Chapter 17
The sound did not belong to Langley Hall.
It was a thin, lacerating pierce that sliced straight through the heavy oak of his bedchamber door, a sharp contrast to the familiar, low groans of the old timber and the steady, rhythmic beat of the rain against the glass.
Roman was out from beneath the heavy velvet quilt before his conscious mind had entirely cataloged the noise. He did not pause to strike a flint or to find his velvet dressing gown.
In his shirtsleeves and breeches, his bare feet catching the chill of the polished floorboards, he was down the dark expanse of the eastern corridor before the echo of the cry had completely faded.
When he thrust the nursery door open, the room was suspended in a dim, amber haze. The fire had died down to a mound of glowing orange eyes, casting long, distorted shadows up the whitewashed walls.
Miss Hartley was on the floor. She sat with her back propped against the heavy leg of the wooden cradle, her skirts bunched around her knees in a rough, dark tangle. Liliana was stretched across her lap.
The child was not throwing herself about in the usual manner of a tantrum; her small, rounded limbs were rigid, her head thrown back against Miss Hartley’s arm as she let out another reedy, exhausted wail.
Miss Hartley looked up the moment the door swung wide.
Her hair had come entirely undone from its neat, tight pins, falling in a thick, tumbled mass over her shoulders, the wild strands catching the firelight like spun copper.
Her face was stark white, save for the dark, bruised hollows beneath her eyes and the high, frantic flush on her cheekbones.
"Roman," she breathed.
It was the first time she had omitted his title entirely without a prefix or a correction, he noted, her voice stripping away every layer of the carefully constructed barrier between them. She looked small on the floor, stripped of the poised, unflappable armor of the perfect nursemaid.
He was on his knees beside her in an instant.
The sudden proximity brought the immediate, intoxicating scent of her skin, not the lavender starch of her aprons, but something warm, musk-laden, and deeply alive, mixed with the sharp, sweet heat of the baby’s illness.
He reached down, his large hand brushing against Miss Hartley’s fingers as he sought the child’s forehead.
The heat radiating from the small body was staggering. It felt like holding a hand over an open furnace. Liliana’s skin was dry, her tiny chest heaving against the linen of her nightshirt with a terrible, shallow speed.
"She woke ten minutes ago," Miss Hartley said, her words rushing together, her breath hitching in her throat as she rocked her hips in a small, desperate circle to soothe the child.
"She was fine when I lay down. I swear to you, she was perfectly well.
And now she is burning. I tried to give her water, but she cannot seem to swallow. "
"Hush," he murmured. Yet, beneath the calm facade, his own pulse was hammering a fierce, irregular rhythm against his ribs.
He felt a sudden, visceral terror that caught him entirely off guard.
"We will find the cause. Earnest!" he roared toward the open corridor, his voice booming through the quiet house.
The butler appeared within moments, his waistcoat half-buttoned, his usual immaculate composure fractured by the urgency in the duke’s voice.
"Send a rider for Dr. Harrison," Roman commanded, not looking up from the small, flushed face on Miss Hartley’s lap. "Tell him to bring his chest for an acute inflammation. Tell him if he does not arrive within the hour, I will buy his medical practice and burn it to the ground. Move."
Earnest vanished without a word, his boots clicking rapidly down the stone stairs.
Left alone in the dim circle of firelight, the silence pressed back into the room, broken only by Liliana’s ragged breathing.
Roman did not rise from the floor. He shifted closer, his thigh pressing against the dark wool of Miss Hartley’s skirts, the heat of his own body mingling with hers in the narrow space between the cradle and the hearth.
He reached out to support Liliana’s head, his long fingers cradling the baby’s neck, his palm resting flat against the curve of Miss Hartley’s thigh beneath the fabric.
The contact was electric. Even through the heavy layers of her petticoats, he could feel the tight, trembling tension in her muscles, the deep shudder that went through her every time the baby whimpered.
Her skin was so close he could see the tiny pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat, right where her collar had come unbuttoned to reveal a small, pale patch of collarbone.
"Look at me," he commanded softly.
She turned her head, her dark eyes wide and wet with a liquid grief that seemed to reflect the dying embers of the fire.
