Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
H oratio fought sleep. Juliet slept in his arms but he feared that every breath would be her last. His own tiredness ate at his resolve, making his eyes heavy. The warmth in the room was like an embrace, soothing his senses and increasing his drowsiness.
Towards dawn, sleep finally overcame him.
He awoke with a start, sunlight streaming in through the room's tall bay window. Fear turned his insides to ice, halting his heart for a moment when he realized that he had slept.
Juliet lay next to him. She was pale and cold. With trembling hands, he touched her shoulder and gently shook her. She did not wake, but he noted the rise and fall of her chest. Pressing his fingers against her neck, he eventually detected a pulse.
It felt weak. Frighteningly so.
“Juliet!” he whispered starkly, “Juliet! Wake up. It is morning! We are here in Carlisle, the home of Doctor Alistair Carmichael.”
Juliet murmured, but did not wake.
Horatio wanted to shout, wanted to shake her awake, but he couldn't. She was too vulnerable, too fragile, and delicate. She was breathing, she was alive. Clinging to life . The weight of her survival rested squarely on him now.
He pressed a swift, desperate kiss to her lips before rising from the bed, still fully dressed. His driver, the same man who had driven him to Wetherby House, had been given accommodation along the hallway from his master. Presently, Horatio strode to his door, knocking sharply until he heard motion within. Moments later, the man answered, his hair disheveled and nightgown askew.
“Your Grace? Are we leaving so soon?” Graeme yawned.
“No. I am going into the town in search of Doctor Carmichael. I must ask you to stand vigil over Juliet. Watch over her until I return.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Like she was my own daughter,” he replied with quiet conviction.
He was old enough for there to be streaks of gray in his thick dark hair, with the ruddy face of a man used to earning his living out of doors. Horatio waited as he hurriedly donned trousers and a shirt over his nightclothes before following him back to the room he and Juliet had shared. Graeme took a solitary chair from the hallway and dragged it inside, before seating himself across from Juliet, his gaze steady on her pale, unconscious form. Satisfied, Horatio departed.
He hastened down the stairs where he found the innkeeper, Mr. Barstow, polishing a tankard behind the bar. He was a slender man with a fringe of pale hair and a bent, beak-like nose. When Horatio appeared, he dropped the tankard he had been polishing and rose to his feet hastily.
“Your Grace! I trust you and your wife had a pleasant night's sleep?”
“She did. Me, not so much. She is unwell and I am looking for a physician to consult. I have in mind a man named Alistair Carmichael . Possibly a Scotsman, I can’t be sure. But he is resident in this town.”
“Yes, Carmichael . I am familiar with the name,” Barstow said, rubbing his hands on a piece of linen, “you are correct. He is a Scotsman. I believe he has a house and a practice on the Glasgow Road, beyond the walls beside the old castle.”
Horatio felt a surge of hope. “Can you direct me?” he asked quickly.
Barstow fumbled in the pocket of his apron and produced a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. He rapidly scribbled a map. Horatio scrutinized it for a moment, placing it against his memories of the streets when they had arrived the previous afternoon. He thought he could follow it. Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he took out a pocketbook and tore out a promissory note.
“I require a horse. Make this out for any amount and I will sign it.”
Barstow, to his credit, held up his hands to avoid taking the note.
“Your Grace, I will not take a penny from you for aiding you in your hour of need. Anything that this house can provide to your Duchess, you have it.”
“Thank you,” Horatio said, earnestly. He put out his hand and Barstow clasped it, eyes wide. “You are a good man, Mr. Barstow. All I will ask of you is to look after my... wife . Presently, my driver is sitting vigil over her, but he may require assistance in my absence.”
Barstow nodded resolutely. “My maids and my wife will help all that we can.”
Relieved, Horatio made his way to the stable yard, where a stable hand swiftly saddled a gray mare for him. With a brief glance at his map, he nudged the horse into a brisk trot. The early sun hung low over the eastern hills, casting their silhouettes in golden relief.
Not long after, he found himself on a gravel road that crossed a river on a stone bridge. Ahead, atop a grassy mound, was the ruins of an old castle. The town's walls crossed the river to join the curtain wall of the castle but only stone pillars remained of that section, standing proud in the water. Beyond the bridge was a number of houses whose gardens joined them to the Glasgow Road. Each was set in its own plot of land, separate from its fellows, screened beyond tall hedges and trees. Horatio could glimpse chimneys and rooftops above the trees. They were sandstone villas, the land they each presided over speaking of the wealth their owners possessed.
The address that Horatio had been given was the first of those houses. It nestled upon a raised bank of grass with a tumbling stream winding around it before joining the river. A horse grazed contentedly on the grass to one side of the house and a trap was visible on the other side under the cover of a low brick building with an open front. A man was digging in a flower bed at the head of the garden, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. He glanced up as Horatio strode up the stone steps that led a winding path up to the house. His horse, he tied to a wooden fence that separated the house from the road.
“Good morning to you, sir,” he said cheerily.
His accent was English and similar to that of Mr. Barstow. Horatio supposed it must be local to this part of Cumbria.
“Good morning to you. I am looking for a Doctor Alistair Carmichael . Is this his home?”
The man straightened, revealing a young face, round and red-cheeked, with fair hair and sky-blue eyes.
“It was. My father built this house in 1790. But he passed away three years ago. Malaria, contracted during his travels in the tropics.” Wiping his dirtied hands on his apron, he extended one in greeting, “I am Malcolm Carmichael, his only son.”
Horatio's dismay must have been plain on his face because Malcolm immediately put a hand to his shoulder, forehead creasing.
“I am sorry, sir, if I spoke bluntly,” he frowned. “I did not expect the news to produce such a reaction. Did you know my father?”
