Chapter 1 #2
He heard Thomas’s coughing before he reached Farrow Cottage, the sound carrying on the wind. He lengthened his stride, boots crunching through the snow, and burst inside without knocking. One look at the nurse’s face was enough: Thomas Farrow might not last the night.
“My lord,” she began, but he was already past her, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the sickbed.
Thomas was far too light when Fred gathered him up, nothing but bones wrapped in blankets damp from fever-sweat. He was barely awake, even with the jostling movement.
“You—” His words were hard to make out but Fred heard them well enough. “You did this.”
Fred thought he meant he’d made Thomas ill but then he saw him pointing his finger at The Poisoned Quill crumpled at his bedside. The one that had been so cruel to Julianna and had called Thomas an invalid.
But then another ragged cough tore from him, wet and awful, drawing his attention back from the vile scandal rag. Fred clenched his jaw. He’d made a mistake leaving them here after the wedding. Another mistake in a lifetime too full of them.
Mrs. Sykes hurried behind, thrusting a hat onto Thomas’s head and gloves onto his hands as Fred carried him toward the door. Snow lashed his face as he stepped outside, but he bent his head, holding Thomas close against him, steadying his pace through the drifts.
His legs burned, his chest ached from the effort, but he kept moving. The nurse stumbled beside him with a small cry, and Fred shifted Thomas higher in his arms, gritting his teeth against the wind, to help her.
“Go back,” he said to her, once she was steady on her feet. “Come to Sedgewick Manor once it’s cleared.”
“Are you certain, my lord?”
“Yes. Go.”
She looked unsure but he turned from her and kept going, the Manor in his sights. The silly woman could do as she liked but he was getting Tom somewhere safe and warm. He’d wipe the man’s goddamned brow himself if he had to.
Thankfully, by the time he was kicking open the front door, the doctor had arrived, bag in hand.
“You’re here,” Fred said. “Upstairs. Quickly.”
“I wasn’t given much of a choice,” the doctor muttered before Gilbert intervened with a swift, “I’ve set the master bedroom for Mister Farrow, my lord.”
Fred carried Thomas through the great hall and up the stairs to the one chamber that had been properly readied, his own.
He laid him down as gently as he could, glad to see the fire blazed and the linens were clean.
The heavy drapes, the first in the Manor to be aired out and re-hung, kept out any hint of that icy draft he’d felt at Farrow Cottage.
“Step aside, please,” the doctor said briskly.
Fred moved back automatically from Thomas’s bedside, not realizing for a long moment that the words weren’t meant for him. Julianna had followed them up the stairs and now hovered in the doorway. Her eyes, shining in the firelight, were beset with too much worry.
She let the doctor pass and then, when he’d set to work, moved to the chair someone had placed by the bedside. She took Thomas’s hand and began to hum a melody Fred remembered from when they were children. It was one of her father’s.
He turned away, his own chest aching, and left the room.
Downstairs in his study, Fred sat at his desk and stared into the fire, the scent of pine and snow still clinging faintly to his coat. He didn’t know if that was from Julianna or from the outdoors and he didn’t care to parse the difference.
He pulled his coat off and inhaled it, letting the smell of it fill him up. And then he hung it on the hook in the great hall himself, while the staff busied themselves to fulfill the doctor’s orders for fresh linens and hot tea.
For hours he sat still and listened: to the fire’s crackle, the steady tick of the mantel clock, the muted movements above.
And he remembered. Every time Tom had quit their chess games in a rage after Fred had won.
Julianna, trying desperately to embroider while they hooted and hollered and ran outside.
Eliza and Ignatius Farrow, and how they had always, without fail, let him into their home and hearts.
When, near midnight, word came that the fever had broken, Fred sagged against his desk with relief. Thank Christ.
He reached for paper and quill, knowing the words would spill out as they always did in the letters he never sent.
He’d finally burned the stack Eva would never read when he’d returned from France.
He ought to burn these as well but they gave him comfort in a life where he had so little of it, so he didn’t. Not yet.
Julianna,
I was so frightened tonight. If Thomas had died…I don’t know how you would have borne it. I don’t know how I would have borne watching you try. It broke something in me to see you cry. I would have done anything to stop it. Anything at all. That surprises me as much as I’m sure it would shock you.
I am sorry, Jules, for leaving you in that cottage. And for breaking the promise I made to him. For holding you when I should not have. But I cannot forget it. Even now, hours later, I still feel you there. I wish I didn’t.
Yours,
Fred
Fred set down the quill and let the ink dry, before he slipped the letter into the drawer where it joined the small, neat stack of others he had written to her. And then he rose, weary now that the worst of the danger had passed, and made for the stairs.
The house was quiet and dark around him, meaning he’d need to find his own way to bed, wherever that might be. Thomas was in his chamber and he wasn’t certain if any others had been made habitable.
He made it to the top of the landing before he paused, listening. Somewhere in the dark depths of the house came the muffled sound of quiet sobs.
Julianna.
He stood in the shadows, torn between turning toward her and turning away. If he went to her now, he would not know how to go away again. But nor could he leave her to her silent weeping either.