Mia wiped sweaty hair back from her cousin’s face. “Not to worry, dear. Kerr is feeling poorly.”
Tears appeared in Selina’s eyes. “My fault. All this. Take care lest you are next, Fee.”
By nightfall, Kerr took to her pallet and didn’t rise. Mia, left alone, had two patients.
*
“Awake, are you?”Gideon asked. “Then get some of this willow bark in you.”
“Can’t. Hurts. Throat,” Pritchard said, his breath coming shallow and fast.
Gideon dipped a clean rag in the tea and dribbled it in the old man’s mouth, but even that made him choke and cough. He turned his shoulder away.
Hector, camped at his side, whimpered, and the old man fell back. Pritchard dropped his one hand over the edge of his cot, laying it on Hector’s head. The hound licked it and leaned his head against the cot.
“The beastie,” Pritchard said, his voice a faded rasp, “…keeps me.”
Gideon wet the old man’s lips and laid the cloth across his brow. The rheumy old eyes fluttered shut, his breath shallow and wheezy.
The dog peered up at Gideon as if to ask if the old man would live. “You stay close, old fellow. I’m going to check on the others.”
Two grooms, those who’d avoided the pub, also avoided the ones who were ill. They had taken to sleeping down in the stalls. Peter and Frank, the pub regulars, had come down with fevers soon after the night Gideon had found Marshall in the stables. Their fellows brought them food and water up in the grooms’ dormitory but stayed far away.For the best, he thought. For Gideon himself, it was too late for caution. He had been in the Selwyn cousins’ sickroom and at Pritchard’s bedside in his little hovel at the back of the stables.
The sounds of voices greeted him when he climbed the stairs to the dormitory and, as he reached the top, laughter.They’ll do, he thought. Disease was never fair, attacking as it did the old and the weak. And children.Thank God mine are far from here.
Others, he thought, had few ill effects. “Is all well here? How do you feel?”
“Been better. Frank here has the constitution of an ox, though. Not much gets him down,” one said. Peter, he guessed.
“Look who’s talking. He’s the one that fetches what they put on the steps,” Frank said.
“Do you need anything? Are they bringing you enough?”
“Water plenty, and the foods no worse ’n usual,” Frank said.
“Could use some hot tea now ’n again,” Peter said.
“Could use some good stout ale for me throat,” Frank added, and they both laughed.
Gideon chuckled along with them. “I’ll see what I can do about the tea. I’m thinking you’ll be up in no time and can fetch your own ale.”
“Wait!” Frank squinted at Gideon. “Aren’t you the one what killed the duke?”
Gideon froze, half turned toward the stairs. “Only a fool believes loose talk,” he said through tight lips. Their murmurs followed him down the steps.
Probably planning how to defend themselves when I come to murder them in their beds.Disgust roiled his belly. He wouldn’t be back.
The other grooms and Jem grew silent as he walked by, watching him, he thought, for signs of madness. Jem at least ought to have known better. Gideon turned toward them and watched the young one’s eyes grow large. “You lot. Fetch some hot tea up the stairs to your fellows,” he said. He went up to the house—carefully avoiding people,—reached his room, and washed up. He changed his shirt and linens before returning to the stables.
He stopped in the door at the far end of the kitchen near the estate offices first, requested a crock of broth for Pritchard and a sandwich for himself. There was water aplenty by the stables. Mrs. Demming, the cook, studied him from across the room but ordered her kitchen maid to do his bidding. They sent the potboy to bring him what he requested. The boy set it on a counter to Gideon’s left and ran back.
To his ongoing battle to lay the half-wit cripple to rest, he had added fear of the sickroom.
He found Standish in the stables, waiting for him. He had lingered in the area, finding plenty of need. The influenza had abated in Nether Abbas. There were three dead, however, including Rogers the tavern keeper’s elderly mother. “You called for me? These fellows tell me we have two sick grooms.”
“Those two are recovering quickly. I want you to look in on an old friend.” He led the physician through the stable block and tack room to Pritchard’s hovel, not much more than an A-frame leaning against the wall.
Hector, who had been lying by the cot, rose to his feet and pressed himself against Gideon, whining while Standish examined the patient. It didn’t take long.
