Chapter 17 #2
Eloise had, of course, attended church nearly every Sunday of her life.
It was what was expected of her, and it was what good, honest people did, but in truth she’d never been a particularly God-fearing or religious sort.
Her mind tended to wander during the sermons, and she sang along with the hymns not out of any great sense of spiritual uplifting but rather because she very much liked the music, and church was the only acceptable place for a tin ear like herself to raise her voice in song.
But now, tonight, as she looked down upon her small nephew, she prayed.
Charles hadn’t worsened, but he hadn’t improved, and the doctor, who had come and gone for the second time that day, had pronounced it “in God’s hands.”
Eloise hated that phrase, hated how doctors resorted to it when faced with illness beyond their skills, but if the physician was correct, and it was indeed in God’s hands, then by the heavens above, that was to whom she would appeal.
When she wasn’t placing a cooling cloth on Charles’s forehead or spooning lukewarm broth down his throat, that was. But there was only so much to be done, and most of her time in the sickroom was spent rather helplessly in vigil.
And so she just sat there, her hands folded tightly in her lap, whispering, “Please. Please.”
And then, as if the wrong prayer had been answered, she heard a noise in the doorway, and somehow it was Phillip, even though she’d only sent the messenger an hour earlier.
He was soaked from the rain, his hair plastered inelegantly against his forehead, but he was the dearest sight she’d ever seen, and before she had a clue what she was doing, she’d run across the room and thrown herself into his arms.
“Oh, Phillip,” she sobbed, finally allowing herself to cry.
She’d been so strong all day, forcing herself to be the rock that her brother and sister-in-law needed.
But now Phillip was here, and as his arms came around her, he felt so solid and good, and for once she could allow someone else to be strong for her.
“I thought it was you,” Phillip whispered.
“What?” she asked, confused.
“The butler—he didn’t explain until we were up the stairs. I thought it was—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
Eloise said nothing, just looked up at him, a tiny, sad smile on her face.
“How is he?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not good.”
He looked over at Benedict and Sophie, who had risen to greet him. They looked rather “not good” as well.
“How long has he been this way?” Phillip asked.
“Two days,” Benedict replied.
“Two and a half,” Sophie corrected. “Since Saturday morning.”
“You need to get dry,” Eloise said, pulling away from him. “And now I do, too.” She looked ruefully down at her dress, now soaked through the front from Phillip’s wet clothing. “You’ll end up in no better a state than Charles.”
“I’m fine,” Phillip said, brushing past her as he came to the little boy’s bedside. He touched his forehead, then shook his head and glanced back at his parents. “I can’t tell,” he said. “I’m too cold from the rain.”
“He’s feverish,” Benedict confirmed grimly.
“What have you done for him?” Phillip asked.
“Do you know something of medicine?” Sophie asked, her eyes filling with desperate hope.
“The doctor bled him,” Benedict answered. “It didn’t seem to help.”
“We’ve been giving him broth,” Sophie said, “and cooling him when he grows too hot.”
“And warming him when he grows too cold,” Eloise finished miserably.
“Nothing seems to work,” Sophie whispered. And then, in front of everyone, she simply crumpled. Collapsed against the side of the bed and sobbed.
“Sophie,” Benedict choked out. He dropped to his knees beside her and held her as she wept, and Phillip and Eloise both looked away as they realized that he was crying, too.
“Willow bark tea,” Phillip said to Eloise. “Has he had any?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“It’s something I learned at Cambridge. It used to be given for pain, before laudanum became so popular. One of my professors insisted that it also helped to reduce fever.”
“Did you give the tea to Marina?” Eloise asked.
Phillip looked at her in surprise, then remembered that she still thought Marina had died of lung fever, which, he supposed, was mostly true. “I tried,” he answered, “but I couldn’t get much down her throat. And besides, she was much sicker than Charles.” He swallowed, remembering. “In many ways.”
Eloise looked up into his face for a long moment, then turned briskly to Benedict and Sophie, who were quiet now, but still kneeling on the floor together, lost in their private moment.
Eloise, however, being Eloise, had little reverence for private moments at such a time, and so grabbed her brother’s shoulder and turned him around. “Do you have any willow bark tea?” she asked him.
