“We can’t do this,” he whispered.
“I know,” she replied.
“As much as I… as much as I want to. And God, I really do,” he said, the words sounding like a death toll to her just waking heart. “Imogen, we cannot do this. I cannot believe I almost lost control.”
“I… Yes. You’re-you’re right,” she repeated, her voice quivering as she frantically smoothed her hair.
“It is agreed then. There can be no more of this.”
“It is impossible. It was impossible before, and now?—”
“Oh, now, it’s worse,” Ambrose finished for her, his voice breaking.
“Worse?” she tilted her head to the side.
“I can taste you… You’ve left me impossibly hungry, and now the very thing I crave is taunting me from right under my roof.”
He looked at her one last time, a look of such profound longing that it made her heart ache, before he turned, swung open the door to the bedchamber, and strode down the dark hallway.
“Goodnight, Miss Lewis,” he called over his shoulder as he went into his quarters down the hall and shut the door with a thud.
Imogen was left alone in the shadows, the blue ribbon lying forgotten on the floor.
Chapter Eighteen
“Come on now, Lord Philip,” Imogen whispered to the boy as he slept restlessly.
We were fools to be so easily heartened. I cannot believe we saw that brief cooling of his skin as victory, that we mistook the exhaustion of his body for the breaking of the fever. Surely it was born of our desperation to see him well, yet to steal away for such a selfish moment…
“You are a fighter, Lord Philip! You can overcome this,” she cried.
The air in the nursery had grown thick, a weight that pressed against the lungs of anyone who went inside. It was a suffocating braid of scents - the sharp, acidic bite of vinegar-soaked rags, the cloying heaviness of the boy’s fever-sweat, and the sweetness of dried chamomile and valerian root steeping in the corner.
By the second afternoon, the smells had stained the curtains. By the third, they seemed to have stained Imogen’s very skin.
She sat in a high-backed wingchair Mrs. Higgins had brought in from the study, her body vibrating with a fatigue so deep it felt like a hum in her very bones. Across from her, Philip tossed under the heavy quilts, his fever broken but his breathing erratic and uneven. His skin was the color of curdled cream, slicked with a fine, oily sheen that the vinegar wash couldn’t seem to strip away.
“Just a sip, dear,” she whispered as she held a teacup to his lips. Her own voice sounded foreign to her, a dry rasp in the quiet room.
She lifted his head, as fragile as a bird, and pressed the rim of the teacup to his cracked lips. He moaned, a faint sound that made her heart lurch and swallowed a dark trickle of herbal brew.
Poor boy, he just cannot fight the last of this congestion… I need something to help loosen it. I will try another vapor.
She went down to the scullery then and fetched some fresh mint, making a small basin of boiling water with the herb. She carried it back to his room, set it by the bedside, dunked a towel inside, then held it to the boy’s chest.
“This will loosen the humors,” she said.
As she lowered him back down, her vision blurred. The floral pattern on the wallpaper began to swirl, the rosebuds stretching into long, grasping fingers. She did not realize she had closed her eyes until the heavy clack of the door latch jerked her upright.
Night had swallowed the room. The only light came from a dying fire, casting the nursery in jagged orange and bruised purple. A silhouette stood in the doorway, vast, motionless, and cold. She knew it was the Duke.
He didn’t step onto the rug. He simply let his shadow stretch across the floorboards until it touched the foot of his nephew’s bed. He stood there for a count of ten, his presence a sweet demand for recovery, before the shadow withdrew and the door clicked shut.
Then came Dr. Gump, the family physician, a blur of rustling coattails and the metallic clink of instruments.
“My apologies for the hour, but I had another patient with dysentery. The pulse is still rapid, but that is good. He is fighting,” the old man muttered, his hand a pale ghost against Philip’s wrist. Imogen watched him through a haze, her chin dipping toward her chest. “Keep with the compresses, Miss Lewis. We are nearly there…”
“Of course, Dr. Gump,” she said with a yawn, rising to her feet to fetch a fresh compress.
