Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,9
the first floor, where she waited. She’d tended to Gosney’s lacerations and sent the maid to the public dining room to settle her nerves with tea and something to eat.
Cassandra had occupied the time since either watching the doings in the courtyard below or the darkening and swelling clouds above while she considered her situation and entertained fantasies in which the Duke of Ashmont made his way slowly and painfully through all nine circles of Dante’s Hell.
“Two fractured ribs,” said the surgeon. “While the fractures appear to be clean, it is, as I’m sure you understand, impossible to be certain of the fact.”
She’d suspected broken ribs, and though the injury was not as bad as she’d feared, this wasn’t the best news. Surgeons, in her experience, were inevitably sure, all too sure.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“A fever.”
Her heart sank.
Shattered bones could result in fatal infections, affections of the lungs. She’d seen it happen in impoverished families. Even among the upper orders, one heard of all too many cases. She told herself that Keeffe had survived a great deal worse—but he’d been a younger man then, undamaged and in prime strength.
“He claims he’s ready to return to work,” Greenslade said. “I don’t doubt he feels better, and in the usual way of things, having wrapped him securely, I would say you might continue your journey—albeit with caution. But peripneumony is a concern in these cases, and in the present circumstances I would urge you most strongly not to move him farther than the nearest bedchamber. A day or two of rest, with a cooling diet and careful nursing, will tell us whether the fever is simply the body’s immediate reaction to the injury, or a deeper complication. I attempted to explain this to him, but he became so wrought up that I was obliged to administer a dose of laudanum, to prevent his injuring himself further. For the moment, he has quieted.”
“If we want to keep him here, we’ll have to strap him to the bed,” Cassandra said. After the racing accident he’d spent months immobilized, told he’d never walk again. Small wonder he’d reacted so forcefully to the surgeon’s recommendation.
“What I would suggest—”
The door flew open. The Duke of Ashmont filled it, all sunlight hair and celestial blue eyes and big shoulders and too much of everything. He stepped into the private parlor, which seemed to shrink in consequence.
“They told me you were out of the sickroom,” he said. “How’s the jockey?”
Ashmont hadn’t expected a warm welcome and he didn’t get one. The lady folded her arms and looked at him, her face impassive, while the room’s temperature sank several degrees.
“Two fractured ribs,” she said before the surgeon could respond. “With complications.”
He felt sick. He ignored it and said, “Ribs, yes. Tendency to go to pieces. But Greenslade here’s wrapped him up good and tight, I daresay, and—”
“Mr. Greenslade, kindly step out of the room,” she said. “I should like to have a word with the duke. In the meantime, I must ask you to look at my maid. Some lacerations. I cleaned them, but she needs a stitch or two, and she resisted my offer to do it.”
The surgeon looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Do as the lady says,” Ashmont said. “If I need help, I’ll scream.”
Greenslade went out, closing the door behind him.
“Remember you now,” Ashmont told her. “Camberley Place. You and Lady Alice and all the other little girls. The cousins.”
Her expression remained as cold and blank as stone.
“You know, not sure you ought to be alone with me,” Ashmont said. “As I recollect, it isn’t done. Respectable lady. Infamous rakehell. That sort of thing. Maybe, for instance, we could adjourn to the courtyard, where I might get a running start. Or at least witnesses, in case of murder.”
“Keeffe has a fever,” she said.
“Ah.”
“He is not to be moved. He is supposed to lie quietly in bed for a day, perhaps two or more, while we wait to see whether the fever worsens, and then, whether he survives.”
“Not to be moved. He won’t like that.” He caught a flicker of surprise in the grey eyes before the Mask of Death came down again.
“No, he won’t. He dislikes it to the point that the surgeon has had to dose him with laudanum. That won’t quell Keeffe for long, and it ought not to be repeated often, in any event, where there is a possibility of lung infection. He would never have let himself be carried here had he not been