“What do you want, Giles?” Lady Morpeth spoke but Giles had closed his eyes. “Giles!” she said sharply.
He opened his eyes. “As in everything else, I leave it to you, my wife.”
Lady Morpeth straightened and looked at Alasdair, her gaze steely even as her stance wavered and Nurse Gastrell rushed to her side to steady her. “For now, I will defer to the physician in the room.”
Over the next hour, Alasdair continued to try to remove Arabella from the bedchamber, but she refused. She would not leave Alasdair’s side. She hoped he knew it was for him that she stayed, and not for Giles, but how to let him know?
“Let Mrs. Andrews stay, if she wishes to,” Lady Morpeth said. “She has a power over you, Dr. Andrews, that the rest of us do not. She may convince you to do what the rest of us cannot.”
“Cut me, Doctor,” Giles now moaned from the bed. “I do not want to die.”
“Ye still may recover, Lord Morpeth,” Alasdair said.
Giles raised his head an inch or two. “But if I worsen, you will perform the surgery?”
“I ...”
Giles head fell back to the mattress. “Promise me.”
“I cannae.”
“Why?”
“This is not how medicine should be done.”
Giles groaned.
“And ...” Alasdair hesitated.
“What, Doctor?” Lady Lyndmouth seemed frantic.
“I would need to take my arm out of the sling, and I fear that there is still enough residual pain in my right shoulder that my manual skills would be limited.”
“I will help.”
Everyone in the room, save Giles whimpering on the bed, turned to look at Arabella.
Arabella did not know why she had said that. She only knew that it was her instinct to help Alasdair. And she had always had a strong stomach and no fear of her father’s sickbed, even when she was only ten years of age.
“Dr. Andrews will tell me what to do. I will do what he cannot with his right arm.”
“Ye have nae training,” Alasdair sputtered.
“That is true. But you have the training. And I am very good with fine work.”
“Fine needlework!”
“Yes.” Arabella straightened her shoulders. “That is what I have been allowed to do. But my fingers are nimble and my eyes are sharp. And as you said, you will only attempt it if there seems no other way for Lord Morpeth to recover. And I will only get involved if your arm should hamper you.”
“There will be blood.”
“Do not women face their own blood every month without fear? Is fresh blood from a man so different?”
“Ye could kill him.”
“Yes. It will be a terrible responsibility. The same one you would shoulder.”
“I forbid it.”
