Barbara Metzger (31 page)

He was going to die.

“Mama.” Kendall’s voice followed a hesitant scratch on the bedroom door. “Hugo is sick. I think you had better come.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“He’s going to die. I know it.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Alissa told her husband, wringing out another damp cloth to place over Hugo’s forehead. “Our son is not going to die. I will not let him.”

“You could not keep your husband from dying,” Rockford insisted, staring down at the slight, still form of his eldest boy, his heir.

“Hugo has a mere recurring congestion and fever. My husband had a sore throat that turned putrid, and his lungs filled. And you called in the best Harley Street physician, one who has trained in Edinburgh. We had naught but the local sawbones, who physicked cows when he was not trimming hair. You have a shelf full of medications, while we had only willow bark tea and leeches.”

“Lud, you won’t let them bleed the boy, will you?”

“Of course not. I stopped when I saw how the letting was weakening my husband, instead of causing healthier blood to flow. Who knows but the leeches contributed to his death. Hugo is not nearly as sick.”

“His grandparents warned me Hugo could go off at any time.”

“His grandparents were fools who kept the poor boy on a short leash because it suited them. You saw how he has thrived since coming to us. And you must stop speaking like that. He can hear you.”

Rockford shook his head. “The doctor said Hugo was out of his mind with the fever.”

“I do not believe that. He squeezed my hand when I told him how much I love him, and he asked for his puppy before we gave him that last dose of medicine. It is the laudanum that is keeping him asleep, not the fever. Your physician thinks rest is the best thing for him, and fluid. Now hold him up while I see if I can get him to sip the barley water.”

Rockford despaired when more got on his sleeve than down the boy’s throat. “It is all my fault.”

“What, that he is too sleepy to drink? We will try again in a few minutes.”

“No, that he is so ill, that I did not let you take him back to the country when you wanted.”

“What, in a cold and drafty carriage, stopping at indifferent inns? That would have been dreadful for him if he were coming down with an ague or something. And what would I have done with him without you to send for the physicians, to stir the kitchens to prepare invalid food, to keep the other children away before they also took ill?”

“But I dragged him all over town today in the cold rain, never once thinking that he might take a chill. I should have remembered how weak he is.”

“Hugo is
not
weak. All children suffer contagions and disease. It is part of childhood. Even you and Eleanor must have had the measles or the sniffles when you were children. It
happens.”

He could not recall being sick, never so ill that he was kept drugged and confined. “I should have taken better care of him. I am his father, by heaven. I should not have let this happen to him.”

“And how would you have stopped it? I ask. Despite your high opinion of your own value, you are only his father, not God. And you saw him when you got back with all those flowers. He was beaming as never before. He told us all that this had been the best day of his entire life.”

“But it could be his last!”

She almost threw the bowl of water at Rockford. “Leave at once if you feel that way. I will not have Hugo hearing your doomsaying. He might think it true.”

Rockford would not go. Alissa was capable and loving, but Hugo was his son, for all the good he could do. He took the damp cloth from her hand and swabbed at Hugo’s face the way he had seen her do. “Still, I should have waited for better weather to take him to the gardens.”

“And disappointed him past bearing? Stop blaming yourself, Robert. Blame me for bringing him to London, then. Or blame me for threatening to take him away before you had a chance to make up for all the years you did not have together. If you must feel guilty over something, feel remorse that you did not give him a hundred such wonderful days filled with his favorite things, including his father’s attention. Feel sorry for yourself that you missed your brilliant child’s early years. But rejoice in how many more glorious times you will have with Hugo, as soon as he is back on his feet. You will be a magnificent father, my lord, once you realize you do not have to accomplish everything in a day or a week.”

“I am not a patient man.”

“But you can be.” Her blush told him she was remembering their own time together that night. “And you will be.”

He had no choice but to be patient for his wife and his son, but how was he to get through the wait?

By staying at Hugo’s bedside through the night and the next morning. If Alissa thought Hugo could hear him, Rockford would tell the boy to be strong, that they both had so much to learn, that he would try to be a better father than his own absent, uncaring sire had been. Just in case Hugo was bored with the repetition, the earl spoke his words in every language he thought the boy knew, and some he did not yet. Things he had never said to anyone, ever, were important to say now, lest he never get the chance. He would think about telling some of them to his wife later.

Finally Alissa made him go to sleep, so that he could relieve her in the afternoon for a much-needed rest of her own. After that they took turns at the bedside, pouring lemonade and honeyed tea and barley water and beef broth into Hugo when he was awake, cooling him with damp cloths when the fever climbed higher.

Rockford rigged a coal brazier and a tent of sheets to make steam when the physician thought the moist air would help keep Hugo’s lungs clear. He saw the anguish on Alissa’s face when the doctor said that, wondering if such a simple thing might have saved her husband.

But then, had Henning lived, she would not be here with him, Rockford thought, jealous again of a dead man. She would not be helping with his son, and helping him keep from going mad with worry. She never complained, never let the maids or the physician’s nurses take over the sickroom, believing that Hugo should see a familiar face whenever he awoke, hers or his father’s. She never fretted about her appearance or her comfort as she sat in the chair at Hugo’s bedside, her brown hair curling around her face from the humid air in the room. She never looked more beautiful, or more appealing…for the brief moments he saw her as they changed shifts every couple of hours.

Alissa spent whatever time she could spare with the other boys and Amy, who had been banned from the sickroom. She also spent a few minutes praying each time she reached her bed, before falling into an exhausted sleep. Despite her assurances to Rockford, she was concerned about Hugo. He was not getting worse, but neither was he improving, so she prayed for his recovery. And for her husband. If anything happened to the boy, Rockford would never forgive himself. He would go back to being the coldhearted man she first met, the one who armored his heart in ice to keep from being wounded. He would blame himself, and then he would blame her, even if he never said so.

