Chapter 5 #2
He took her clothing with a nod and received her instructions to bring up broth and a fresh tray at regular intervals. At her request, he also promised cloths and cold water—essential tools to keep Julius’s temperature down and to ensure he remained hydrated through the night.
Propping the door open to allow the breeze from the open window to circulate, Audrey returned to her valise and began rifling through its contents until her fingers met the familiar spine of her father’s worn copy of Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
The leather binding was soft with age, the edges of the pages feathered and faintly stained from years of use in the field.
Margins bore her father’s distinctive, neat hand.
Some printed lines were firmly crossed out, replaced with his meticulous corrections, field-tested through experience and observation.
She needed to brew a fever-reducing tea for her patient, but first, she must be precise about the choice of ingredients. Every element must be suited to Julius’s current condition—fever, blood loss, potential infection. No room for error.
Drawing a breath to calm herself, Audrey sank into an upholstered armchair by the window.
The breeze chilled her cheeks, still damp from the exertion of her earlier tasks.
The chair sat beside a small mahogany table stacked with a few volumes, one of which caught her attention, Aus den Memoiren des Venetianers by J. Casanova. Volume one.
She raised her brows. The memoirs of the infamous Venetian adventurer.
Somehow, it seemed rather fitting that this particular title graced Julius’s bedside.
She could picture him vaulting from a second-story window in the dead of night, escaping the wrath of some titled matron’s husband.
There was a roguish charm to his tailored irreverence.
Handsome, certainly, but more than that, incorrigible.
And yet, beneath that bright surface, he had chosen to involve himself in a matter of deadly consequence to aid his friends. That paradox lingered with her.
She set the book gently back onto the table and licked the pad of her finger before leafing through the pages of her father’s herbal.
The scent of old paper and dried leaves wafted up, a comforting perfume.
With her valise perched beside her on the table, she flipped to the section marked with a ribbon.
Page 128. Oak.
“The same is singularly good in pestilential and hot burning fevers, for it resists the force of the infection and allays the heat. It cools the heat of the liver, breaking the stone in the kidneys, and stays women’s courses …”
She reached into the valise and drew out a small stoppered glass vial containing finely ground oak bark, her father’s labeling still intact.
She continued scanning.
My Lady’s Thistle.
“The seed and distilled water is held powerful to all the purposes aforesaid, and besides, it is often applied both outwardly with cloths or sponges to the region of the liver, to cool the distemper thereof, and to the region of the heart, against swoonings and the passions of it.”
In the margin, her father had written, “Excellent as compress. Particularly effective when combined with oak bark to cool fever rooted in the liver.”
Audrey drew the second vial and placed it beside the oak. The habit of assembling ingredients with methodical precision steadied her. It was as though her father’s voice was guiding her hand.
By the time Rose returned with the boiling water, Audrey had devised a complete treatment plan for the hours ahead.
Tea for ingestion, compresses for cooling, cloths for physical regulation.
She worked quickly, combining the powdered ingredients in the teapot.
The resulting brew smelled earthy and faintly acrid.
She poured out a cup, bringing it to her lips to taste.
The bitterness was immediate—dry, grassy, and lingering. Her nose wrinkled.
“Hmph. A spoonful of honey would not go amiss.”
After mixing in a little of the honey she had earlier applied to his wound, she returned to Julius’s bedside.
He was still conscious, though barely. She coaxed him upright, sliding an arm behind his shoulders and pressing the cup to his lips. “Drink this while you can,” she said firmly. “It will bring your fever down.”
He obeyed, though sluggishly. She noted the tremble in his hand as he tried to grip the cup.
If he slipped into a deeper fevered sleep, there would be no more swallowing. Then she would rely solely on compresses, placing them over the liver and the back of the neck, alternating with the cool cloths she had requested. It would be a long night.
And it was the first she would endure alone.
Her father had always stood beside her when treating patients in the past, correcting, supporting, guiding. But now it was her hands alone. Still, his knowledge was in her blood, and his voice in her mind. He had trained her for this.
She must not falter. There was no physician in London she would trust to treat Julius, not with their mania for bloodletting and leeches.
Her father had railed against it. “It is not medicine to bleed a man dry who is already weakened. It is murder disguised in a white cravat,” he had said once. Audrey could hear him now.
