Chapter 4 Fever and Fortune
The problem with a seizure is that everyone wants to help, and almost all of the help is wrong.
The footman’s body jerks hard enough that his heels thud against the floorboards.
Someone grips his shoulders, trying to pin him still like they can wrestle his brain into obedience.
A maid sobs into her apron. Another servant hovers with a spoon like she’s about to feed him soup through clenched teeth.
“Move back,” I snap, keeping my voice steady because my hands are. “Give him space.”
They stare at me—the strange woman in a nightgown issuing commands in the Duke of Ashbourne’s house. For a beat, I think I’ve made a mistake. Not medically. Socially. The kind that gets you quietly removed from rooms and, if you’re unlucky, from life.
Then the footman’s arm slams down, narrowly missing the edge of a table.
Instinct overrides propriety.
I shove the nearest chair away with my hip. “Candles,” I say, louder. “Get the candles away from him. Now.”
Someone finally moves. Wax drips. A flame wobbles dangerously, then is carried away.
The seizure rolls on—violent, relentless, like a storm that’s decided to make his body its coastline. His jaw clenches. Foam glints at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are unfocused, gone somewhere I can’t follow.
Time becomes strange. Every second feels like a minute. Every minute feels like an hour.
“How long?” I demand, because duration matters and I’m the only person here who seems to know that.
No one answers.
Fine. I do it myself.
I count in my head, forcing my thoughts into something orderly.
One. Two. Three…
His convulsions begin to slow. The muscles in his face twitch, then release. His body gives one final shudder, and then—suddenly—stillness.
The room exhales as one.
“Is he—?” the maid whispers.
“Not dead,” I say quickly, because it’s always the same question and it always makes everything worse. “He’s breathing.”
I lean in, watching his chest rise. It’s ragged, but it’s there. I slide a folded cloth under his head, because I don’t have a pillow and I’m not about to let him crack his skull on someone’s polished floor.
“Do not hold him down,” I tell the man still gripping his shoulders. “Let go.”
He hesitates—then obeys.
Good. Small miracles.
“Now we turn him,” I say, and this time I don’t ask. I take his arm and guide it. Someone else helps, awkwardly. We roll him onto his side. His mouth opens slightly and a thin line of saliva escapes. It dribbles onto the cloth instead of back into his throat.
He makes a low sound, not quite a moan, and his eyelids flutter.
Postictal. Confused. Exhausted. Vulnerable.
I keep my voice soft now, even though my pulse is racing. “You’re all right,” I tell him, because sometimes people hear even when they don’t. “Just breathe.”
“What is happening?” a sharp male voice demands from behind me.
My shoulders tense.
I don’t have to turn to know who it is.
The duke.
Footsteps approach—measured, heavy, controlled. The sound of a man who is used to entering rooms and having them rearrange themselves around him.
“Your Grace,” someone murmurs.
I glance up.
James stands at the edge of the knot of servants, his hair slightly disordered, his shirt open at the throat as if he pulled it on in the dark. Candlelight catches in the planes of his face, turning his expression into something carved: sharp cheekbones, tight jaw, eyes alert and not amused.
His gaze takes in the footman on the floor, the servants hovering like frightened birds, and then lands on me—kneeling in a nightgown with my hands on his employee’s arm.
For a heartbeat, we just look at each other.
Then the room remembers it is a room, and everyone remembers who he is.
“He had a fit,” someone blurts. “Terrible, Your Grace. We sent for Dr. Thornbury.”
James’s eyes flick to the footman again. “Thomas?”
So his name is Thomas. That’s a relief. He has a name. He is not just The Seizing Footman.
Thomas’s lashes flutter, but he doesn’t respond.
James steps closer. I expect him to demand answers, to demand distance, to demand I stop touching his servant because I am not permitted to touch anything in this house without an introduction.
Instead, he crouches on the other side of Thomas, careful to keep his coat from the floor, and studies his breathing.
“Is he dying?” the maid whispers again.
James’s gaze lifts to me, and I realize he’s waiting for my answer.
Because I’ve been the one doing something.
“No,” I say, as steady as I can. “He had a seizure. He’s breathing. He needs space and time.”
James’s eyes narrow slightly at the unfamiliar word. “Seizure.”
“A fit,” I translate quickly. “Falling sickness. Whatever you call it. You don’t restrain him, you don’t put anything in his mouth, and you keep him on his side until he’s fully awake.”
There is a beat of silence where I can feel every pair of eyes on me.
Then James says, very quietly, “And you know this because?”
Because I am from a world where we at least stopped shoving spoons into people’s mouths and calling it care.
Because I am from a world with ambulances and oxygen and emergency departments.
Because my mother raised me to be calm in a crisis even when I’m not sure what day it is.
