then another. She smiled at what she saw, then quickly dropped the smile. “It looks convincing, I think, so long as I don’t smile. Smiling destroys the image.”
“Well, as you are supposed to be sick still, you wouldn’t be smiling.”
“True…Maybe a small weak smile for effect.”
Sarah laughed. “Yes.”
“Please get me my clothes out. I should like to visit Mr. Stackpoole.”
Sarah had crossed the room to fetch clean linens when someone knocked on the door.
Cecilia waved at Sarah to answer.
“One moment,” Sarah called out. She set the linens on the bed and crossed to the door. She pressed on the latch and pulled open the door a few inches. When she saw who stood on the other side, she opened it all the way.
“Who is it?” Cecilia asked.
