A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,67
dangerous man.
“Lacks originality but manages to get the point across,” Nathaniel said. “Expand a bit on the slow, painful death and you’ll be more convincing.”
“Said the man whose worst trait is that grannies make up stories about him to entertain children on stormy nights. Do I offer you a brandy now?”
“You do, being a quick study despite appearances to the contrary. I politely decline because I am in something of a hurry.”
“Dukes often are,” Lord Stephen opined. “Poor sods. That’s why they need duchesses, ladies who will stand between the titled idiot and all that distracts him from what matters, or so my brother claims. Althea hasn’t had to remind you of your manners yet, has she?”
Lord Stephen’s gaze assessed, the same way an art dealer examined a dusty item of statuary, seeing the quality therein, but also the restoration needed after years of neglect. If his lordship was the spare, what on earth must the Duke of Walden be like? But then, spares were often fierce in their own way.
They had to be. “Her ladyship has not objected to my behavior thus far,” Nathaniel said. “I trust I will never give her cause to regret her association with me.”
She already did, or she should. The lady herself emerged from belowstairs, a covered basket over her arm.
“Did you remember to fetch some ginger?” his lordship asked. “Illness and its treatments can occasion dyspepsia.”
“I forgot, drat and damnation.”
“Never mind,” Lord Stephen said, pushing away from the sideboard. “I’ll send some along at first light. Wash your hands frequently when you’re tending an illness, Thea. Paracelsus advised cleanliness in the sickroom, and he was a man of considerable judgment. Rothhaven, I really will kill you.”
He held out a hand.
Nathaniel shook, finding his lordship’s grip firm to the point of painful. “As you should, if I transgress. Lady Althea, shall we be on our way?”
She passed Nathaniel the basket, snatched a straw hat from a peg, and preceded him out the door. Lord Stephen remained in the foyer, looking far too pleased with himself for a man watching his sister disappear into the darkness with a stranger.
“Nighty-night,” he said, waving gently. “And don’t worry. Althea refused to let me die, though I gave the quest my all on more than one occasion. The patient will be up and about in no time.” He blew a kiss not at his sister, who was off down the steps, but at Nathaniel.
“Good night, and my thanks for your reassurances—such as they are.”
Nathaniel and Althea kept up a brisk pace along the moonlit paths, but when he ushered her into Robbie’s apartment they found the patient’s condition was worse than when Nathaniel had left less than an hour past.
Much worse.
“I did not stop to inquire if you know your way around the actual sickroom,” Rothhaven said. “Clearly you do.”
Robbie had lapsed into a fitful slumber, though Althea wasn’t fooled. His fever had been building quickly when she’d arrived. He was comfortable for now, but the worst was likely ahead.
“The poor have no physicians to speak of,” she said, “and what few medical men open their surgeries to charitable cases crowd every patient—consumptive, fevered, rheumatic, poxed—into the same airless waiting rooms. A visit to the quack is all too often followed by a visit from death itself. We learned to take care of our own.”
Rothhaven poked at the fire, though Robbie’s bedroom was warm enough. “You truly were wretchedly poor.”
Althea could be honest with him, which was both a relief and a little sad. Rothhaven saw her for exactly what she was—a woman on the outside of society longing to be welcomed into it. How ironic, that a man who’d set aside all the entrée and influence in the realm should be her confidant.
“I was so poor that by the time I turned ten years old, my father encouraged me to be friendly to any man who put a copper in my begging bowl. Jack Wentworth was nasty when drunk, but he was cruelty personified when sober, and gin is not free.”
Perhaps she’d been a little too forthcoming, but the hour was late, and Althea was already tired. Robbie had grumbled about drinking willow bark tea, grumbled about sipping the whiskey with honey and lemon. He’d refused a sponge bath until Althea had taken his hand and put it in the bowl of tepid water so he could feel its temperature.
He was still, apparently, terrified at the prospect of an ice bath.