Horatio shook his head, throat tightening, unable to find words for a moment. “No,” he finally choked, “I had never met him, but my wife is ill. Gravely ill. And your father was our last hope.”
Malcolm’s brows knit in concern. “Well, I am also a physician,” he said quickly. “Perhaps I can help? What are her symptoms?”
Horatio stared at him for a moment, feeling stupid that he had not even enquired about the man’s occupation.
“I… I do not know if it has a name. She suffers a terrible weakness, accompanied by coughing and great difficulty in getting warm. She is deathly pale and has been having fainting fits.”
Malcolm listened intently, stroking his chin with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, leaving a smudge of dirt behind. “It could be close to anything with those symptoms,” he mused. “What does her own doctor think?”
“She has no doctor,” Horatio admitted grimly. “She has hidden her illness for... I don’t know how long. Her mother died of the same condition.”
“Ah, a hereditary condition? That narrows it down,” Malcolm said, brightening. “Well, I shall be happy to consult. Forgive me, I have not asked your name or that of your wife.”
“I am Horatio Templeton, Duke of Ravenscourt. She is Miss Juliet Semphill… and well, we are—”
Horatio was about to explain why he referred to Juliet as his wife when they were not yet wed, when Malcolm suddenly grabbed at his arm, fingers digging in. His eyes were wide and mouth slack.
“ Semphill ? Did you just say Semphill? ”
“Yes. Her mother was Judith...”
“Judith, yes!” Malcolm shouted, “My father wrote of her extensively. He never solved the problem of her illness during his lifetime and he died seeking the cure. I carried on his work based on his notes. But I did not know that any had survived from that family. I knew that Judith and her husband were dead and the house destroyed in a fire. This is remarkable! How far along is she?”
“I… I do not know,” Horatio blinked, momentarily taken aback. “She is very weak and I could not wake her this morning—”
“Pale? Thready pulse? …Err, wheezing when she breathes?”
“Yes! All of those things,” Horatio quickly nodded.
“And you could not wake her. There is no time to waste. This is a disease of the blood, a wasting disease that atrophies the lungs and heart. The weakness comes from lack of blood reaching the brain in sufficient quantities. At least, a lack of healthy blood. I do not know if I can reverse the decline, but there is an experimental process that I devised that might work. It will either help her or kill her.”
“Anything! If we do nothing, she will die anyway. Anything!” Horatio pressed.
Malcolm's jaw firmed and he grabbed Horatio's hand, squeezing it tightly.
“I will gather my equipment and follow you in the trap.”
It took moments for Malcolm to gather the required equipment in a battered leather bag and to harness his horse to the trap. But to Horatio, it felt like an hour, during which he begrudged every second.
Finally, he was leading the trap back through the streets of Carlisle for the inn, the Swan . In the stable yard, Horatio wasted no time, swinging out of the saddle and tossing the reins to a bewildered stable hand. Malcolm did likewise after the trap had clattered into the yard. He leaped from his seat, bag in one hand. The two men raced for the inn and Horatio led the way up to the room in which Juliet lay. Graeme sat on the floor outside the door. He scrambled to his feet as Horatio approached.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but the landlady turfed me out—said it wasn't decent for me to be in there. She's watching over Miss Semphill with her daughter.”
Horatio opened the door, striding in with Malcolm on his heels. Malcolm immediately went to work, stripping back the bedclothes and listening to her chest with a peculiar metal instrument resembling a horn. Then he took out a pocket watch and held her wrist, counting.
“You came to me not a moment too soon,” he rattled, “she is losing her fight for life. I am going to recommend a blood transfusion.”
“What on earth is that?” Horatio gaped dumbly.
“A technique of my own invention. When it works, the results are miraculous. When it fails, the patient dies. It is kill or cure. I bleed the patient to remove the bad blood if you will, but I replace it with healthy blood from a donor. It seems that not all blood is the same, though I cannot yet prove it. But I believe this is why the technique fails at times.”
It sounded ludicrous to Horatio. He knew that bleeding was a common treatment, though he had never understood how since a person could quickly bleed to death when a vein was opened. But he had never heard of the blood being replaced. There was a kind of logic in the notion of replacing bad blood with good, he supposed.
“Fine, take mine,” Horatio offered quickly.
Malcolm looked at him skeptically.
“You look slightly pale yourself, Your Grace. This procedure requires a good deal of strength from the donor. Your wife will be losing blood but shall be immediately replenished. You will not. It can lead to unconsciousness.”
“I am fine, man! Take it,” he roared.
Malcolm hesitated for a moment, then nodded, slapping Horatio on the shoulder heartily. He set about setting up his apparatus. Horatio sat next to the bed, stripped to the waist with a tight cord around his upper left arm. A needle was inserted into his arm and a rubber tube connected the needle to a large, glass bottle. In turn, this was connected to another bottle with a set of leather bellows connected as well. Then a tube ran into Juliet's arm. She was already bleeding out of her other arm.
Horatio told himself that it was his imagination that she was becoming paler as he watched. He bit back his impatience at the time it took Malcolm to prepare taking his blood and giving it to Juliet. He prayed that it would be compatible, that Juliet would be one of those who experienced a miraculous recovery. As his life blood flowed out into the bottle, Malcolm began working the bellows and pumping Horatio's blood into Juliet's arm.
Horatio could not take his eyes off Juliet. He heard Malcolm's watch ticking. Both men were watching her face intently, but it was Horatio who saw it first.
“Is it me… or is that color in her cheeks?”
“By George!” Malcolm exclaimed, “by George and Patrick and Andrew and David. By Edwin and Oswald and Alban! Yes! It is taking! Your blood is restoring her! Now, how much more can you give?”
“Take it all if you need to. Keep going!” Horatio urged as he watched death's touch recede from his wife's face.