“No! You mustn’t expose yourself,” Mia said.
He stepped forward, forcing her to give way, and closed the door behind him. “It’s too late for that. Besides, no one else will come in to help you. Let’s get you to bed.”
She felt her face flame. He meant sleep, but the mention of bed…
“This situation is long past the point you can afford to be missish.” He pushed her toward her own bed, unoccupied in the corner. He pulled back the covers, and she fell on it.
Gentle hands removed her shoes, covers came over her, and she felt sleep closing in. Mrs. Morrit will have apoplexy,” she murmured.
*
Mrs. Morrit won’tbe the only one. The Tavernash dragon is likely to be overcome with glee, and I don’t dare consider what her uncle will say.Gideon swallowed a frisson of guilt.
Miss Selwyn’s reputation wouldn’t survive this. But there was no help for it. If Euphemia Selwyn fell ill, there would be no one to care for any of them. He would deal with the scandal afterward.
He would have to make the honorable offer. If they all survived. He’d never planned to take another wife, but he would if necessary. It would be one more burden from this misbegotten journey inflicted on him by his brother, but he would do it. Of course he would. Staring at her hair against the sheets, he thought it might not be so terrible. His foolish body certainly reacted to her, and he’d come to admire her. Her reaction to a forced marriage was the painful question.
He examined the washstand she used to prepare tisanes and tea and added his remaining stock of slippery elm to her much-depleted reserves. There appeared to be plenty of honey, but willow bark ran low.
A lady’s desk was tucked next to Miss Selwyn’s bed. He took pen and paper, casting surreptitious glances at the lady, pleased to see the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. He scribbled a quick note requesting willow bark, tea, and additional linens. He stared at it long and hard before scrawling his signature at the bottom. There was no point in being coy. His presence in the room would be all over Woodglen by noon. He left the note in the hall along with some dirty linens.
“Fee? Is that you?” Selina Selwyn must indeed be better, from the sound of her voice.
When he approached her bed, her eyes flew wide, and she grabbed the covers, pulling them to her chin. “You mustn’t be here!”
“I’m sorry. Believe me, there was no other choice,” he told her.
“What have you done with Fee?”
“Miss Euphemia is sleeping the sleep of the just. She was exhausted and on the brink of collapse. She’ll be no help to you if that happens, Miss Selwyn,” he said gently.
She leaned up to glance at Mia’s bed and fell back as if the effort wore her out. “If you’ve harmed her, my father will see you hung,” she said. Her expression was defiant, but fear lurked behind it.
Gideon hadn’t considered what she might have been told. He was supposed to be the stuff of a young woman’s nightmares. He ignored it, a strategy he generally found effective. “There appears to be marmalade with the toast. Are you able to eat some?” he asked.
She blinked at him. He thought she meant to refuse, but hunger won out. “Fee meant to care for Kerr,” she said between bites.
“Ah yes, the redoubtable Miss Kerr.”
“Her pallet is in the dressing room,” Miss Selina told him.
He poured a tisane in a cup and located the dressing room through an open door.
Pale and shrunken, the woman on the pallet did not seem so fearsome. Her skin burned, and a ragged, dry cough seemed to be torn from her throat. When she gazed up at him vaguely and accepted a swallow of liquid without attempting to send him on his way, he was certain she was ill indeed. He took time encouraging as much of the tisane into her as he could and then brought a wet cloth for her head. Her eyes drifted shut, and he sank back on his knees.This one is fading away.
He removed the dry linen cloth next to her head, obviously left from the night before. She lay flat on the floor and had no pillow.Because we put them all under the other patient.That could be corrected.
“There is a cup of hot tea on the washstand. Would you like it?” he asked Miss Selwyn.
“That must be Fee’s. I drank mine.” Her eyes darted to her sleeping cousin. “It will only get cold. I may as well have it.”
“Would you like to sit in a chair? It would be easier to drink,” he said.
“I can’t. I—”
“Dizzy?”
“No. It is personal.”