All he had wanted was a mother for his sons so he did not have to worry over them. She was already a failure by his standards, to say nothing of how many of his rules she had broken by coming to town, by demanding his protection and his fidelity and his love-making. Now he was so worried over Hugo that Alissa barely existed for him. He spoke only to the boy, in languages she could not understand. With his silence to her, she had to stop believing those tender words he’d whispered in her ear, no matter how much she wanted them to be true. Everyone knew a man would perjure his soul for sex. Oh, she understood Rockford was attracted to her, possessive of her. He’d sent a Bow Street Runner to Rock Hill to watch for Sir George Ganyon’s return, hadn’t he? But did Rockford feel more for her? Did he feel enough to build a relationship? He did not say and she could not ask. Those were rules of his that she would not dare break.

Alissa prayed, for all of them.

* * *

Mr. Canover and his brother did their best to keep the other boys from fretting or getting underfoot. They took them and the pups to the nearby park, kept up the riding instruction, and visited historical, educational sites, after formal lessons in the nursery schoolroom.

Aminta refused to pay morning calls with Aunt Reggie or to go shopping with Lady Eleanor, so she helped with the children, as she had always done. She’d much rather visit the Tower of London than another highborn hostess, and she had more clothes than she’d possessed in all of the years of her life combined. Claymore made sure the young miss had a maid in attendance when she went out, for her reputation, and Jake made sure a strong groom accompanied her, for her protection.

Aunt Reggie stopped arguing, seeing that the girl was not comfortable out in society and did not shine there. She would find a nice, quiet young man to marry in her own time, the older woman conceded.

If left to her own devices, Lady Eleanor would never marry. Just look at the last man she had chosen, a bailiff and a thief! Before that, she had done something so awful that a duke broke half the tenets of polite society to jilt her. Lady Winchwood, with her three husbands, could not be satisfied to leave it at that. No, she was a firm believer in the institution of marriage for everyone, especially females without income or residences of their own.

“No, you cannot stay home,” she told Eleanor. “People will think you are hiding. We have accomplished too much this past week to let it all go for naught now. Your reputation wears the thinnest layer of respectability, so you cannot afford to let it tarnish in storage. We have to represent Alissa, too, so no one forgets that she is acting just as she ought. Let them know how she and Rockford are caring for poor Hugo.”

“No one will believe Rockford is sitting at a child’s bedside,” Lady Eleanor responded. “I have a hard time believing it myself.”

“If they can believe you went chasing after Arkenstall to recover your brother’s artwork, they can believe anything, even the truth. Now put on something pretty, for we are going to a ball. I have a good mind to look over the gentlemen myself. No sense in letting an opportunity like this slip.”

So Lady Eleanor Rothmore once again entered the social world, with more trepidation, but also more success. Lady Thurgood, especially, befriended her, eager for news of Hugo, whom she had selected as a future son-in-law. When other matrons came by the seats Aunt Regina had claimed, happy to discuss their own children’s illnesses, Eleanor was wise enough to hide her complete uninterest in the topic. A few of Rockford’s diplomatic cronies practiced their diplomacy by asking her to dance, or to stroll about the perimeters of the ballroom. Lady Eleanor was not precisely a middle-aged belle, but neither was she a faded wallflower, not in burnt-orange silk. Having seen that her charge was occupied enough, Lady Winchwood had found some elderly gentlemen to play cards with. If she could not coax a proposal out of one of the old dears, she could at least relieve them of a few pounds.

Two more dances, Eleanor decided, then she would collect her aunt and go home. Her head hurt from the weight of the jeweled turban Aunt Reggie had insisted she wear; her feet hurt from the too-small shoes selected to make her seem less of an Amazon; her mouth hurt from maintaining the artificial smile. She had done enough to keep her own reputation intact, and Alissa’s shining from all the praise of her devotion to Rockford and his son.

She accepted Viscount Montmorency as a partner for the next set, a reed-thin gentleman of sixty summers. Eleanor asked to visit the refreshments room instead of taking her place in the Scottish reel, for if she was not too old to be kicking up her heels, and her sore toes, with the schoolroom chits making their come-outs, Lord Montmorency certainly was. Eleanor could imagine the gossip if her partner keeled over during their dance.

The viscount handed her a glass of champagne and proceeded to bore her with tales of his aches and his ailments. No wonder the man had never married, Eleanor thought as she idly surveyed the room over the rim of her glass; he wanted a nursemaid, not a wife.

Then her eye caught a familiar figure. The Duke of Hysmith nodded to her as he continued to chat with Lady Hargreave, a widow reputed to be in need of a wealthy husband to pull her and her gambling debts out of River Tick. Eleanor wondered if Hysmith knew the gossip, and if he cared to be viewed as a banker instead of a beau.

He must have, for he left the widow’s side as soon as the orchestra stopped playing, to walk in Eleanor’s direction. No, she was in front of the champagne table, Eleanor told herself, that was all.

“I think the waltz is next,” his grace said, holding out his arm. “My dance, I believe, Lady Eleanor.”

It was no such thing, but she could not say so in front of Lord Montmorency, so she tipped her head slightly—any more and the blasted turban would have slipped over her ear—and placed her hand on his well-cut coatsleeve.

Silently they walked to the ballroom and took their places when the music began. Silently they danced, knowing that every eye in the place was on them. When a duke danced with an earl’s daughter, no matter their ages, people took note. When a widowed noble waltzed with the woman he had condemned to spinsterhood, a slightly shady spinster at that, the rumormongers started salivating.

Finally Eleanor asked, “Why?”