A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,82
if he fell to the floor.
When Robbie had awakened, she’d bathed his brow and hands with cool water, something he seemed to enjoy now. If he had any fever it was mild, and his cough was subsiding with regular applications of a honey, lemon, whiskey, and ginger tisane.
He had seemed in every way to be regaining his health.
Althea had been reading aloud to him from Tom Jones when she became aware that the bed had begun to tremble. Robbie’s expression went from a fixed stare to a faint, and then his limbs commenced to shake. She rolled him to his side—not easy when a large man was thrashing and twitching—and waited a small eternity for the convulsions to cease.
She didn’t want to watch, and yet she could not look away. Years ago, on the streets of a bad neighborhood in York, she’d seen an older woman overcome with a seizure right on the walkway. Passersby had stopped and stared, though nobody had offered a word of derision. The woman’s daughter had been with her, and when the shaking had stopped, she’d helped her mother to her feet and onto the nearest bench.
This seizure was worse for befalling Robbie in his very home. The one place where he ought to be able to bar his door against all evils, Robbie was not safe.
He quieted, seeming to fall into a doze while Althea straightened the bedclothes. On Nathaniel’s orders, she was not to offer Robbie even water until he was awake and somewhat clear-headed.
“I did not wet myself.” He spoke slowly, like an inebriate. “I ought not to say that. Lady present.” He was still lying on his side, as if truly felled by strong spirits.
“Would you like to sit up?”
He pushed himself to his back with a great sigh. “I would like to die.”
Stephen had said the same thing on many occasions. He’d even made plans to end his life when adolescence had begun changing the body he’d barely learned how to manage as a boy.
“Are you in pain?”
Robbie turned his head on the pillow to regard her. “Not of the physical variety, but for a slight headache.”
“Ah, then you are simply feeling sorry for yourself. Shall I fetch your brother so he can feel sorry for you too? Perhaps you’d like the staff to stand about your bed with long faces, muttering prayers for the dying and composing your eulogy.”
His smile was like Nathaniel’s, but more bitter. “Let my brother sleep. It’s the least he deserves, and Nathaniel’s pity is unbearable. Tell me about Lord Stephen. How did he acquire that limp?”
The question was intended to shift the focus from Robbie’s seizure to something else—anything else. Althea allowed the change in topic because Stephen’s situation was relevant.
“Our father broke Stephen’s leg when Stephen was four years old. Stephen was hungry—he was always hungry—and Papa had filched a loaf of bread from somebody’s windowsill. He enjoyed tormenting his children by eating in front of them, bite by bite, knowing they longed for even a stale crust. Sometimes he’d toss a bit of food to the floor for them to fall upon like stray dogs, sometimes he’d eat the lot and laugh at the children’s silent misery.”
She had Robbie’s attention. In fact, he looked like he wished she’d say no more, but Althea denied him that indulgence.
“On one occasion,” she went on, “Stephen refused to remain silent. A four-year-old boy can hold a lot of rage, especially when his own father taunts him for being hungry. He railed at Papa, and Papa—who was perennially drunk—either tripped over him or purposely stomped on his leg. In either case, the result was a child better suited to begging effectively, and Jack Wentworth saw that as an advantage.”
Robbie closed his eyes, which was wise of him. If he renewed his lamentations regarding a condition that had befallen many a hapless soul, one to which no shame or disfigurement ought to attach, Althea would…
She’d do nothing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know your situation is not purely a case of the falling sickness, and you have suffered much.” As has your brother.
Robbie remained quiet for so long she thought he’d gone back to sleep. Seizures apparently left him tired as well as foggy, while Althea was wide awake.
“You refer to your father’s children in the third person,” Robbie said, eyes still closed. “‘They longed for even a stale crust.’ I cannot set my disability at the same distance, my lady. At any moment, I can collapse,