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“Very well, I believe I understand now,” she said, lowering her gaze again.
“Do you?” he asked, offering no reassurances. Not that he owed her any if he was right and it had been all her fault. He had certainly known she would expect marriage, even if her father would not have insisted. Of course he’d felt he had to leave.
“Would you please excuse me?” Emily pushed her chair away from the table and rose, tears perilously close to falling.
“Certainly,” he replied, standing immediately.
Before she reached the doorway, he approached and touched her arm. “Emily, wait. You look very pale. You’re not feeling ill, are you?”
She shook her head without looking at him. “No. I did not sleep well.”
“Go and rest, then.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Come down to the library when you awaken. Or I shall bring a tray and join you for supper if you like.”
Replying with a curt nod, she escaped, hurried up the stairs to the far end of the third floor hallway and shut herself in the countess’s room. Tears of humiliation and despair had overtaken her halfway there and she gave way to them in full once the door was closed behind her.
She threw herself onto the bed and buried her face in a pillow. All these years she had blamed him for abandoning her to the scorn of their small village when in truth, it was she who had caused him to leave his home. Going away then had saved him from having to marry her, a woman he could not love, only to find himself trapped by that very fate because of her most recent folly. He must hate her now. Despite that, he still acted nobly toward her.
“Because he is noble,” she cried into her pillow, “as I shall never be. It will never work. Never!”
Rarely did she allow herself to weep over anything, but now she could not seem to stop. Rain beat against the windows as if the very skies wept for her. Years worth of pent-up misery spilled forth and she cried until she felt decidedly ill. Her eyes grew swollen and her head ached abominably. Exhausted beyond bearing and steeped in anguish, she finally fell asleep.
Nicholas balanced the tray of tea and cakes on one hand and knocked gently on her door with the other. It was four in the afternoon and he’d not seen Emily since breakfast. Her pallor and near silence had worried him. Angry or happy, she was rarely as quiet as she had been earlier.
When she did not answer, he knocked more firmly. “Emily? I’ve brought tea.”
Still no response. Nicholas tried the handle and found the door unlocked. He pushed it open a few inches and saw her lying facedown on the bed, still fully dressed. “Oh, God!” He flung the door open and rushed in. With a clatter of dishes, he shoved the tray onto the nearest flat surface and ran to her. “Em?”
She mumbled something but refused to move. Nick rolled her over onto her back and cupped her forehead with his palm. Hot. Burning with fever.
He grasped the bellpull and yanked it furiously, then ran to the doorway and shouted for the doctor. Immediately he dashed back to her, loosening her clothing, his hands trembling with fear for her.
“Nick? What…what are you doing?” she croaked in a weak voice as she batted ineffectually at his hands.
“You’re sick, Em. Be still! This corset is—curse the damned thing!” He untied and pulled free the laces that held it together below her breasts. At last he parted it, tugged it from beneath her body and threw it aside. He ripped the gown from her and tossed it, as well.
She stared up at him, muddled, speechless and obviously shocked by what he was doing.
“The doctor will be here in a moment,” he assured her while he drew the covers up to her neck. The brief glimpse of her clothed in only her chemise barely registered. He was too concerned she would die.
The doctor hurried in carrying his black case of instruments which he deposited on the bed beside Emily. Nicholas had moved out of his way, but quickly rounded the bed so that he could observe. “She has fever,” he announced, “and look at her face.”
A frightened Emily raised one hand to touch her cheek, but Nicholas grasped it in his and held it. “Be still, my sweet. Just be still for a moment. All will be well.” His voice shook, almost broke. He exchanged a look with the doctor who was frowning.
“My lord, I must ask you to leave for a short while.”
“No.”
“I must examine your wife.”
“Go ahead. And hurry,” Nick added. “I will stay.” The doctor shrugged and turned his full attention to Emily. “Have you…evacuated in the past few hours?” he asked. “Either way?”
Her eyes rounded. She sucked in an unsteady breath, looked from Nick to the doctor and gasped, “No.”
“Good sign,” he commented. “You do have a bit of fever. How do you feel?”
She paused to think, Nick supposed, for she did not reply for what seemed an eternity.
Finally she spoke. “My head. It aches. And I feel quite tired.”