“Because I’ve seen it,” I say. It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.
James nods once, sharp. “All of you—back,” he orders the servants. “Give them air.”
They scatter immediately, grateful to be told what to do by someone their century recognizes.
I should be offended.
I’m mostly relieved.
Thomas’s face twitches. His eyes open—unfocused, then slowly, slowly finding the ceiling.
He tries to move, and his arm jerks weakly.
“Easy,” I say, leaning in. “You’re all right. You had a fit.”
His gaze slides toward me, bewildered. He tries to speak, but it comes out as a rough exhale.
“Water,” he whispers finally.
“Yes,” I say. “Water.”
I look up. “Clean water. Not gin. Not vinegar.”
James’s eyes flicker. “Mrs. Finch?”
The housekeeper appears as if summoned by his voice alone, her face pale and furious.
She is a woman in her forties, hair covered, posture rigid with competence. She takes in the scene in one glance and looks like she is already mentally filing grievances against everyone present.
“Your Grace,” she says, clipped.
“Water,” James orders.
Mrs. Finch glances at me—sharp, suspicious—and then back to James. “Yes, Your Grace.”
She turns and snaps, “Molly—fetch it.”
Molly runs.
Thomas’s eyes drift shut again. His breathing is steadier now, the terrifying drama of the seizure replaced by the quiet exhaustion after.
And then another set of footsteps arrives—faster, brisk, as if offended by the very idea of urgency.
“Out of the way,” a man’s voice snaps.
Dr. Thornbury.
He strides into the corridor in a dark coat and a hat still on his head, because apparently manners apply even to medical emergencies. He carries a leather bag that looks older than most modern hospitals.
His gaze lands on Thomas, then on me.
His eyes narrow.
“What is this?” he demands, as if the seizure is my doing. “Who is she?”
James rises smoothly. “Dr. Thornbury,” he says. “This is Miss Hart.”
Dr. Thornbury does not offer a greeting. He does not offer a bow. He does not offer anything but judgment.
“A woman?” he says, disbelief thick in his voice. “On the floor? In her—” His gaze flicks to my nightgown, and his lip curls. “—shift?”
Heat climbs my neck. I tighten my grip on Thomas’s wrist anyway, two fingers at his pulse like a lifeline.
James’s expression hardens. “She assisted before you arrived.”
Dr. Thornbury’s nostrils flare. “Assisted. How.”
“By stopping them from forcing a spoon into his mouth,” I say, because if I’m going to be judged, I might as well earn it.
Dr. Thornbury’s eyes flash. “It prevents the tongue from being swallowed.”
I blink. “That’s not—”
“Miss Hart,” James says, warning in his tone.
Dr. Thornbury steps forward anyway, kneeling with theatrical displeasure. He opens his bag and produces a small roll of instruments, gleaming in the candlelight.
My stomach twists.
Please let those be clean. Please let him not be about to cut into Thomas with something he used on the last person.
Dr. Thornbury presses his fingers to Thomas’s wrist, then lifts a eyelid with a thumb. Thomas flinches weakly.
“Falling sickness,” Dr. Thornbury pronounces, as if he’s delivering a verdict. “He must be bled.”
I stare. “No.”
He looks up, slowly. “Pardon?”
“No,” I repeat, clearer. “He just convulsed for—” I stop, because I didn’t time it aloud. “He had a fit. He’s exhausted. He needs rest. Water. Quiet. Not blood loss.”
Dr. Thornbury’s face darkens. “You presume to contradict me?”
“I presume to keep him alive,” I shoot back, and my voice is sharper than it should be in a hallway full of hierarchy. “Bleeding him will make him weaker. He could aspirate. He could faint. He could—”
“He could be cured,” Dr. Thornbury snaps. He gestures at his instruments. “The blood must be tempered. The excess relieved. It is simple.”
James looks between us as if he cannot believe this is his life.
“Your Grace,” Dr. Thornbury says, turning toward James as if I am an inconvenience someone failed to put away, “I will not have a stranger instructing me in my profession.”
James’s face is perfectly controlled, but I see tension at the corner of his mouth.
“She is not instructing you,” James says, voice even. “She is…offering an opinion.”
“An opinion,” Dr. Thornbury repeats with disgust. “From where? A London tavern?”
My cheeks burn. “From common sense.”
Dr. Thornbury’s eyes snap back to me. “Common sense says you return to your bed, Miss Hart. And that you leave men’s work to men.”
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek.
This is the moment where I want to make a speech about modern medicine and sexism and the fact that the tongue is attached to the jaw and cannot, in fact, be swallowed like a marble.
This is also the moment where I remember Kitty’s warning about men who don’t ask, and the reality that I have no power here except the fragile goodwill of one duke.
So I change tactics.
I make it about Thomas.