He did not speak. He did not look as if he meant to do so. But that did not matter. That he was there with her and Harriet, that he knew he needed to be, was what Ophelia focused on.
As promised, it was just as the sun began to rise through the window that Ophelia heard a knock on the door. It was followed by shouting, and Adrian strode from the room.
Ophelia perked up, which only made Harriet cry harder. But she climbed to her feet and was just settling herself as the physician finally walked into the room.
“Ah, so that is the source of the crying,” he said with humor, but was met with cold stares from both Ophelia and Adrian. He winced. “I take it that is has been a long night…”
“That is an understatement,” Adrian said, lurking over his shoulder.
The physician asked that Harriet be set down, at which point he looked her over. He touched her forehead. He checked her tongue. He did all manner of things which Ophelia did not understand. And always, Harriet wailed.
“Well, the good news is that she will be fine,” he said with a deep sigh once he was finished.
Ophelia scooped Harriet back into her arms at once. “What of the crying?” she asked. “She is in pain. There must be something that you can do.”
The physician hesitated. “For a fever as this one, with a baby so young, it is not always optimal to offer any sort of medication. The best thing to do is wait for the fever to break.”
“Try again,” Adrian growled from behind him.
The physician started in surprise, turned, and shrank back when he saw Adrian’s glower. “I… I am not trying to hurt the infant, Your Grace. I am merely giving you my recommendation.”
“Recommend something to ease her suffering,” he said without blinking, without looking away once. He stood over the physician, dark and menacing, and Ophelia honestly worried that he might do something violent. “Now!” he barked.
The physician did not argue. Faced with Adrian’s rage, he was rather quick to offer a tonic that he said would fight the fever, as well as numb some of the pain. It would not end it, and it would not put Harriet to sleep, but it would go some way toward making her comfortable.
“But I must insist that the dose be kept light,” he said to them both, unable to look at Adrian. “This is not a cure, and too much might be dangerous.”
Ophelia might not have agreed with the way that Adrian went about changing the physician’s mind, but she did not say anything to stop it. Nor did she want to. There was little she would not have done to help Harriet in her time of need, and that Adrian was of the same mind… once again, she simply could not believe how far he had come.
They watched Mr. Watley brew the tonic. Adrian watched closely as she fed it to Harriet. And they stood together for another hour as the tonic did its work, enough that soon Harriet stopped her crying and was able to fall asleep.
“Thank God,” Ophelia exhaled her relief once the crying stopped and Harriet was fast asleep in her cot. “That was…” A shudder. “It was a very long night.”
Adrian continued to watch Harriet, his expression severe.
“Adrian…” She took his hand, and he started in surprise. She laughed. “She is going to be fine. Likely, once she wakes, the fever will have broken.”
“She better be,” he growled. “Or that physician will wish he had fled the country.”
“I do not doubt it,” she laughed again. Then she squeezed his hand one more time. “And thank you. Not just for what you said to the physician, but for being there for her last night. Being there for me.”
“Ophelia, I…” He looked at her as if in pain; the struggle he was experiencing in his subconscious unmissable. “I told you, I would do right by you. Anything you need, you know that you can count on me.”
“I do,” she said. “I really do.”
And in those words, there was not so much as a hint of a lie, nor did Ophelia see the point in searching for one. She believed not only that Adrian meant to do what was right, but that he wanted to do it too. A huge change, as she saw it, and a welcome one.
CHAPTER 17
Adrian worked meticulously in the near darkness. There was a single lantern hanging over his right shoulder, but his face was so close to his work that it blotted out the light so that the lantern felt all but pointless.
His hands were perfectly steady. His eyes narrowed for focus. Using a single cloth, he gently touched and patted the dried glue and resin, wiping it away so that it looked as if the crack that had once been startling and obvious was no more.
A sigh of relief as he finished, and he set the object down on the table.
And then, as Adrian always did when he finished fixing one of the many broken objects he found around the house, he simply looked at his work. Not with pride. Not with a sense of accomplishment. Rather, it was grim satisfaction, perhaps even a small hint of embarrassment.
This obsession of his was not something that he prided or cherished. He knew it would never bring him true happiness. Rather, it was a compulsion of his. And while Mr. Watley and others believed it was to do with his inability to allow imperfection into his home, only he knew that the reason ran far deeper than that.
