Chapter 4 Fever and Fortune #2
I look at James instead of Dr. Thornbury. “Your Grace,” I say, forcing the honorific through my teeth, “if you bleed him and he collapses, you will have weakened him for no reason. Give him an hour. If he worsens, do what you must. But let him recover from the fit first.”
James holds my gaze.
There is a long beat where the entire house seems to pause, waiting to see which authority he chooses.
Finally he says, “An hour.”
Dr. Thornbury stiffens. “Your Grace—”
James lifts a hand, stopping him with one gesture. “You may remain,” he says, “and observe. If Thomas deteriorates, you may proceed.”
Dr. Thornbury’s face turns a shade redder. “This is absurd.”
James’s voice stays calm. “It is my house.”
That’s it. That’s the argument.
Power as punctuation.
Dr. Thornbury presses his lips into a thin line. He snaps his instruments back into their roll as if the leather has personally offended him.
“Very well,” he says, each syllable clipped. “We shall see how your American—” his eyes flick to me again “—experiment fares.”
Experiment.
Great. I love being an experiment.
Molly returns with a cup of water, hands trembling. I take it and tip a few drops to Thomas’s lips when he’s awake enough to swallow.
He coughs, weakly, then drinks. The water spills down his chin. I wipe it with the edge of my sleeve, because I have nothing else.
Dr. Thornbury watches as if I’m performing witchcraft.
Minutes pass.
Thomas’s breathing steadies. The color returns to his face. His eyes open properly now, blinking slow, confused.
He tries to sit up.
“No,” I say gently, pressing a hand to his shoulder. “Stay on your side. Just for a bit.”
He frowns, then lets his head sink back. “My—” he whispers. “My tongue—”
“It’s still there,” I tell him. “I promise.”
That earns a weak, bewildered twitch of his mouth that might be the beginning of a smile.
James watches the exchange, something unreadable in his eyes.
After an hour, Thomas is sitting with his back against the wall, wrapped in a blanket, sipping broth like someone who has returned from a war no one else saw.
He is not cured.
But he is alive.
And he is not bleeding all over the Duke of Ashbourne’s floor.
Dr. Thornbury looks like he has swallowed something sour.
“He will have another,” Dr. Thornbury says sharply, as if threatening Thomas is the same as treating him.
“He may,” I agree, because that’s honest. “But bleeding him won’t prevent it.”
Dr. Thornbury’s eyes flash. “You have no medical education.”
I lift my chin. “No.”
And yet.
He looks at James. “Your Grace, if you allow this…person to interfere again, you risk your household.”
His brows draw together. “Noted.”
Dr. Thornbury stands, gathering his bag with stiff movements. “I shall return in the morning,” he says, and his glare makes it clear he is not doing it for Thomas.
He is doing it to be right.
When he leaves, the corridor seems to breathe again.
Thomas is helped to his feet, unsteady. Mrs. Finch orders him to the servant’s hall with the kind of tone that suggests compassion is something she does privately. The maid who cried earlier wipes her face and looks at me like I’m either a miracle or a menace.
Maybe both.
James turns to me.
“You should go back to bed,” he says, low.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
He looks me over—nightgown, bare feet, hair loose. His gaze lingers for the briefest second on the hollow of my throat, then lifts again, and I realize I am very aware of the fact that I’m barely clothed in front of a man who can ruin me by coughing politely.
My cheeks burn.
James takes off his coat and holds it out without a word.
I stare at it, then at him.
“Thank you,” I manage, and slide my arms into it.
It’s heavy wool, lined and warm. It smells faintly of cedar and smoke and him. It also hangs past my knees like a respectable tent.
Better.
James’s gaze flicks away, as if he’s relieved too.
“You handled yourself well,” he says, voice careful, as if compliments are foreign currency.
I huff a laugh that comes out wrong. “I handled myself like someone who really didn’t want to watch a man die because everyone insisted on wrestling him.”
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth. “Dr. Thornbury is…traditional.”
“Dr. Thornbury is a walking hazard,” I mutter.
James’s brows lift. “You are bold, Miss Hart.”
“I’m terrified,” I say honestly. “It’s just that terror and sarcasm share lodgings.”
His gaze holds mine for a beat too long, and something warm slides into the space between us—something neither of us is supposed to acknowledge.