"She is strong," Roman said, his voice a low, rough murmur that felt entirely too intimate for the room.
He did not move his hand from her leg; instead, his thumb made a slow, unconscious stroke against the fabric, a steadying pressure that felt like an anchor in a rising gale. "She will survive a night of fever."
"You do not know that," she whispered, her lower lip trembling just enough to draw his gaze to the soft, parted curve of her mouth. "Children... children vanish in a single night, Roman. The light simply goes out, and there is nothing you can do to hold it in."
The raw, bleeding truth in her words struck a chord within him.
He wanted to reach out, to wrap his hand around the back of her neck and pull her forehead against his chest until the shaking stopped, until the scent of her hair filled his senses and blocked out the cold reality of the house around them.
The desire was sudden, sharp, and entirely inappropriate, a slow-burning fuse that had been sputtering between them for weeks and was now threatening to ignite in the dark.
He compressed his lips, his eyes locked on hers, refusing to let her look away from the certainty in his face. "I am the Duke of Berengar. I do not permit things to vanish from my house."
A small, breathless sound escaped her, halfway between a sob and a laugh, and she leaned just a fraction of an inch closer to his shoulder, her warmth seeping into his linen shirt.
Dr. Harrison arrived forty minutes later, his coat slick with rain, his spectacles fogged from the speed of his ride. The formal drawing rooms remained dark, the doctor being brought directly up the back stairs to the nursery, where the fire had been hastily rebuilt by a silent, pale-faced footman.
The presentation was clinical, the old physician checking the child’s tongue, pressing his blunt fingers against the swollen glands of her neck, and listening to the rattle in her small chest while Roman stood at the foot of the cradle, his arms crossed, his jaw set in a hard, defensive line.
Miss Hartley remained on her knees, her hands clasped tightly under her chin, her eyes tracking every movement of the silver stethoscope.
"An acute febrile congestion," Harrison pronounced, straightening his spine with a small groan as he wiped his hands on a clean handkerchief.
"Common enough in children of this age when the season changes so violently.
The lungs are clear for the absolute present, Your Grace, but the body system is overtaxed by the heat.
The fever will run its course, but she must be watched through the night.
If the skin does not begin to cool before the sun is up, we must bleed her behind the ear. "
Miss Hartley flinched as though she had been struck with a whip. "No," she said, her voice sharp, authoritative, and entirely devoid of the deference expected of a servant addressing a professional. "No bleeding. She is too small. It will drain what little strength she has left."
Harrison blinked at her over his spectacles, his aristocratic features stiffening with a mild, offended surprise. "My good woman, I have practiced medicine in this county for thirty years…"
"Try cold compresses on her wrists," Miss Hartley interrupted, rising to her feet with a sudden, fierce energy that seemed to fill the small room.
She did not look at Roman; her focus was entirely on the baby.
"Cold water, mixed with a drop of vinegar if there is any in the scullery.
Wrap them tightly around the pulse points.
It draws the heat away from the brain. It worked before. "
The room went entirely still.
Roman looked at her, his gray eyes narrowing into two sharp, silver slits.
Liliana had been at Langley Hall for exactly four weeks.
In that time, she had been a picture of robust, if loud, health.
She had never suffered a cough; she had never run a temperature; she had never required so much as a drop of gripe water.
It worked before.
Before meant before Langley. Before meant a life that had nothing to do with the registry offices of London or the character references she had provided with such neat, elegant penmanship.
Miss Hartley caught herself a moment too late, her breath hitching in her throat as she saw the stillness in Roman’s face. A bright, guilty crimson flooded her cheeks, erasing her previous pallor as she quickly lowered her eyes.
"I... I meant with a child in my previous position," she said, the words coming out just a fraction too fast, the rhythm of her speech lacking its usual calculated symmetry. "The... the young baronet in Surrey. He was prone to the croup."
Harrison sniffed, clearly unimpressed by the nursemaid’s interference. "An old wives' remedy, perhaps. But harmless enough, I suppose, provided the water is not drawn from an infected well. See to it that she does not chill too rapidly, Your Grace."
"I will see the doctor out," Roman said. His voice was perfectly level, a smooth, unreadable sheet of ice that gave no indication of the storm brewing beneath the surface.