The Duke and His Duchess - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,17
He paced away from her to peer out her back window. In spring, her tiny yard was a riot of flowers, but now it was a bleak patch of dead, tangled foliage and bare earth, with a streak of dirty snow by the back fence. “I need advice, Kathleen, and information, and I cannot seek them from the usual sources.”
“I will not gossip with you, my lord. Not about anybody. I know how you lordly types like to revile one another by day then toast one another by night.”
He turned and smiled at her. “You know, my wife frequently takes that same starchy tone with me. I have always admired a formidable woman.”
He’d confused her with that compliment. Beautifully arched brows drew down. “Perci—my lord, what are you doing here?”
He admired women who could be direct, too.
“My lady wife is sickening for something, and she won’t consult a physician. She didn’t refuse me outright when I suggested it, but she has a way of not refusing that is a refusal. Whatever’s wrong with her, it’s female. You always had a tisane or a plaster to recommend when I was under the weather, and your remedies usually worked.”
Kathleen left the sofa too and went to the sideboard. None of the decanters were full—in fact, they each sported only a couple of inches of drink. Her hands on the glass were pale and elegant, though the image struck Percival as cold, too. He swung his gaze to the bleak little back garden, where a small boy was now engaged in making snowballs out of the dirty snow.
“You love your wife, I take it?” In the detachment of her tone, Percival understood that the question was painful for a woman who would likely never marry and never have any pretensions to respectability again.
He kept his gaze on the small boy pelting the back fence with dirty snowballs. The boy had good aim, leaving a neat row of white explosions against the stone wall at exactly the same height. “I love my wife very much, else I would not be here.”
Kathleen said nothing for a moment while the snowballs hit the wall, one after another. “Describe her symptoms.”
He did as best he could while the boy ran out of ammunition and knelt in the snow and mud to make more.
“Is she enceinte?”
Percival shook his head, much more comfortable watching the busy little soldier in the back garden than meeting Kathleen’s gaze. “She doesn’t smell as if she’s carrying.”
Kathleen came to stand at his shoulder. “What on earth does that mean?” A touch of their old familiarity infused the question. Just a touch.
“My wife always bears the scent of roses. I don’t know how she accomplishes this, because she doesn’t use perfume. Maybe it’s her soap or the sachets in her wardrobe. It’s just… her, her fragrance. Blindfolded, I could pick her out from a hundred other women by scent alone. When she’s carrying, there’s more of a nutmeg undertone to the scent. Very pleasant, a little earthier. I realized it with the second child, and it was true with the third and fourth, too.”
He glanced over at her and saw she was watching the boy too. The look in her eyes reminded him of Esther—whose name he had managed not to utter in this house—when she was nursing Valentine. Sad, lovely, and far, far away.
“My guess is nothing ails your lady that time will not put to rights, my lord. She is likely weakened by successive births and weary in spirit. My sister has nine children, my brother’s wife eight. You must be considerate of her and encourage her to rest, eat good red meat—organ meat, if she’s inclined. Steak and kidney pie or liver would be best. Under no circumstances should she be bled; nor should she conceive again until her health and her spirits are recovered. You should get her out for light exercise for her spirits—hacking out or walking, nothing strenuous.”
Esther loathed organ meat. He’d never once in five years seen her eat either liver or kidney.
“How long will it take her to recover?”
Kathleen crossed her arms and considered him. She was a tall woman and did not have to peer up but a few inches to meet his gaze. “You might ask a midwife, or one of those man-midwives becoming so popular among the titled ladies.”
“I’ve yet to meet a member of the medical profession not prone to gossip and quackery—unless you can suggest somebody?” This was what he’d come