Benedict just looked at her, blinking, and then finally said, “I don’t know.”
“Mrs. Crabtree might,” Sophie said, referring to one half of the old couple who had cared for My Cottage before Benedict had married, when it had been nothing more than an occasional place for him to lay his head.
“She always has things like that. But she and Mr. Crabtree went to visit their daughter. They won’t be home for several days. ”
“Can you get into their house?” Phillip asked. “I will recognize it if she has it. It won’t be a tea. Just the bark, which we’ll soak in hot water. It might help to bring down the fever.”
“Willow bark?” Sophie asked doubtfully. “You mean to cure my son with the bark of a tree?”
“It certainly can’t hurt him now,” Benedict said gruffly, striding toward the door. “Come along, Crane. We have a key to their cottage. I will take you there myself.” But as he reached the doorway, he turned to Phillip and asked, “Do you know what you are about?”
Phillip answered the only way he knew how. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
Benedict stared him in the face, and Phillip knew that the older man was taking his measure. It was one thing for Benedict to allow him to marry his sister. It was quite another to let him force strange potions down his son’s throat.
But Phillip understood. He had children, too.
“Very well,” Benedict said. “Let’s go.”
And as Phillip hurried out of the house, all he could do was pray that Benedict Bridgerton’s trust in him had not been misplaced.
In the end it was difficult to say whether it was the willow bark or Eloise’s whispered prayers or just dumb luck, but by the following morning Charles’s fever had broken, and although the boy was still weak and listless, he was indubitably on the mend.
By noontime, it was clear that Eloise and Phillip were no longer needed and in fact were getting in the way, and so they climbed into their carriage and headed home, both eager to collapse into their large, sturdy bed and, for once, do nothing but sleep.
The first ten minutes of the ride home were spent in silence.
Eloise, astonishingly, found herself too tired to speak.
But even in her exhaustion, she was too restless, too tightly wound from the stress and worry of the previous night to sleep.
And so she contented herself with staring out the window at the dampened countryside.
It had stopped raining right about the time Charles’s fever broke, suggesting a divine intervention that might have pointed to Eloise’s prayers as the young boy’s savior, but as Eloise stole a glance at her husband, sitting beside her in the carriage with his eyes closed (although not, she was quite certain, asleep), she knew it was the willow bark.
She didn’t know how she knew, and she was quite cognizant of the fact that she could never prove it, but her nephew’s life had been saved by a cup of tea.
And to think how unlikely it was that Phillip had even been at her brother’s house that evening. It had been quite a singular chain of events. If she hadn’t gone in to see the twins, if she hadn’t gone to tell Phillip that she didn’t like their nurse, if they hadn’t quarreled . . .
Put that way, little Charles Bridgerton was quite the luckiest little boy in Britain.
“Thank you,” she said, not realizing that she’d intended to speak until the words left her lips.
“For what?” Phillip murmured sleepily, without opening his eyes.
“Charles,” she said simply.
Phillip did open his eyes at that, and he turned to her. “It might not have been my doing. We’ll never know if it was the willow bark.”
“I know,” she said firmly.
His lips curved into the barest of smiles. “You always do.”
And she thought to herself— Was this what she’d been waiting for her entire life? Not the passion, not the gasps of pleasure she felt when he joined her in bed, but this.
This sense of comfort, of easy companionship, of sitting next to someone in a carriage and knowing with every fiber of your being that it was where you belonged.
She placed her hand on his. “It was so awful,” she said, surprised that she had tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Benedict and Sophie.”
“Nor I,” Phillip said softly.
“If it had been one of our children . . .” she said, and she realized it was the first time she’d said that. Our children.
Phillip was silent for a long time. When he spoke, he was looking out the window.
“The entire time I was watching Charles,” he said, his voice suspiciously hoarse, “all I kept thinking was, thank God it’s not Oliver or Amanda.
” And then he turned back to her, his face pinched with guilt. “But it shouldn’t be anyone’s child.”
Eloise squeezed his hand. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with such feelings. You’re not a saint, you know. You’re just a father. A very good one, I think.”
He looked at her with an odd expression, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said gravely, “I’m not. But I hope to be.”
She cocked her head. “Phillip?”