And Lord Stirling had trusted her father with his health for over three decades. In his absence, Audrey believed she was doing exactly what the earl would have wished for his heir.
Still, the weight of it pressed against her chest—a silent, invisible mantle heavy as lead. Yet there was no turning back. Julius’s life depended on her.
Julius was hot. Blisteringly so. A searing heat pulsed through his limbs, licking at his heels like the flames of damnation.
The very air scorched his lungs, and the roar of the fire thundered in his ears, deafening and relentless.
If it did not relent, he would be consumed, reduced to ash. He must be in hell.
It was retribution. Just punishment for the sins he could not undo.
Abbott, poor devil, forced to wed under the lash of scandal, while Julius had done naught but bear witness. A friend betrayed by silence.
The little baroness, barely out of the schoolroom, her voice soft as spring rain, choked by bruises that ringed her throat like a noose. He had failed her too.
Brendan, dragged to Bow Street, the noose figuratively at his neck, and Julius had stood idle, unable to stop it.
Coward.
He had not even gone after his mother when she fled to Paris, simply because he could not bear to face the horror of that journey back across the Channel.
The reek of salt and bilge, the endless tossing of the ship.
Even now, he could feel the sickening roll beneath his feet.
That was strange. Hell should not be drenched in seawater.
And yet the fiery air was thick with the briny sting of the English Channel, of storm-drenched sails snapping taut in a gale. The dissonance was nauseating.
Then … light.
A soft voice cut through the roar. It was clear, though distant. Familiar. A hand, cool and sure, pressed a cloth to his brow. A blessed chill swept across his temple and down his cheeks. The fire recoiled. The sea stilled. The demons fled.
The voice murmured again, and he recognized it.
Audrey.
With a low sigh, Julius surrendered to the pull of that voice, sinking into the cool hush of her presence, the sweet balm of oblivion overtaking him.
Audrey swabbed her restless patient as he muttered and shifted beneath the damp linens.
His skin was far too hot for her liking.
She rinsed the cloth in the basin at her side, waited a few moments for the steam to dissipate, then applied it once more to his fevered brow.
She swept it gently across his pallid face, then down the lean, muscled length of each arm, lifting them in turn to glide the linen down his flanks and across his chest.
The sheets beneath him were sodden with sweat, clinging to his back and sides like a second skin. Frowning, Audrey nibbled her lower lip, weighing her next move, when Patrick entered, carrying a fresh stack of folded linens and a larger basin filled with water.
“Should we change his sheets?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, we’d best. I’ll bring new ones directly.”
The old retainer placed the tray of folded cloths on the table, removed her jars and vials from the tray she had been using, and tucked it beneath his arm before leaving with a brisk nod.
Audrey returned to her task, running the cooling cloth once more along Julius’s clammy body.
It would be best to remove as much perspiration as she could before they moved him.
His chest rose and fell with shallow rhythm, his face flushed, lashes dark against his cheeks.
She gently raised his head, cradling it in the crook of her arm, and brought the cup to his lips.
“Swallow, Julius,” she urged, her voice low but firm.
To her relief, his mouth opened, and he swallowed a few weak gulps of the bitter brew before sinking back into the mattress, his head rolling slightly as he exhaled.
She lowered him with care, then checked the dressing with cautious fingertips.
As expected, the bandage was damp—saturated from the heat of his body.
She stepped back, already calculating her next move. The wound would need cleaning and redressing. She would reapply the honey and wrap him in a dry bandage once Patrick returned, and they could shift him to strip the bed.
Glancing toward the mantel clock across the chamber, she noted how slowly the minutes passed. It was to be a long night still. Outside, the storm had abated, but the garden lay shrouded in mist and stillness. A pewter gloom hung in the air, as though the entire world had donned mourning.
Audrey rubbed at her tired eyes and sank back into the velvet wingback chair beside the bed, its worn brocade familiar beneath her fingers.
Just a moment’s rest. The weight of her limbs had grown heavier with each hour, and though her stomach gave a faint pang of protest, it was only now she realized she had not eaten since morning.
She would need food soon. Strength. Julius’s fever had not yet broken, and the hours ahead demanded her full attention. But for now, she allowed herself the briefest reprieve, watching the gentle rise and fall of her patient’s chest as she waited for the work to begin anew.