The Duke Effect (The Rogue Files #7) - Sophie Jordan Page 0,49

“We needed her. Is that not why she is here? To help my Maude? Not to go off gallivanting with you?” The duke’s lips tightened, almost disappearing before they released and he spoke again. “What is this girl to you?”

Constantine could only stare. He had no response. The question was absurd.

After some moments, he finally found his voice. “Nor—Miss Langley? She is no one to me. She’s here because she is a very skilled herbalist.” The words felt wrong somehow. He studied Nora as she bent over the duchess, her hands gently probing and touching the duchess’s inert body.

She was not no one.

She was someone. Someone who drove him to distraction and made his skin feel too hot and too tight over his bones.

“You best leave her be then. She is here for my Maude. Not for you and whatever oats you seek to sow. Lady Elise is for you. Busy yourself with wooing her.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

It was far easier to agree with the man. Especially as he stood fretting, clearly distraught over his wife. A wife who looked alarmingly pale and listless beneath Nora’s ministrations.

The duchess moaned softly, clearly beset with pain. She turned her face into the pillow as though hoping to muffle the sound.

Birchwood tensed beside him. “I can’t lose her. I won’t survive that. Now that our sons are gone, she’s all I have.” He faced Constantine while nodding toward the bed, toward Nora. “You brought her here.”

Constantine sighed and nodded. “I did.” A fact he was coming to regret.

“She has to heal her. She must.”

“I know she will try.”

The old man seized his hand in a surprisingly strong, crushing grip. “Not good enough, lad. You see it done.” His eyes were red with emotion. “See. It. Done.”

Nora left the duchess’s bedside only once and that was to collect her bag and all the ingredients she needed to prepare remedies for the afflicted lady. She had the maids erect a work table for her in the duchess’s chamber. Nora was prepared to try anything that might work. She had several options in mind.

None, however, seemed to work.

That was her conclusion the following day when the duchess still moaned and writhed in agony in her bed, no relief achieved.

Oh, Nora’s lavender rosemary ointment and salt lemon tincture gave some ease, but only for a short time. She knew her remedies treated the symptoms. She still did not know what afflicted the duchess, only that her aches seemed to go bone deep. The older woman was able to indicate that her shoulders and arms bore the brunt of her pain. Without properly understanding what plagued her, Nora feared she could never cure her.

She was poring over one of Papa’s books she had brought from home when the door to the chamber opened. The duke marched in the room without casting her a glance, leading a tall, impeccably attired gentleman. They walked a direct line to the bed.

The stranger settled the bag he carried upon the edge of the bed beside the duchess. He pressed a hand to her brow and clucked his tongue sympathetically. “How are you feeling, Your Grace? Not quite yourself, I hear?”

The duchess opened her eyes. She seemed to stare at the man with a decided lack of focus. Eventually, she let out a huff of discomfort and rolled over onto her side.

Opening his bag, the man started digging inside it. It took all her will not to step forward and demand his identity and purpose. He lifted a vial and poured some of the liquid into a spoon.

At that point, she could not stop herself. She took several steps forward. “What is that?”

The man looked over his shoulder and regarded her with an arrogant expression. “’Tis laudanum. It will relax her.”

She frowned. Apparently the man was a doctor. A doctor the Duke of Birchwood did not see fit to introduce to her. She shifted on her feet, suddenly uncomfortable in her own skin.

She cringed as she watched him pour a very generous dose of laudanum for the duchess.

Unlike many physicians, Papa had not been a devotee of the medicine. He found that patients became too dependent on opiates and he had believed them to be altering to mind and body. He’d used them only in the most extreme of circumstance and she had never seen him administer such a substantial dose to anyone.

She bit her lip, frowning down at the duchess. Whatever the duchess’s condition, it appeared to be chronic. She could very