The bedchamber stood on the opposite side of the kitchen. With her skirts swinging around her booted feet, Georgiana huffed her way past the table and stove and through the door. Once inside, she let his heavy arm drop again.
Soaked and bloody. Thom wasn’t going into the bed like that. She stripped the quilts down the mattress, then covered the sheet with towels.
Thom needed to be stripped, too. She reached for his cap, damp but warm. Too warm. Heat radiated through the knitted wool. Tugging it off, she laid the backs of her fingers to his forehead.
Burning.
Oh, no. No, no, no. When she’d first found Thom on the beach and rolled him over, she’d touched his face. His skin had been cool. Not now. And the bugs wouldn’t heal this—they created the fever. It only happened rarely, and with severe wounds. The tiny machines worked so hard to heal him that they overheated his body. Infected men and women almost never sickened or died from anything but old age, unless an injury killed a person faster than the bugs could heal him. But bug fever was often fatal.
Rushing to the window, Georgiana threw it open. Frigid air swept inside the room. She flew back to Thom’s side. She needed ice, opium. His temperature had to be lowered, and the drug slowed the bugs. They wouldn’t repair his wound as quickly, but the opium might keep the healing from killing him. He probably only lived now because his body had lain half-submerged in the freezing ocean water.
She tore open the buckles of his coat, her mind racing as quickly as her fingers. A few blocks of ice were stacked in the ice house, but she would have to send a wiregram to town for more. The physician could bring opium.
But she had to get Thom undressed first. She wrestled the thick coat down his arms and tossed it aside. A woolen fisherman’s gansey lay beneath, the gray weave soaked in blood. She yanked the pullover up to his chest, taking his linen shirt with it and exposing the bullet hole in his side.
The small wound had stopped bleeding. Carefully, she turned him. The bullet’s exit had done more damage, the injury larger and more ragged, but no blood seeped out. The edges had already healed.
Thank God. Even if the healing slowed, this wound no longer threatened his life. She just had to worry about the fever.
Gripping the hem of his gansey and shirt, she stripped them the rest of the way off, almost losing her balance in the process. His prosthetics thunked back to the floor, and—
He had new arms.
For an instant, astonishment froze Georgiana in place. No longer dull, skeletal iron. These were steel, and shaped in proportion to his body—a combination of intricate machines designed to resemble a pair of long, muscular arms.
Where on Earth had he gotten them? Who could have made such incredible devices?
But Georgiana knew. She’d heard the whispers, rumors that had flown by airship and sailed by boat across the North Sea to the small Danish town of Skagen. Yet although she herself had called him a cheating scoundrel in her mind, that was only when she’d been at her angriest, her most hurt. She hadn’t believed the rumors. After all, Thom had only visited her bed three times. Three awful times that he’d seemed to enjoy even less than Georgiana had. So she hadn’t believed that he’d gone to another woman’s bed.
And maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps there was another explanation. It hardly mattered. As soon as he was well again, she would say good riddance to him.
He would go, anyway. Thom always did. But this time, for the first time, Georgiana would have the satisfaction of knowing that he went after she’d told him to leave—and not after she’d asked him to stay.
* * *
By evening, the rash that signaled the worst stage of the fever began spreading over Thom’s throat and chest. The doctor didn’t say anything as he administered another injection of opium, but Georgiana didn’t need the grim-faced man to tell her how little hope was left. Those small red dots marked the beginning of the end.
Thom would leave again. He wouldn’t come back. Not because she’d told him to go, but because he’d made her a widow.
But that was not how this would end. She had accounts to settle with her husband before he left, so Thom could not go like this.
Georgiana would simply not allow it. And in recent years, she had become very good at getting her way.
The lamps flickered throughout the night, the flames dancing in the draft from the window. Accompanied by the roar of the ocean, Georgiana bathed his nude body in ice water until her fingers shriveled and ached. In the morning, the doctor pumped Thom full of opium again and helped her replenish the chunks of ice piled around his motionless form. She resumed bathing his skin, her frozen hands stiff and her mood too heavy to lift.
Exhaustion finally claimed her in the middle of the second night. She fell asleep in an armchair next to Thom’s bedside and woke at dawn with a crooked neck. Her husband lay still, with only a sheet over his hips for modesty. The gray light through the window paled his skin, washing away the flush of the fever. The ice surrounding his big body had melted almost to nothing.
The dour Doctor Rasmussen stood at the vanity, snapping his black case shut. He wore his scarf and gloves, and the brim of his hat shadowed his humorless features. From outside, Georgiana heard the chattering engine of his steamcart.
She jolted upright, her back and neck protesting. “You are already leaving? But we must add more ice.”
In a tone as somber as his expression, the doctor replied, “There is no need for more, Mrs. Thomas.”
No need . . . ? Fear yanked Georgiana to her feet. Her gaze shot to Thom’s pale, still form.
The doctor continued, “The rash receded during the night. I’ve administered another dose so that your husband continues to rest, but he should not need another.”
Relief descended in a bone-dissolving wave, but Georgiana didn’t trust it until she flattened her palm against Thom’s chest. Still too warm, but not burning. His heart beat in deep, even thuds. The angry rash and the swelling in his throat had faded.