Chapter 11
“Fetch the doctor. Now. And bring towels. Warm ones,” Rose’s voice cut through the nursery like a bell, startling both maids to motion.
The first dashed out, skirts lifted indecorously, while the other hovered with the stunned intensity of a rabbit cornered by hounds.
In the cradle, Lizzie wailed, every note scraped raw with distress.
Her face, normally the color of cream, had gone violently pink.
The breath that shivered from her lungs steamed in the chill morning air.
Her whimper was not the healthy, complaining cry of an infant refusing to sleep; it was thinner, desperate, edged with a hoarseness Rose had never heard from her before.
She bent over the cradle, heart stumbling in her chest. “Darling, darling,” she whispered, stroking the baby’s hair. She pressed her palm to the child’s forehead; it was too hot to bear.
She turned to the second maid, who lurked at the door. “Go! Tell Mrs. Durham to fill the copper bath, not too hot, and to bring the fever powders if she has them.”
The maid fled.
Left alone, Rose scooped the screaming child into her arms, cradling her close despite the inferno radiating through the layers of muslin and flannel. The baby’s skin was damp, hair plastered to her skull, the usually contented green eyes now wild and unfocused.
For one paralyzing instant, Rose’s mind blanked to nothing but white fear. She had never seen a child so sick, had never been the one responsible for its survival.
She pressed Lizzie tighter, rocking at a rhythm she hoped would trick the body into peace. The baby’s cries only grew more ragged.
The door burst open, and Mrs. Durham entered, flushed and breathless, bearing a chipped blue bowl full of tepid water and a hunk of coarse linen. “The physician’s been sent for. But it may be hours before he arrives.”
Rose nodded. “Give me the cloth.”
Mrs. Durham tried to take the baby; arms outstretched. “Let me help, Your Grace—”
“No,” Rose said. “I must do this myself. She needs me.”
The nurse withdrew and set the bowl down on the chest of drawers as Rose lay Lizzie out on the changing table, stripping the sweat-soaked nightgown from her body with trembling fingers. Her little belly, round and pale in the firelight, heaved with each breath.
Rose checked for the faint, purplish bruises that Sister Miriam had once warned signaled disaster. There were none.
She dipped the linen in the water, wrung it out, and began dabbing the baby’s face, neck, wrists, and ankles. “Easy, darling, easy. Just a bit of cool water, you see?”
Her hands moved with purpose, though inside she was unraveling.
As Rose worked, the baby’s shrieking began to slow, replaced by hiccupping, open-mouthed sobs. The heat was not lessening, but Lizzie’s strength was failing, the angry kicks giving way to limp shudders.
She gathered the child against her shoulder, rubbing slow circles along the spine.
“What if…” she muttered.
“We do what we can until the doctor comes. That’s all.” Mrs. Durham’s voice was grim, but kind behind her.
Rose set her jaw. “Prepare the bath. Now, please.”
The nurse and the staff worked together, lugging the copper basin from the night nursery into the bedroom properly and filling it with buckets of water, half cool from the outside pump, half boiled over the kitchen fire. Steam haloed from the surface.
Rose checked the temperature with her elbow, a habit borrowed from the nuns, and nodded when it was neither scalding nor chill. Then, she carried Lizzie to the bath, one arm cradling the head, the other gripping the legs so tightly her own knuckles blanched.
The maids hovered, uncertain if they should help, but Rose shooed them back. “I have it. Just stay nearby. Please.”
Lizzie let out a wavering, plaintive sound as Rose eased her into the water. The contrast of hot skin against tepid liquid made the child arch her back and yelp, but Rose kept murmuring, “Hush, dear, hush now. I’m here.”
She let her free hand dip the cloth into the water, wringing it out and trailing it along the baby’s body, careful as if polishing glass. Lizzie’s wails softened with each pass, growing smaller and smaller until they were little more than whimpers.
Rose sang, low and unsteady—not a proper song but the old tune Julia had hummed while sewing, a refrain that wound itself around the words, “you are loved, you are loved, you are safe.”
Rose did not remember ever being sung to herself, but the words came anyway, stubborn as weeds through stone.
