Cringing at the frigidity of the water, he balanced the temperature as best he could.
That done, he returned to Honoria’s room in time to see the doctor, clad only in his trousers and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, bending over a nude Honoria with his hands upon her stomach, spanning above her belly button.
Even in her catatonic state, she produced a whimper of distress that fell silent when the doctor’s hands moved lower, his fingers digging into the flesh above her hip bone, on the line where her pale skin met a whorl of ebony hair.
An instantaneous primal rage surged through Titus at the sight. With an animalistic sound he’d never made before, Titus lunged around the bed and shoved the doctor away from her.
Alcott stumbled into the nightstand, upsetting a music box and her favorite hairbrush.
Titus threw the bedclothes back over Nora, snarling at the doctor as he placed his body as a shield against the much larger man. “You keep your fucking filthy hands from her.”
Rather than becoming guilty or defensive, the doctor’s shock flared into irritation, and then, as he examined Titus, it melted into comprehension. He adjusted his spectacles and advanced a few steps. “Listen to me, lad. I am a man, yes, and she is a lady. But in this room, I am only a doctor. To me, this is the body of a dying human. I must examine her.”
Titus narrowed his eyes in suspicion, wondering if this man took him for a dupe. “You don’t have to touch her… there. Not so close to—”
Alcott interrupted him crisply. “Though I am convinced of my initial diagnosis, I would do her a disservice if I didn’t rule out all other possibilities. Internally, many maladies can produce these symptoms, and therefore palpating the stomach will often help me make certain she is not in other danger. You have an organ, the appendix, right here.” He indicated low to the right of his torso, almost to his groin. “If it becomes swollen or perforated, it will spread fever and infection through the blood. If this were the case with Miss Goode, an immediate operation would be required, or she’d be dead before noon.”
Noon? Titus swallowed around a dry lump, peering over his shoulder at her lovely face made waxen by a sheen of sweat.
“Your protection of her is commendable. But it is my duty to keep this girl alive,” the doctor prodded, venturing even closer now. “That obligation takes precedence in my thoughts and my deeds, over anything so banal as modesty, as it must in yours now while you help me get her into the bath. Do you think you are capable of that?”
Titus nodded, even as a fist of dread and pain knotted in his stomach.
The doctor reached out and patted his shoulder. “Good. Now help me get the sheet beneath her and we’ll use it as a sort of sling.”
She fought them as they lowered her—sheet and all—into the bath, before suddenly settling into it with a sigh of surrender. After a few fraught moments, her breath seemed to come easier. The wrinkles of pain in her forehead smoothed out a little as her onyx lashes relaxed down over her flushed cheeks.
Alcott, his movements crisp and efficient, abandoned the room, only to return to administer a tincture she seemed to have trouble swallowing.
“What’s that?” Titus queried, eyeing the bottle with interest.
“Thymol. Better known as thyme camphor. It has anti-pathogenic properties that will attack the bacteria in her stomach, giving her greater chance of survival.”
“The doctor gave us all naphthalene,” Titus remembered. “It helped with the fever, but…then they all got so much worse.” The memory thrummed a chord of despondency in his chest with such a pulsating ache, he had to press his hand to his sternum to quiet it.
Alcott snorted derisively, his skin mottling beneath his beard. “Naphthalene is more a poison than a medicine, and while it’s less expensive and more readily available, it is also little better than shoving mothballs into your family’s mouth and calling it a cure. I’d very much like a word with this so-called physician.”
Would that Titus had known before. He could have perhaps asked for this…thymol. “I don’t know why I didn’t get so sick as them. I did everything I could for their fevers. Yarrow tea and cold ginger. I couldn’t lift them into a bath, I was a boy then, but I kept cold compresses on their heads and camphor and mustard on their chests.”