With Mrs. Bean’s help, Felicity kept Drake as comfortable as possible when he wasn’t so wild with fever as to knock them away. When those demons overtook him, Edmund came forward and kept Drake still so he wouldn’t harm himself and rip open Mr. Warner’s handiwork. The surgeon had removed the bullet, cleaned and stitched the wound as much as he could, and then offered little hope. Drake’s recovery depended on the Almighty.
Someone squeezing her shoulder startled Felicity into opening her eyes, which she had risked closing for just a second. She jerked to complete wakefulness. “Yes? What is it?”
“It be all right, gal,” Mrs. Bean said quietly. “I be goin’ downstairs for a while. You need me to fetch anything for you?”
Felicity rolled her shoulders and rubbed her neck, trying to work out the stiffness. “No, thank you, Mrs. Bean. Nothing for me. Get yourself some rest. I am fine here.”
The old woman shook her head. “You be far from fine, gal, but you be doing the best you can. That be all you can do when things come to this.” She cast a concerned glance at Drake. “Leastwise he seems quieter today. A quiet day is a good day.”
Felicity rubbed the weary grittiness from her eyes. “Indeed, it is. We can only hope that is a good sign.”
Mrs. Bean nodded as she ambled over to the door, the tip of her cane softly clicking against the hardwood floors. “I be back soon, gal.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bean.” Felicity rose and went to the washbowlon the table beside the bed, emptied the old water into the bucket on the floor, and filled it with clean water from one of the pitchers beside a stack of freshly boiled and dried bandages, crocks of balm, and three brown bottles of laudanum. She sometimes wondered if the vile laudanum made Drake worse. Mama had always hated the stuff. Said it made her dream of frightening and unbelievable things.
Felicity wet a cloth, then dabbed its coolness across Drake’s forehead, throat, and the part of his chest not covered by the bedsheet or bandages. His state made her softly snort with a sad laugh. If she wasn’t ruined before, she was surely ruined now, tending to a man in such a state of undress. But it no longer mattered. Mrs. Bean was in no condition to handle his care all alone; the innkeeper had her business to run, and Felicity just didn’t feel right about Chance hiring a maid for the job. No, family took care of their own. Strangers didn’t.
Her hand froze in place as she passed the cloth across Drake’s bare shoulders.Family.Drake was not family. He was the disgraced man she had intended to marry. Chance had told her about Drake’s uncle taking his life, making Drake the real Earl of Wakefield and removing that worry from the equation.
She clenched her teeth. The title was not the issue and never had been, as far as she was concerned. It was Drake’s inability to be honest that was the problem. She soaked the cloth again, squeezed out the water, and washed his arms and hands, then draped the wet rag on a peg on the table. Edmund and Mrs. Bean would wash the rest of him. It was not at all proper for her to do as much as she had already done. She dared not do any more.
“Felicity?”
Uncertain whether he had actually spoken or she had dreamed it, she turned back to him and leaned closer. “I am here.”
“I am sorry.”
He sounded lucid. She girded herself against anything he might say. “Are you going to apologize every time you speak to me?”
Without opening his eyes, he barely nodded. “I will spend the rest of my life apologizing to you, if you see fit to allow it.”
She repressed a sigh and swallowed hard. “How is your pain? Are you in need of more laudanum? Mr. Warner said you may have more if you wish.”
“No more laudanum.” He opened his eyes and barely shifted, quickly halting with a grimace. “I can bear the pain in my shoulder. That is not the agony that troubles me.”
She wasn’t about to question him further. Instead, she filled a cup with fresh water, lifted his head, and held it to his lips. “Drink—Mr. Warner said it is most important that you drink. We added honey to this water. Mrs. Bean said it would help you.”
He sipped the tiniest bit, then slightly turned his head away. “Who is Mrs. Bean? The owner of this place?”
“No, Mrs. Bean and her son, Edmund, were mycaretakersfor a while.”
He flinched again. “The ones Rum and Catherty hired?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be. They are good and kind people who will soon live at Broadmere Hall. I am a better person for meeting them.”
Closing his eyes, he went quiet for so long that she thought he had once more drifted off to sleep. “Why did you stay?” he asked, his voice weak and raspy. “Why did you stay to care for me?”
What could she say when she had no idea herself? They had simply stayed because they were supposed to stay. They couldn’t very well toss him onto the inn’s porch like a sack of potatoes. She shrugged. “We stayed because it was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do,” he repeated, his smile faint and trembling. “I have much to learn aboutthe right thing to do.”
“Once you heal, perhaps you will find someone who might teach you.”
He turned to face her and locked eyes with her. “There will never be another. There is only you.”