Then he steps back, breaking it.
“Go,” he says, softer. “Before Mrs. Finch has you skinned for wandering the halls.”
I nod, clutching his coat around me, and follow Molly back toward my room.
As I walk, my mind refuses to stop replaying the scene in the corridor.
The spoon. The vinegar. The confident certainty of a man about to bleed someone who just seized.
And me, with nothing but a few scraps of knowledge and my own stubbornness, standing between Thomas and the wrong kind of help.
If that is enough to make me dangerous here—
What else do I know that could matter?
* * *
Morning comes with coal smoke and a headache that feels like punishment.
I cannot stand the uncertainty, the way everything here is rumor until it is written down. I ask Molly for the library.
The room smells of beeswax and old paper. Newspapers sit stacked on a table. I pick up the top one with careful hands.
The Times.
At the top of the page, in crisp black ink: 1817.
I am in 1817.
The number sits on the page like a sentence. My mother is not here. Nothing I know is here. There is no way to call her, no way to go back.
The breath leaves me, and I fold into the chair and cry—quietly, because I am still learning what kinds of pain are permitted in this house.
When the door opens, I flinch. It’s Beatrice.
She closes it behind her and crosses the room without speaking. Then she sits beside me, careful and unsteady, like kindness is a thing you can drop.
“Oh, Emma,” she says.
I cover my face. “I want to go home.”
Beatrice’s hand finds my shoulder, warm and certain. “I know,” she whispers. “But you are safe here—as long as my brother can keep you so. And you are not alone.”
* * *
James finds me in the library an hour later.
He stops when he sees the newspaper in my hands and the state of my face. “You have found the year,” he says quietly.
“Yes,” I manage. “It’s real.”
Something shifts in his expression—tight, restrained. “I am sorry,” he says at last. “For what you have suffered.”
The apology lands strangely. I nod because I don’t trust my voice.
He looks at the paper again. “Dr. Thornbury will return,” he says, as if clinging to practical things. “He is displeased.”
“He wanted to bleed a man who’d just had a seizure,” I say. “He can be displeased all he wants.”
James looks toward Thomas. “He has had fits before,” he admits. “He hides them. He fears dismissal.”
“He shouldn’t,” I say, and the anger surprises me with its steadiness. “It’s not weakness.”
James’s eyes hold mine for a moment, and there is something like discomfort there—like he understands more than he wants to.
He clears his throat. “Beatrice tells me you were upset.”
Of course she does.
I stare at the date on the paper because it’s easier than looking at him. “I miss my mother,” I say, and it feels like admitting a wound.
James goes very still. “You called for her in the street,” he says.
I nod.
His hand lifts—halfway—then stops, hovering near my shoulder like he is considering a kindness he has no right to offer. My breath catches.
He drops it.
“Miss Hart,” he says, voice rougher, “you must understand my position. You in my house invites gossip. My sister will pay for it. And I am engaged.”
Lady Victoria, again.
“Beatrice mentioned,” I say, and my voice comes out sharper than I intended.
James’s gaze flickers. “It is an arrangement.”
“Do you want it?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Silence.
Then he says, very quietly, “What I want is rarely the question.”
It should be enough. It isn’t.
The door flies open before I can say anything else, and Beatrice sweeps in holding an ivory card like it’s a weapon.
“Lady Pemberton’s ball!” she announces, triumphant. “And she has invited us—and she wishes to meet our American relation.”
My stomach drops. “No.”
Beatrice’s eyes widen. “Emma!”
James exhales, already bracing. “Beatrice—”
“James,” Beatrice snaps, and I forget she can be sharp. “You cannot hide her forever. Better they meet her under our roof’s protection than make up stories in their drawing rooms.”
I look at James, waiting for the refusal.
His gaze meets mine—conflicted, calculating, and strangely steady.
At last, he says, “If you go, you will go with us. And you will do precisely as Beatrice and Mrs. Finch instruct.”
Beatrice beams like she’s won a war.
My mouth is dry. “So…that’s a yes.”
James’s jaw tightens. “It is.”
I take the invitation with shaking fingers and stare at the elegant script.
Lady Pemberton’s ball.
In 1817.
And somehow, impossibly, I am going.