The baby stared up at her with enormous, liquid eyes, glazed and so heartbreakingly vulnerable that Rose could barely meet them. She kept singing, voice trembling but determined, and the nursery fell into a hush that felt sacred.
The water cooled, and Mrs. Durham stepped forward, holding a towel. “If you wish, Your Grace—”
“I can do it,” she said as she lifted the child from the basin, wrapping her instantly in the towel and cradling her close.
The baby shivered, but then, blessedly, went limp, her breath easing into the slow, regular pattern of deep exhaustion.
Rose exhaled, realizing only then that she’d not truly breathed since the moment she entered the room.
She pressed her lips to the baby’s head. “You are safe. You are safe. I have you.”
Lizzie blinked once, and in that moment, Rose felt the connection, an invisible thread, drawn tight and sure as any vow. She had never understood what it was to love something so fiercely, so completely, until now.
She sat by the hearth, rocking Lizzie, letting the towel soak up the water and the baby’s own trembling sweat. The maids hovered at a respectful distance. Mrs. Durham brewed chamomile and brought it to Rose, but she did not touch it. Her entire body was focused on the small bundle in her arms.
The doctor would come, and the fever would break, or it would not. There was nothing left to do but wait and hold on.
Rose kept singing, softer now, until her voice was nearly lost in the hush of the nursery. She rocked and rocked, never letting go.
Felix watched them through the open crack of the nursery door, unseen and, he hoped, unneeded.
The sun was a pale-yellow suggestion along the east windows, not yet enough to warm the old bones of Carden House.
Even from this vantage, he could see how Rose’s arms encircled Lizzie. It wasn’t just a cradle, but a fortress, a promise, the child wrapped so tight against her chest that not even air dared come between them.
He took in every detail: the fever sweat standing in beads on the baby’s brow, the exhausted damp at Rose’s temples.
She moved with a certainty he had never seen in her before, rocking in the high-backed chair, one foot tapping out a pulse on the nursery rug, humming a tune that did not quite settle into any melody.
Lizzie’s tiny hands flailed, then relaxed, flailed again, then stilled. Rose never lost rhythm. She simply absorbed the panic and pressed it out as warmth, as if the very act of holding could will the fever away.
The knowledge landed on him heavy and sour: This is what a mother should be. This is what home should feel like.
He recoiled from the thought.
Weakness, he told himself. Sentiment. The traitor of all men.
The old duke had taught him early that affection was a leash, nothing more.
He remembered his own mother pacing these same halls, trailing the scent of cold roses and gin, her smile a brittle thread pulled too tight.
He remembered how the nursery had felt chilly even when the fire blazed, how his own childhood nurse had been dismissed for holding him ‘too often.’
If this was what a home felt like, it was a lie. Some beautiful, impossible thing doomed to fall apart the moment you reach for it.
Still, he found himself standing there, his hand braced on the doorframe, unable to turn away.
He told himself he was only waiting for a moment when he might be useful.
That it was practical to observe, to learn the signs in case the fever returned, or in case Rose herself collapsed from exhaustion.
But this, too, was a lie. He was waiting because some part of him wanted this scene branded into memory: Rose in the chair, Lizzie safe, the rest of the house held at bay.
What would it be like to have this every day? To walk through these halls and hear laughter echo from room to room instead of the measured footfalls of servants or the brittle laughter of society’s wolves? The thought made him dizzy and furious.
He would not be that man. He would not become his father, who mistook conquest for care and considered children mere investments. He would not become his mother, frozen by the weight of her own disappointment.
He would not, could not, believe that home could be anything but a series of transactions.
The sound of the chair creaking as Rose shifted snapped him back. She glanced up, and for a heartbeat, he thought she had seen him. She did not call out. Instead, she looked down at Lizzie and pressed her lips to the child’s forehead, murmuring something too soft to carry.
Felix let his hand drop from the door. He flexed his fingers, finding them cold. He knew, with the fatal clarity of his own design, that if he ever let himself want this, he would break it beyond all repair.
He straightened his cuffs and made himself walk the length of the corridor. Each step was a little easier than the last.
By the time he reached his study, the door closing behind him with a decisive click, he had almost convinced himself he had not lingered at all. But the image of them burned behind his eyelids, impossible to banish.