The doctor patted her hand. “This might be nothing at all, you know. A touch of the ague or merely the excitement of the day. We shall get some fluids into you as quickly as we may, in the event it is the cholera.”
He glanced meaningfully at Nick who hurried to the door where Lofton was waiting and ordered up everything liquid he could think to list.
“For now, you’ll need this.” The doctor pulled a stoppered bottle and spoon from his case and poured a measure of the milky brown liquid for her. Nicholas recognized the smell. Laudanum.
His heart sank. Doc must believe she had cholera. The treatment he had given the others consisted of copious liquids and enough of this opium derivative to calm the stomach and digestive tract. He had said he thought that rapid loss of fluids was what killed the patients who died of the disease.
Nick watched with bated breath as Emily obediently swallowed the medicine and closed her eyes. Doc inclined his head toward the doorway, then stepped back from the bedside and headed for the hallway. Nick followed, knowing what he would hear and dreading it with all his heart. “Is it cholera?”
Doc sighed and leaned against the wall outside the bedroom, massaging his forehead with his hand. “I shan’t lie to you. Your wife most likely is in the early stages. Some do not develop the worst symptoms until after four or five days. Yet some sicken and die within hours. I just do not know at this point.”
“She cannot die,” Nick argued, grabbing the doctor’s arm in a vise grip. “You saved the others. Now you save her!”
“My lord, you know very well I will do everything within my power, but I am not God.”
Nick released a breath of impatience and started to reenter the room.
“My lord, you should go below and wait. At least until we know for certain.”
“If she succumbs, she will not do so alone or with people she does not know,” Nick replied. “I’ll not leave this room until I know she is recovering, or…” His voice failed him. He could not say the word in conjunction with Emily. Instead he met the doctor’s rheumy gaze with one of steadfast determination.
“So be it, but this will not be pleasant, my lord. You were witness to little of what the men suffered with this. Cholera is an ugly disease. Humiliating for the patient and noisome for the caretaker. I hope you have a strong constitution.”
Nick vowed he would have. He’d do whatever it took, bear whatever he must, to help make her well again.
When he reentered, Emily had pushed herself to a sitting position. She was carefully lowering her legs off the side of the bed. Nick grabbed her just in time to keep her from pitching forward on her head. “Where do you think you’re going?” he snapped.
She winced at his tone and he was immediately sorry he’d spoken so sharply to her. “What is it, Em? What do you need?”
“I would as soon not say,” she whispered. “Could you leave me alone for a moment, please?”
“Nonsense! You need the chamber pot, then say so. I will carry you.”
“No!” she answered, very forcefully he thought, for someone who might be dying. “Please leave this room immediately and do not return unless I call for you!”
For a moment he simply stared at her. Her color was high and her anger apparent. “Let me help you behind the screen. Then I’ll wait outside. Will that do? Look how shaky you are. You’ll fall if I leave you to walk that far.”
“It’s the laudanum,” she explained as if speaking to a thick-headed child. “It made me dizzy. I hate the stuff.”
He walked her over to the privacy screen that hid the facility. It was a chair made of oak with a seat that lifted. At least she would have something to brace her upright. With much trepidation, he did leave her there as soon as she was near enough to reach it. She glared at him meaningfully until he turned away and left her alone.
A scant few moments later she reappeared, grasping the edge of the heavy wooden screen with both hands. “Nick?”
He rushed to her from the doorway where he’d been waiting. “Yes, dearest? Could you not manage alone?”
She tried unsuccessfully to focus on his face. “I see two of the bed. Help me to it?”
Gladly he scooped her up and put her back where she belonged, reminding himself to order Lofton to bring a bedpan. Less than a quarter hour into this sickroom business and Nick admitted he was already a sorry wreck.
Doc checked Emily’s pulse, pinched the skin on her arm, then urged her to drink a full cup of the broth Lofton had fetched. He waved Nick to the chair beside the fireplace. “You might as well get some rest while you can. This looks to be a long night ahead.”
Nick settled in the chair, rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands, leaning his forehead upon them.
Alternately he prayed, cursed, promised and threatened all manner of things. He both vehemently beseeched and ordered the Almighty to allow her to survive, knowing all the while that what would be, would be.
Nicholas had been in dire straits more times than he could count, but never in his entire life had he ever felt so helpless as he did now.
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