Five words were all it took.
“Mama, I don’t feel good.”
The words were so small, so plaintive, that Amelia almost didn’t hear them over the rain battering the windows. She looked up from her embroidery—tedious work she’d been using to avoid thinking about the choices she had to make, choices that were far from easy.
Henry stood in the nursery doorway, his wooden horse dangling forgotten from one hand. Even from across the room, she could see the flush staining his cheeks. The unnatural brightness in his eyes.
The embroidery hoop clattered to the floor.
“Darling?” She was across the room before conscious thought could intervene, her hand finding his forehead. Heat radiated from his small body like a furnace. “Oh, sweetheart. Come here.”
She lifted him—when had he grown so heavy?—and carried him to his bed. His head lolled against her shoulder with a listlessness that sent ice flooding through her veins. Henry was never listless. Never still. He was perpetual motion and endless questions and laughter that could light up the darkest corners.
This terrible stillness was wrong.
“Mrs. Boldwood!” Her voice emerged sharper than intended, edged with panic she couldn’t quite suppress. “Mrs. Boldwood, send for the physician. Immediately.”
The housekeeper appeared with the efficiency of long service, took one look at Henry’s flushed face, and paled. “At once, my lady.”
The minutes stretched like hours. Amelia stripped Henry down to his smallclothes, her hands shaking as she worked. His skin burned beneath her fingers. Too hot. Far too hot.
Not him. Please, not him. Anyone but him.
She’d lost her mother. Lost the version of herself that had existed before Edward’s coldness had taught her to make herself small. She could not—would not—lose her son.
“Mama?” Henry’s voice was thin, reedy. “I’m cold.”
“I know, darling. I know.” She pulled the lightest coverlet over him, though every instinct screamed to bundle him in warmth. But she remembered enough from her own childhood fevers—the physician had always adviced keeping the patient cool. Let the heat escape rather than trap it.
Please let me remember correctly. Please let that be right.
Henry began to cry—not the robust wailing of a child denied what he wanted, but a weak, pitiful sound that tore at something deep in her chest. She gathered him close, rocking slowly, humming the lullaby her own mother had sung before death had stolen her away.
The physician arrived as the evening bells were chiming seven. Mr. Thornton was an elderly, competent physician, his manner brisk but not unkind as he examined Henry with methodical thoroughness.
“A fever, certainly,” he pronounced at last, snapping his bag closed. “Common enough in children his age. The body purging some ill humour, most likely.”
“But what do I do?” The desperation in her voice was undignified, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “How do I make him better?”
“Cool cloths to the forehead and wrists. Small sips of barley water if he’ll take it. And this—” He produced a dark bottle from his bag. “Three drops in water, every four hours. It should help bring the fever down and ease his discomfort.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Her hands clenched in her skirts. “If the fever doesn’t break?”
“Give it time, Lady Amelia.” His expression gentled fractionally. “Children are remarkably resilient. More often than not, these fevers burn themselves out within a day or two. But if it worsens—if he develops difficulty breathing, or becomes unresponsive—send for me immediately.”
He departed with promises to return in the morning, leaving Amelia alone with her fear and a bottle of herbal draught that seemed woefully inadequate to the task.
The hours crawled past with agonizing slowness. She followed the physician’s instructions with desperate precision. Cool cloths, replaced as soon as they grew warm. Three drops of the draught, administered with trembling hands whilst Henry whimpered and tried to turn his face away. Barley water he wouldn’t touch.
And through it all, the fever burned on.
“Hush now, my darling.” She’d lost count of how many times she’d sung the lullaby, her voice growing hoarse. “Mama’s here. You’re safe. You’re going to be fine.”
Please let that be true. Please, God, let that be true.
The rain intensified, drumming against the windows with percussion that matched her racing pulse. Lightning flickered, throwing strange shadows across the nursery walls. And Henry’s small body trembled in her arms, burning with heat that refused to abate no matter how many cool cloths she applied.
At some point—she’d lost all track of time—his crying changed. Grew weaker. More desperate. His eyes, when they fluttered open, seemed unfocused. Glassy.