He poured himself two fingers of whiskey and did not sit.
Felix did not intend to return to the nursery.
He told himself Rose was perfectly capable, and there was nothing he could offer but interference.
Yet the next time he looked up from his desk, having accomplished nothing but to scrawl three versions of the same letter and discard them, he found himself already halfway up the stairs.
The nursery door was not closed. He hovered, then knocked.
Rose’s voice, soft as last night’s dream. “Come in, Your Grace.”
He entered. She was still in the armchair, swaddled in a shawl, Lizzie wrapped against her chest, only the baby’s downy hair and one pink ear visible.
Felix stood there, awkwardly. He tried to find something to say that might not sound foolish. “I can have a cot brought in, if you prefer,” he whispered.
“No. She will not settle in the cradle, not after last night. And I don’t mind sitting up. I slept less at the convent.”
He nodded. She busied herself tucking the blanket around Lizzie’s feet, then ran her finger along the baby’s cheek with the gravity of a priest making the sign of the cross.
For a long time, there was only the small sound of Lizzie’s breath, still too rapid, but deeper now. Rose watched the pulse flutter at the base of the baby’s neck, each beat like the ticking of some terribly important clock.
Felix crossed to the hearth, knelt, and poked at the coals until a small, reluctant flame sparked and flared. Then he turned to Rose.
“She’s through the worst of it?” he asked, low.
“She’s cooler. I think she’s safe for now.”
He nodded, eyes flicking to the untouched tea. “You should drink,” he said, and when she did not move, he poured the tea into a fresh cup and set it within reach.
Felix moved carefully, as if every step was measured to avoid disturbing the baby. He lifted the towel from the cradle, found it still slightly damp, and folded it into a square, then he dipped it in the basin, wrung it so gently the twist made not a single sound, and brought it back to Rose.
She did not take it, so he dabbed it himself across Lizzie’s brow. The baby stirred and made a protesting sound, but Felix’s touch was so cool and deft she settled instantly. He repeated the gesture until her forehead shone with dampness, then left the cloth draped over the crook of Rose’s arm.
“Thank you,” she told him, and he only nodded in return, as though he was doing the most natural thing.
The minutes wavered. Lizzie’s color softened from angry red to mottled pink, then to a familiar, sallow cream. She drooled a little, lips pursed in a way that made Rose’s heart clench with stupid, animal joy.
She bent her head and pressed her mouth to the child’s temple. “You’re all right. You’re all right.”
Felix watched her, then reached into the cradle and withdrew a fresh blanket, bringing it to Rose.
“Let me,” he said, and she did not resist as he draped it over both of them, tucking the edges around Lizzie’s feet, then around Rose’s own shoulders.
“Thank you,” Rose said.
For a while, they sat in silence, the three of them, a strange, makeshift family, knit together by crisis and sweat and the lingering terror that it could all dissolve in a moment.
When Lizzie finally relaxed, her entire body going heavy and slack with genuine sleep, Rose felt a new exhaustion come over her. She let her head fall back, the weight of it balanced by Felix’s arm, where he rested it behind her on the settee.
She drifted, not asleep but not fully awake, lulled by the rhythm of the baby’s breath, the soft hiss of the fire, and the odd comfort of Felix’s presence so close beside her.
When the physician finally arrived, blinking and tousled, he was almost irrelevant. They listened to his instructions, nodded at the doses and remedies, and let him check the baby’s pulse.
He bowed, then turned to Felix. “The duchess managed splendidly, Your Grace. She may have saved the child’s life.”
Felix glanced at Rose, but she did not react; instead, nodding with the barest acknowledgment.
The doctor declared Lizzie out of danger, left powders and advice, then vanished.
Rose looked down at Lizzie, then up at Felix.
He met her gaze. “She’s strong,” he said.
Rose nodded. “She must be. She’s a Greycliff.”
The corner of his lip turned upwards in a hint of a smile.
The tea had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. The room was full of light now, and for a few precious minutes, Rose believed she could keep the world at bay forever, just by holding on tight enough.
She closed her eyes, and for the first time since girlhood, she slept without fear.