For the first time, Lady Lyndmouth’s seemingly perfect composure was shaken. She appeared horrified. “My lady—”
Lady Morpeth raised her hand. “No. Not now.” She turned to Alasdair. “I am glad you are here, Dr. Andrews.”
He bowed. “Yer butler Andrews has said that some men are going soon to fetch my bag from the carriage. Once the morphia in my bag thaws, we can give some to yer husband. ’Tis more potent than the laudanum.”
“No!” Morpeth raised his head.
Lady Lyndmouth instinctively lunged forward to put out her hand to touch his face and then realized what she was doing and withdrew her hand.
“No, Lady Lyndmouth,” Lady Morpeth said and stepped away from the bed. She murmured to her nurse and Nurse Gastrell guided her to a chair and Lady Morpeth sat down heavily. “Please give him comfort. I would not deprive him of that, since I cannot give it to him myself. Like so many other things a wife should provide.”
As he had so many other times in his career, Alasdair marveled at the seemingly infinite courage of the human female.
Lord Morpeth lay in his bed, rigid, covered in sweat, whimpering in pain.
The bedchamber had continued to have three women in it. Lady Morpeth, sitting in a chair, weak but determined not to leave her husband’s room. Nurse Gastrell with her, of course. And Lady Lyndmouth was also there, clutching Lord Morpeth’s hand, changing the wet cloths on his forehead, murmuring to him.
Alasdair had never treated a patient where the mistress and the wife were both present at the same time. There was no etiquette governing this. He would have to make it up as he went.
Alasdair reexamined Morpeth and then turned so that he faced both Lady Lyndmouth and Lady Morpeth.
“I fear ’tis typhlitis,” he said.
There was a sound behind him. He turned. It was the butler Andrews, much the worse for wear like all of them in the room. He was clearing his throat and coming in the door with the basin of snow Alasdair had requested ten minutes earlier. He looked at Alasdair apologetically.
Arabella was behind him. “What is typhlitis?” she asked.
She had slept fretfully, weeping and then sleeping and then weeping some more. She was not sure how to face the first day of the lonely future she had conjured for herself in such detail last night, but she forced herself to rise and dress. She started downstairs for breakfast but then saw the butler Andrews in the hallway with a basin of snow. She worried that it was for Alasdair’s shoulder but the butler Andrews told her that her husband’s shoulder was fine. He told her that her trunks had been recovered from the abandoned carriage and would be brought to her room shortly so that she might have a change of clothes.
She stayed the butler with her hand on his arm.
“But my husband, he is well?”
“Yes, Mrs. Andrews, but I must deliver this snow to him before it melts.”
She wondered what need Alasdair had of snow if his shoulder was fine. And so she followed the butler Andrews to this room.
Alasdair, she noted, did not look tired. He was in his element. But he stiffened when he saw her and she asked her question.
“Miss L— Mrs. Andrews, ye should not be here.”
“Is it contagion?”
“No,” Alasdair said abruptly.
“Then why should I not be here? I can be of use.”To you, she added in her head.
Alasdair said, “’Tis not seemly.”
Arabella looked at Lady Lyndmouth. She was holding Giles’ hand, staring at him intently, her lips moving, perhaps in prayer. She looked at Lady Morpeth and the nurse.
She got very close to Alasdair and said, “Along with two of the other ladies here, I already have knowledge of Lord Morpeth’s body. You know I have no care for what is seemly, Dr. Andrews.”
Then she saw Alasdair’s face. It had gone white. A muscle at his jaw flexed. He held himself very still. Oh, why had she reminded him of that? She had no right hurting him, no matter how he had hurt her.
“Typhlitis is an inflammation of the bowel,” he said. “There is an outpouching of the intestine, here,” he pointed to his own right lower abdomen with his good left hand, “called the vermiform appendix. It can become inflamed—sometimes because ’tis filled with stones—and it can rupture. Parkinson and Wegeler have described it.”
“Then what happens?” Arabella asked.
