Chapter 12
Penelope pressed her palm more firmly against Rose’s forehead, ignoring the way her pulse jumped beneath her skin. Perhaps she was imagining it. Perhaps the nursery fire had simply been stoked too high, or Rose had become overheated beneath her blankets.
“She feels warm.” She could not keep the worry out of her voice.
But when she lifted her hand away, Rose whimpered and turned her head, seeking comfort that Penelope could not seem to provide.
“Lottie?” Penelope kept her voice level, though alarm crept up her spine like cold fingers. “How long has she been fussy?”
The nurse looked up from where she was folding linens, her weathered face creasing with concern. “Only this past hour, Your Grace. Nothing I could not manage. Babies have their difficult days.”
“Yes. Of course.” Penelope bent over the cradle again, studying Rose’s flushed cheeks. “I am being foolish.”
“Not foolish.” Lottie joined her, placing a hand on Rose’s forehead with the confidence of thirty years’ experience. Her expression shifted. “She is running a touch warm, though. Nothing alarming yet, but I shall keep watch through the evening.”
Nothing alarming yet. The qualification did nothing to ease the knot forming beneath Penelope’s breastbone.
“I shall stay as well,” she heard herself say.
Lottie opened her mouth—likely to protest, to remind Penelope that duchesses did not spend their nights in nurseries when perfectly capable nurses were employed for precisely this purpose. But whatever she saw in Penelope’s face made her close it again.
“As you wish, Your Grace.”
The evening crept past with agonising slowness.
Penelope tried to read, then abandoned the book when she realised she had been staring at the same page for twenty minutes.
She attempted needlework and stabbed her finger badly enough to draw blood.
Finally, she gave up all pretence and simply sat beside the cradle, watching Rose’s restless sleep.
The baby’s cheeks grew pinker. Her breathing quickened. When Penelope touched her again, the heat had intensified, no longer something that could be explained away by overenthusiastic fires or too-heavy blankets.
“Lottie.” Penelope’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “The fever is worsening.”
The nurse bent over Rose, her experienced hands moving with quick efficiency—checking temperature, examining the baby’s colour, listening to her breathing. When she straightened, her mouth had thinned into a grim line.
“I shall fetch cool water and cloths. And laudanum, if we need to bring the fever down.”
“Should we send for the physician?”
“Let us see how she responds first. Fevers are common enough in infants. Most break on their own with proper care.” Lottie headed toward the door, then paused. “Your Grace, you should rest. I have managed many sickrooms.”
“I am staying.”
The declaration allowed no argument. Lottie studied her for a long moment, then nodded and disappeared into the corridor.
Penelope lifted Rose from the cradle, cradling the too-hot weight against her shoulder.
The baby’s whimper twisted through her like a blade.
She had never felt quite so helpless, quite so aware of how fragile life could be—how quickly warmth could turn dangerous, how a child’s discomfort could escalate into genuine peril.
“Hush, darling,” she whispered against Rose’s damp curls. “You are safe. I promise you are safe.”
But the words felt hollow even as she spoke them. What good were promises against fever? Against illness? Against all the invisible dangers that could steal a child’s life before anyone understood the threat?
She was pacing the nursery, Rose heavy and burning in her arms, when Alastair appeared in the doorway.
He still wore his evening clothes, though his cravat hung loose and his waistcoat was unbuttoned. His hair looked as though he had been dragging his hands through it. When his gaze found Rose, his face went blank in the way she had learned meant he was frightened.
“Lottie said she has a fever.”
“Yes.” Penelope continued pacing, unable to stop moving. If she kept walking, kept holding Rose, perhaps she could will the fever away through sheer determination. “It has been climbing for the past two hours.”
“What did the physician say?”
“We have not sent for him yet.”
“Why the devil not?” The sharpness in his tone made her flinch.
“Lottie believes most fevers break on their own. That we should wait and see—”
“Wait and see?” Alastair crossed the room in three strides. “She is burning up,. We are not waiting for anything. I am sending for a physician now.”
“I know she is burning up. Do you think I have not noticed?” Her voice rose despite herself. “Do you think I would take risks with her health? Lottie has decades of experience—”
“And I would feel considerably more comfortable with a physician’s opinion.”
Rose began crying in earnest then, her wails thin and reedy. Penelope bounced her automatically, though it did nothing to soothe the baby’s distress.
“Fine. Send for him. But he will say precisely what Lottie has already told us—cool compresses, willow bark tea, observation. There is nothing magical he can do.”
Alastair’s jaw tightened. “Nevertheless.”
He strode from the room before she could respond, and Penelope was left alone with Rose’s cries echoing off the nursery walls. Her arms ached. Her head throbbed. And beneath it all ran a current of pure, animal fear that threatened to undo her entirely.
Lottie returned with water and cloths. Together, they sponged Rose’s overheated skin, coaxing drops of willow bark tea past her lips when she would take it. The baby fought them, twisting and wailing, until Penelope wanted to weep right alongside her.
“There now,” Lottie murmured. “You are doing well, little one. Fighting is good. It means you have strength.”
But Rose’s strength seemed to be draining with each passing hour. By the time the physician arrived—summoned from his bed and clearly disgruntled about it—the baby had fallen into a restless, feverish sleep that was somehow more frightening than her earlier cries.
