My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,67
she gives him to me. I should go back up there.” Instead, he slumped into a chair.
“I’ll go,” Wick said. “I’m the boy’s uncle. You’ll have to force Kate to give him up. I’ll walk him while the two of you nap for a couple of hours. Tell her that. I will walk up and down in the portrait gallery.”
Gabriel looked up, his eyes heavy. “She’ll never accept it.”
Wick pulled him to his feet. “Assert yourself, Gabe. Remember, you’re the master of the house, the paterfamilias, king of the castle, and all the rest of that rubbish. Grab your son, hand him to me, and take your poor wife off to get some proper sleep. You’d better go to your old chambers up in the tower because she won’t be able to hear Jonas cry from there.”
When Wick let go of his arm, Gabriel actually tottered.
“How long has it been since you slept?” Wick demanded, taking hold of his arm again and hauling him along the corridor.
“Exactly how old is Jonas? I’ve lost track.”
“Not even a fortnight. You need to get yourself and Kate to sleep,” Wick said, pushing him through the nursery door. A moment later, he was holding his nephew.
“I’ll sleep for one hour, then I’ll be back,” his sister-in-law stated. She was a beautiful woman, but just at the moment she resembled one of those weird sisters in the Shakespeare play. Wick couldn’t remember which play it was, but there were three of them in the production he’d seen, and Kate would have fit right in. Her eyes were red, her face drawn, and grief and fear vibrated in the air around her. “He just had some milk . . . at least I think he did.”
“More than an hour,” Gabriel said firmly, pulling her toward the door.
She managed to stop her husband in the doorway. “Don’t let anyone else touch him,” she told Wick in a threatening tone.
He nodded.
“And whatever you do, if that doctor comes, don’t let him give the baby anything. I’m certain his dose made Jonas sicker, and he wanted to try opium. I know that’s a bad idea.”
“I already forbade him entrance to the castle,” her husband said, managing to get Kate into the hallway.
As the sound of their footsteps receded, Wick looked down at the baby, and Jonas looked back at him. Then Jonas opened his mouth so wide that Wick could view his interesting lack of teeth and screamed until his face turned red.
Wick’s ears hurt. But something hurt in his chest too. Jonas looked thinner now than he had when he was born. His eyes were sunken, and there seemed to be a little less fire in his cry. He looked like a wizened old man, as if he’d lived an entire life in a week or two.
Wick swore under his breath and set off down the corridor, then down a flight and into the portrait gallery. After he had walked for five minutes, Jonas settled down some. He turned his face against Wick’s chest and sobbed more quietly. He curled his finger around Wick’s rather than flailing it in the air.
“Just don’t die,” Wick found himself whispering. “Please don’t die.”
Jonas gave an exhausted sob.
Wick walked for another half hour or so, up the portrait gallery, out into the corridor, around the bend, back down the corridor, back into the portrait gallery . . . at last, Jonas slept.
Sometime later, footsteps sounded in the stone corridor behind him. “Mr. Berwick, oh, Mr. Berwick,” panted one of the footmen, as Wick turned toward him. “My apologies, Mr. Berwick, but Mrs. Apple says that the first of the new nursemaids has arrived, and she’d like you to be there for the interview.”
“How can that be?” Wick whispered. “I sent off to Manchester only yesterday.”
The footman had just realized what—or rather who—Wick held in his arms. He started walking backwards on his toes. “Don’t know,” he whispered back. “Shall I tell her you’re unavailable?”
Wick looked down at Jonas. The baby was turned against his chest, a fold of Wick’s shirt clutched in one tiny hand. “I can’t stop walking,” he said. “Send the woman up here. Mrs. Apple can see her first, then I will.”
Fifteen minutes later, Wick had just reached the far end of the gallery for the twentieth or perhaps fortieth time and was turning around to walk back the other way when the door opened and the nursemaid entered. His first thought was that she was too young.