features arranged themselves with such compassion, Titus couldn’t look at him without a prick of tears threatening behind his eyes. “You did admirably, lad. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, death wins the battle and we doctors are defeated.”
To assuage both his curiosity and his inescapable anxiety, Titus questioned the doctor about bacteria, pathogens, medications, dosages, appendixes—and any other organs that might arbitrarily perforate—until Alcott deemed that Honoria had spent long enough in the water.
It was difficult to maintain the sort of clinical distance Doctor Alcott seemed capable of as they maneuvered her back to the bed, and dried and dressed her in a clean night rail. Titus did his best to avoid looking where he ought not to, touching her bare skin as little as possible.
But he knew his fingertips wouldn’t forget the feel of her, even though it dishonored them both to remember.
The doctor left her in Titus’s care while he went to administer thymol and instruction to the maids, both of whom were afflicted with the same malady but not advanced with high fevers or this worrisome torpor.
Once alone, Titus retrieved the hairbrush and, with trembling hands and exacting thoroughness, undid the matted mess that had become her braid. He smoothed the damp strands and fanned them over the pillow as he gently worked out the tangles. The texture was like silk against his rough skin, and he allowed himself to indulge in the pleasure of the drying strands sifting in the divots between his fingers. Then, he plaited it as he sometimes did the horses’ tails when they had to be moved en masse to the country.
He even tied the end with a ribbon of burgundy, thinking she might approve.
His efforts, of course, were nothing so masterful as Honoria’s maid’s, but he was examining the finished product with something like satisfaction when the appearance of Doctor Alcott at his side gave him a start.
The doctor, a man of maybe forty years, was looking down at him from eyes still pink with exhaustion, as if he’d not slept before being roused so early. “We’ll leave her to slumber until her next dose of thymol. Here, I’ll draw the drapes against the morning.”
“No.” Titus stood, reaching out a staying hand for the doctor. “She prefers the windows and drapes open. She likes the breeze from the garden, even in the winter.”
The doctor nodded approvingly. “It’s my opinion fresh air is best for an ailing patient.” He moved to put a hand on her forehead and take her pulse, seeming encouraged by the results. That finished, he turned to Titus, assessing him with eyes much too shrewd and piercing for a boy used to living his life largely unseen.
“She means something to you, boy?”
She meant everything to him. But of course, he could not say that.
“Titus.”
“Pardon?”
“My name is Titus Conleith.”
The doctor gave a curt nod. “Irish?”
“My father was, but my mum was from Yorkshire, where they worked the factories. We were sent here when my dad was elevated to a foreman in a steel company. But the well was bad, and typhoid took them all three months later.”
Alcott made a sound that might have been sympathetic. “And how’d you come to be employed in the household of a Baron?”
Titus shrugged, increasingly uncomfortable beneath the older man’s interrogation. “I saved old Mr. Fick, the stable master, from being crushed by a runaway carriage one time. He gave me the job here to keep me from having to go back to the workhouse, as his joints are getting too rheumatic to do what he used to. Besides, no orphanage would take in a boy old enough to make trouble.”
“I see. Have you any schooling?”
Titus eyed him warily. “I have some numbers and letters. What’s it to you?”
“You’ve a good mind for what I do. A good stomach for it, as well. I’ve a surgery off Basil Street, in Knightsbridge. Do you know where that is?”
“Aye.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, looking suddenly regimental. “If Mr. Fick can spare you a few nights a week, I want you to visit me there. We can talk about your future.”
“I will,” Titus vowed, something sparking inside of him that his worry for Honoria wouldn’t allow to ignite into full hope.
The three days he sat at her side were both the best and worst of his life.
He told her tales about the horses’ antics as he melted chips of ice into her mouth. He monitored her for spikes of fever and kept her cool with