If he were less of a gentleman, he might have continued to pretend he was asleep, but Theo was pale and exhausted, and he could not allow her to shoulder the burden of his family as well as her—entirely justified—fears for his health and safety.
So he opened his eyes. “Peace, Mama,” he said as she demanded from Theo a list of his symptoms and ailments. “I’m recovering.”
His mother let out a little scream and fell to his side. “Oh Nathanial!”
Elinor, a little further back, had clapped her hand over her mouth, and Penelope was weeping into a little handkerchief.
“What a maudlin sight,” he said dryly, offering his other hand to whichever sister came to claim it first. “Anyone wouldhave thought you had come to mourn my passing. Weep over my deathbed, if you please, and not here.”
“When Theodosia sent us word that—” His mother broke off, sharp eyes assessing the bandage around his chest. In truth, his wound ached like the devil and itched something terrible, too. The doctor had assured him that they were healing pains, but it was taking all his self-control not to rip the blasted bandages away so he could address the itch.
“She told us you’d been hurt in a hunting accident,” Elinor supplied, sufficiently in control to find a chair for Penelope, who clung to his hand and pressed it to her forehead. Only Cassandra hadn’t moved, staring at him as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“She gave us leave to think,” Cassandra whispered, “that youwereon your deathbed.”
“Poor Theo,” Nathanial said, looking for his wife, but she’d slipped from the room. He couldn’t blame her. “I think she began to fear the worst and wanted to ensure you were all here in case. No doubt her note was unnecessarily urgent.”
“There’s not a doubt it was suitably urgent,” his mother said in arctic tones, “but the question is why it was not sent before.”
Nathanial almost wished he’d kept his eyes closed and maintained the façade of sleep. “You must excuse her, Mama. She was tired, recovering from her own illness, and no doubt didn’t want to alarm you.”
Elinor was staring hard at him, eyes slightly narrowed. “Odd that you took ill so soon after she did,” she said after a moment.
“Odd? Not at all,” Nathanial said cheerfully. If there was one thing Theo and he agreed on, it was that his family—or hers—would not be privy to the information that someone was trying to kill them. Nothing could be more assured to cause unnecessary panic. “Although certainly unfortunate.”
“She ought not to have nursed you alone,” Penelope said, dropping her sodden handkerchief on the bedside table andturning red eyes to him. “What a burden to have borne . . .” She shuddered.
“Lord Stapleton did a great deal as well,” Nathanial said. “We are greatly indebted to him. But did you think you would nurse me back to health yourself, Pen?” He pinched her cheek when she didn’t reply. “You know as well as I do that you would have been quite undone when I was at the height of my fever, and we can’t have hysterics.”
“Iwould not have succumbed to hysterics,” Elinor said stiffly. “I would thank you to bear that in mind.”
“No, you would have rearranged the household according to your inflexible vision of how things ought to be done, and you would have scolded me until I regained consciousness.”
Two pink spots appeared on her cheeks. “Well really, Nathanial—”
“And Cassandra shouldn’t have left young William,” he said, giving her a kind smile at her doleful expression. “At least, not for the period of time it would have taken to nurse me back to health. So you see, Theo made the right choice in not summoning you here sooner. She afforded you the least amount of worry and inconvenience possible.”
His mother speared him with a glance. “You appear to think she acted correctly in all things.”
“Mama,” he said, conscious of an odd feeling of pride in his chest, “I would not have handed my care into the hands of another person. She did everything that was right and my biggest regret is that her health suffered in tending to mine.”
His mother harumphed, but the fire was gone from her voice. “In which case, I’m glad she was here, even if another woman might have given us earlier news of your condition.”
“If you mean to disparage Theo as my wife, you may as well leave now,” he said, anger in every word, and for the first time, his mother smiled.
“No, I don’t mean to do that. She’s a good girl, and devoted to you, which I concede has its benefits. A wife should be devoted to a husband where possible, and when the husband in question deserves her devotion.” What a lady should do when her husband did not deserve her devotion, she didn’t mention. Nathanial didn’t dare ask.
“Now,” Elinor said, providing another chair for Cassandra and seating herself on the end of the bed. “You must tell us everything.”
To Nathanial’s disgust, he and Theo were forced to remain at the Stapletons’ for another three weeks. Nathanial graduated from the bed to the chair, and eventually ventured downstairs, but the doctor refused all mention of travel until his wound had sufficiently closed.
But, just as Nathanial thought he might go mad, or might stride out into the estate in the hopes whoever had taken a shot at him might have another go, the doctor proclaimed he was recovered enough to travel.
They left the next day.
“Thank goodness,” Theo said, resting her head against the seat. Her face was pale, and her eyes underlined with deep shadows. “If I’d been obliged to spend another evening with Lady Stapleton, I think I would have screamed.”
Nathanial gave a slight smile at the idea of Theo, so determined to step into the role of duchess, losing all sense of propriety. “I only wish we could have left several weeks ago.”