He examined her with infuriating slowness whilst Penelope stood to one side, her hands clenched so tightly her nails bit crescents into her palms. Alastair had returned and taken up position near the fireplace, his posture rigid, his expression unreadable.
“Well?” Alastair demanded when the examination had stretched past bearing. “What is it?”
Wilbur Harrison straightened, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose. “A fever, Your Grace. Origin unknown, which is unfortunately common in infants. Could be any number of things—a chill, teething, simple infantile ailment.”
“And the treatment?”
“Precisely what I suspect you have already been doing. Keep her cool. Offer fluids if she will take them. Watch for signs of worsening—laboured breathing, seizures, unresponsiveness.” He packed his instruments with maddening calm.
“Most infant fevers resolve within a day or two. Send for me if she deteriorates.”
Then he left, as though he had not just catalogued every terror currently paralysing Penelope’s ability to breathe properly.
“Laboured breathing,” she repeated once he had gone. “Seizures.”
“Which she is not experiencing,” Alastair pointed out. But his face had gone paler than she had ever seen it. “She will be well, Penelope.”
“You cannot know that.”
“No. But I choose to believe it anyway.”
The declaration was so wholly unlike him—this man who hid behind charm and deflection—that Penelope found herself staring. He held her gaze for a moment, his eyes fierce, then moved to the cradle where Rose lay fitful and burning.
“What do we do?” he asked quietly.
We. Not you. Not an order or an assumption, but a genuine question.
“We keep her cool, I suppose,” Penelope said, her voice cracking. “We take turns, so neither of us collapses from exhaustion. We watch for any change.”
“Then that is what we shall do.”
They fell into a rhythm born of desperation rather than planning.
Alastair soaked the cloths whilst Penelope held Rose.
Then they switched—he cradled the baby whilst Penelope prepared fresh compresses.
When Rose would accept it, they coaxed willow bark tea past her lips in tiny, hard-won increments.
The nursery clock chimed midnight, then one, then two. Lottie dozed in the chair by the fire, her presence comforting but no longer needed. This vigil belonged to Penelope and Alastair alone.
For a while, they were silent.
“I caught fever as a child,” Penelope said at last. “I was eight, I suppose. Perhaps younger. And I… remember being so scared.”
“She’s not alone,” he said at last. “Even if she is scared, I am certain it is a comfort to her to have us here.”
His free hand came up, covering hers. For a long moment, they simply stood there—two people bound by a marriage of convenience, united by their fierce, aching love for a child neither of them had planned to want this desperately.
Rose’s breathing changed.
It took Penelope a moment to recognise what she was hearing. Not the quick, shallow pants that had terrified her for hours, but something slower. Easier. Almost normal.
“Is she—” She pressed her palm to Rose’s forehead, hardly daring to hope. “Oh God, the fever is breaking. Alastair, the fever is breaking.”
He shifted Rose in his arms, checking for himself, and his exhale carried six hours’ worth of held breath. “Good heaven! You are right.”
They watched as Rose’s colour gradually returned to normal, as her restless movements eased into genuine sleep. The terrible flush faded from her cheeks. Her breathing deepened, steadied, became the peaceful rhythm of a healthy infant.
Penelope felt her knees weaken. Alastair must have noticed, because his arm came around her waist, steadying her, pulling her down onto his lap with Rose cradled between them.
“Easy,” he murmured. “You need to sit before you fall.”
She should protest. Should remind him about propriety and appropriate distance. Instead, she let her head drop to his shoulder, too exhausted and relieved to maintain any pretense.
“She is well,” she whispered against his shirt. “She is truly well.”
“Because of you. Because you refused to let her face this alone.” His lips brushed against her hair—barely a kiss, more like gratitude made physical. “You were extraordinary tonight.”
“We were extraordinary.” She lifted her head enough to meet his eyes. “I could not have done this without you.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “And that terrifies me almost as much as watching her suffer.”
She understood. Because she felt it too—this unexpected, growing certainty that they had become more than two people sharing a house and a marriage of convenience. They had become partners. A team. Something that defied all their careful rules about distance and detachment.
Rose stirred between them, making a small sound of contentment before settling deeper into sleep. The normalcy of it—the beautiful, ordinary proof of her health—made Penelope’s eyes burn with gratitude.
“We should put her in the cradle,” she managed. “Let her rest properly.”
Alastair rose with surprising grace considering he still held both Rose and Penelope. He set the baby down with care, tucking the blankets around her tiny form. Rose’s fingers curled near her face, relaxed now instead of clenched in discomfort.
When Alastair turned back, Penelope was still standing beside the cradle, unable to tear her gaze away from the sleeping child.
“You need sleep,” he said.
“So do you.”
“Then perhaps we should both collapse somewhere that is not a nursery floor.”
The suggestion was reasonable. Practical. Yet neither of them moved.
Because moving meant acknowledging what had happened here tonight. Not just Rose’s illness and recovery, but the way they had worked together—wordless, seamless, united. The way he had held her without asking permission. The way she had let him.
“Alastair,” she started, then faltered. What could she possibly say? That she no longer knew where their arrangement ended and something real began? That she had spent the entire night acutely aware of him—his presence, his steadiness, the way he had looked at Rose with such unguarded tenderness?
There was nothing.
So she let him leave without a word.