“Not that I’m aware of,” she answered as she hurried from her daughter’s side as if swept up in Alcott’s net.
“Two maids,” Mrs. Mcgillicutty said around her mistress. “They took to their beds ill last night.”
The doctor heaved a long-suffering sigh as they approached the threshold. “Contrary to popular belief, typhoid contamination can happen to the food and drink of anyone at any time. It is true and regrettable that more of this contamination is rampant in the poorer communities, where sanitation is woefully inadequate, but this is a pathogen that does not discriminate based on status.”
“Quite so,” the Baron agreed in the imperious tone he used when he felt threatened or out of his depth. “We’ll leave for the Savoy immediately. Charlotte, get your things.”
“I’ll need someone to draw your daughter a cool bath and help me lift her into it,” the doctor said, his droll intonation never changing. “If you’d inquire through the household about anyone who has been inflicted with typhoid fever in the past—”
“I have done, Doctor.” Titus stepped out of the shadows, startling both of the Goodes. “It took my parents and my sister.”
Before that moment, Titus hadn’t known someone could appear both relieved and grim, but Alcott managed it.
“Absolutely not!” Charlotte Goode was not a large woman, but her staff often complained her voice could reach an octave that could shatter glass and offend dogs. “I’m not having my eldest, the jewel of our family, handled by the boy who shovels our coal and horse manure. This is most distressing; Honoria was invited to the Princess’s garden party next week as the Viscount Clairmont’s special guest!”
Titus lowered his eyes. Not out of respect for the woman, but so she wouldn’t see the flames of his rage licking into his eyes.
At this, the doctor actually stomped his foot against the floor, silencing everyone. “Madam, your daughter barely has a chance of lasting the week, and the longer you and your family reside beneath this roof, the more danger your other children are in. Do I make myself clear?”
The Baron, famously pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, took his wife by the shoulders and steered her away. “We’re going,” he said.
Without a backward glance at his firstborn.
Tied with a Bow
Doctor Alcott took all of two seconds to dismiss the frantic bustle of the Baron’s household, and yanked Titus into Honoria’s bedroom before shutting them in. “Where is the bathroom?”
Titus pointed to a door through which the adjoining bathroom also shared a door with the nursery on the other side.
“Does the tub have a tap directly to it, or is it necessary to haul water from the kitchens?”
“It’s a pump tap, sir, but I’ve only just started the boiler and that only pipes hot water to the kitchens and the first floor.”
“That’s sufficient.” The doctor divested himself of his suit coat and abandoned it to a chair before undoing the links on his cuffs. “Now I need you to fill the bath with cool water, not cold, do you understand? We need to combat that fever, but if the water is freezing, it’ll cause her to shiver and raise her temperature.”
“I’ll go to the kitchens and have them boil a pan just to make sure it inn’t icy.”
The man reached into his medical bag and extracted an opaque lump. “First, young man, you will take this antiseptic soap and scrub your hands until even the dirt from beneath your fingernails is gone.”
“Yes, sir.”
It took a veritable eternity for the water to boil, but it seemed he needed every moment of that to scrub the perpetual filth from his hands. Once his skin was pink and raw with nary a speck, he filled two buckets as full as he could carry and hauled the boiling-hot water up the stairs.
The Baron and his wife swept by him on their way down. “We mustn’t let on it’s typhoid,” he was saying as his wife plunged her hands into an ermine muff.
“You’re right, of course,” the Baroness agreed. “What assumptions would people make about our household? Perhaps influenza would be more apropos?”
“Yes, capital suggestion.”
Titus firmly squelched the impulse to dump the scalding water over the Goodes’ collective heads, and raced to the bathroom, his arms aching from the load. He instantly threw the lock against the nursery as he heard the high-pitched, fearful questions the young twins barraged their governess with on the other side of the door. He plugged the tub’s drain and turned the tap.