“I know.” Juliette softened her voice and told her gently, “We must be strong, however, for Vivien and for ourselves. If we are lucky, we will avoid the suffering she has succumbed to, but if we are not, then we must endure it without inflicting this ailment on others.”
“How you can be so calm in the midst of such dire circumstances, I do not know.”
Juliette wasn’t sure she understood it either. Perhaps it was her experience with being sick that made her so, or perhaps it was knowing that typhus was survivable. Florian had lived through it, which meant there was hope. That thought alone was soothing, as were the endless thoughts of the man himself. She wondered how he was faring and prayed she would live to see him again.
The possibility she might not sent a tear rolling down the side of her cheek. She swiped it away before Lady Arlington had a chance to see it. Strength and courage would get her through this and hopefully...hopefully...allow her to tell the man she loved how sorely she had missed him.
Chapter 21
The last week had passed with infernal slowness, but at least Florian had watched most of the remaining people onboard the quarantine ship return to shore. They would be well on their way back to London by now while Haines, the only remaining patient, was showing excellent signs of improvement.
“Your symptoms were surprisingly mild compared to everyone else’s,” he told his colleague. “Perhaps you did have typhus as a boy and suffered a reoccurrence.”
“I would not have thought it possible.” Reclining in a chair placed out on the deck in the sun, Haines watched while Florian mopped the spruce planking for the last time. Circling the ship while hunting for fish, a cheerful flock of seagulls kept them company.
“Nor I.” It was curious how diseases worked, and Florian was wise enough to acknowledge he did not know everything about them. Far from it. “We were lucky,” he said. “This outbreak would undoubtedly have claimed more lives had it not been for Lady Juliette’s suggestion about this ship.”
“And her help in procuring it.” There was a tiny pause before Haines said, “She will make some lucky fellow an excellent wife one day.”
Florian shot the man a look. “Are you thinking of trying to court her?”
“No. I would not dare encroach on another man’s territory.”
Straightening, Florian stopped mopping for a second and frowned at Haines. “What are you saying?”
At this point Haines rolled his eyes and sighed with excessive amounts of exasperation. “You are obviously interested in her. It is in the way your eyes light up whenever you speak her name.”
Florian’s cheeks grew hot, and he realized to his horror that he was probably blushing.Damn!He quickly turned away and gave his attention to sloshing more water onto the deck. “I confess I find her appealing.”
“Is that all?”
“Very well. She is a woman of pleasing anatomical configuration whose ability to find solutions in a crisis deserves any man’s admiration.”
A loud snort was Haines’s immediate response. “You sound like an equine breeder showing off the merits of his favorite mare.”
Expelling a sigh, Florian set the mop against a barrel and crossed his arms. “I do not excel at sharing my feelings with people. Hell, I rarely share them with myself, so you must forgive the clinical way in which I describe my affection.”
“At least you are able to call it affection, which would suggest emotional attachment.”
Florian groaned. “Precisely what I have been trying so hard to avoid.”
“Why?”
He could not possibly reveal that much, so he merely shrugged and walked to the railing and looked out over the water. The air was blessedly fresh out here, such a pleasant departure from the filthy city air.
“With all the pain and death that surrounds me, shutting it out is easier than letting it in.” And since he’d no desire to continue this conversation with a man he wasn’t particularly close to, he quickly snatched the mop back up and resumed his task. “It will be good to return to some proper lodgings soon. I, for one, am looking forward to sleeping in a real bed and eating a fine piece of meat.”
“As am I.”
Florian glanced at Haines who looked like he might be drooling at the very idea of such luxury. “A good glass of wine would be welcome too. And an ice! I have been craving a visit to Gunther’s for the last two days.”
Florian grinned and gave his attention to completing his chore. If all went well, they would leave the ship and return to London in another couple of days and he would finally...finally...be able to tell Juliette how much she’d come to mean to him.
“You ought to be in bed yourself,” Vivien said. Her voice was so weak Juliette was forced to lean in closer so she could hear.
“I will be fine.”I hope. A rawness within forced a cough from her throat even as she spoke. Since showing symptoms of the disease the day before, Juliette had stopped covering her mouth and nose with the linen, which made it easier for her to breathe. “You are the one I am most concerned about, Vivien. You—” The words caught and cracked with the desperation she felt on account of her friend’s deterioration.
During the course of the past week, Vivien’s fever had lingered. When it had suddenly subsided, Juliette had been overjoyed, only to have her hopes crushed when it had returned, stronger than ever before and throwing Vivien’s mind into an often delirious state. Today when Juliette had come to check on her, she’d been distraught by the sight of gangrenous sores on Vivien’s fingers and toes and by the cadaverous stench she emitted. Washing her had tested Juliette’s composure when all she had wanted to do was succumb to the sobs knotting tightly inside her chest.
