Chapter Thirteen #2
An ache centered inside Amelia, but she forced back the fear. The Scottish doctor felt the girl’s pulse and examined her. He paid particular attention to Christine’s hands, not only checking her muscles, but also testing her skin with both hot and cold water. “Do you feel that, lass?”
When Christine shook her head, Dr. Fraser looked into her eyes and checked her mouth and throat.
“What do you think this is?” Amelia asked Dr. Fraser when she could bear it no longer.
“I canna say that I’ve seen it before,” he admitted. “But I’ve brought many of my books with me. If there’s a doctor who has written about this illness, I’ll be finding out what he’s learned. And we’ll do what we can to cure it.”
Then he asked Christine, “How long has it been since you’ve moved your legs or hands?”
“About a week,” she admitted.
“It’s no’ good for limbs to remain idle for so long,” Dr. Fraser said.
To the earl, he ordered, “She needs to have her legs and arms moved several times a day, so the blood can flow to them. You can do it yourselves or have a servant help her. But if the blood doesna flow where it’s needing to go, she could lose her ability to walk once she’s healed. ”
“I’ll help her,” David said. He went to sit at Christine’s side, while Amelia took the opposite end.
“I’ll be seeing about Juliette and Grace for a moment, and then I’ll return with the books,” Dr. Fraser promised. He departed the room, leaving Amelia alone with her husband.
The bleakness in David’s posture bothered her deeply, for she sensed him shutting her out. After he lowered the bedcovers, Amelia took Christine’s left leg, meaning to bend it.
“I’ll do it, Amelia,” he said. “You can go.”
“Both of us can help her,” she said. “I can do this leg while you do the other.”
“No.” There was frost in his voice that bewildered her. “Go and leave us. I will take care of my own daughter.”
The way you didn’t, she imagined he would say. His words were an invisible blow, and she felt the physical ache of his rejection.
“She can stay, Papa,” Christine offered.
“Not this time,” he insisted. “Amelia has other duties that require her attention. I will take care of you.”
The tightness in her throat held the foreboding of tears, and Amelia stood up. To Christine, she offered, “I’ll bring you a pot of chocolate if you like.”
The girl ventured a smile, but in her eyes, Amelia saw hopelessness. “Perhaps later.”
She squeezed her stepdaughter’s hand and stole another look at David. He was moving Christine’s right leg, gently bending her knee. Amelia waited for him to say something before she left the room.
But he wouldn’t even look at her.
His little girl was dying.
Though David tried to put on a brave face and behave as if she was going to get better, he sensed the truth—that Christine would follow in her mother’s footsteps. But God help him, he didn’t know how he could face this again.
She was just a girl, hardly more than eleven. Her entire life should have been ahead of her, a pathway leading toward a happy future. Instead, he looked upon her face and saw the dark shadow of death.
“Why did you send Amelia away?” Christine asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I thought you weren’t getting along with her,” he said. He switched to her other leg, gently bending the knee.
“I like her better now,” Christine said. “She gave me a desk and some paper and pens for my writing.”
“Your writing?” He’d had no idea that she enjoyed writing stories.
Christine nodded. “I never told her, but she guessed.”
His daughter had never told him, either, David realized. “Amelia does seem to know many things.”
“I have my own space in the attic now, and the window looks out over the grounds. There’s even a widow’s walk on the roof.” There was a yearning in her voice, as if she’d guessed that she might never go up there again.
“It sounds nice.” He switched to her hand, bending the wrist back and forth. “Can you bend your elbow?”
Christine tried, but she only managed to lift her arm a little. “Not really.”
He continued to work with her other wrist and fingers, and she fell silent.
He wanted to converse with her, to say something that would lift her spirits and make her feel better.
Inside, all he could feel was rage that something like this could happen to a child.
He wanted to lash out at the illness that was stealing her away from him.
Please let there be a medicine that will cure her.
But he was afraid to let himself hope.
When Dr. Fraser returned, his wife and daughter were with him. David’s first reaction was to send them away, but he saw that Christine was interested in the three-year-old girl who beamed at her. The child was dressed in pink, with matching ribbons in her plaits, and she held a tiny reticule.
“I brought Grace for a moment,” Lady Falsham explained. “She wanted to cheer up your daughter.”
David wasn’t certain it would work, but he supposed there was no harm in it. “For a little while.”
“Do you want to play?” the girl asked, climbing up on the bed beside Christine. “I could play with you.”
“I can’t play very well,” Christine apologized. “I’m sick, and my legs won’t move.”
“You don’t have to move.” The little girl held up her reticule. “I’m going to brush your hair.”
The wry smile on his daughter’s face suggested that she didn’t think Grace could do very much, but she allowed it.
In that moment, while the child was happily chattering nonsense to Christine, David froze. Seeing the two of them together was like the memory of when Christine had climbed to her mother’s bedside on the day Katherine had died.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. “Forgive me,” David said, pushing his way out of the sickroom. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He needed air, to escape the stifling atmosphere of hopelessness. Outside, the weather had turned cloudy, and he hardly cared. Ignoring the servants, he pushed his way out the front door, heedless of the impending storm.
“David!” He heard Amelia calling out to him, but he didn’t turn to face her. Sympathy wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed to escape all of it, to be alone where he could regain the rigid control over his emotions.
He kept his pace swift, striding down the gravel driveway and toward the open moors. The wind slashed at his face, but he didn’t care. He welcomed the physical punishment, reveling in the prelude to a rainstorm.
Amelia would follow him, he suspected. But when he glanced behind him, he saw that she’d stopped at the front door. Good. The reckless anger coursed inside him, and he would offend anyone who tried to talk with him now.
The rain began to spatter against him, and he kept walking, letting it soak through his clothing. He didn’t care about it at all. Right now, he wished he’d never left Castledon. If another doctor had seen Christine sooner, she might not be suffering this badly.
It was irrational to blame Amelia, for she’d sent for two doctors. But he couldn’t stop his wayward mind from wondering if she’d done everything possible to help Christine.
Ahead, he spied an abandoned cottage that had once belonged to his gamekeeper.
It would offer solitude and a brief shelter from the storm.
He went inside, shivering from the cold.
A sensible man would start a fire in the hearth, but instead he sat down on a wooden stool and stared at the chimney stones.
He didn’t want to go through this again. It had taken years to get over the pain of losing Katherine, and Amelia ought to have a better husband than him. He never should have married her.
Upon a low wooden shelf, he spied a chipped plate. Without thinking, he picked it up, his thumb grazing the edge. Then he threw it against the hearth, watching it shatter like the pieces of his life.
And with that, his thread of sanity broke.
David picked up the stool he’d been sitting on and slammed it against the chimney, watching as it splintered and fell against the stones.
The need to destroy, to release all the violent rage, was visceral.
He broke every piece of pottery he could find, letting the mindless destruction offer its own peace.
When he turned and saw Amelia standing in the doorway, he didn’t care what she thought of him. The tiny one-room cottage was destroyed, full of broken glass and fragments of furniture.
“This is who you married,” he told her. “And if I lose my daughter to death, you need to leave me.”
She said nothing but took a step forward and closed the door behind her. From beneath her cloak, she withdrew a woolen blanket that she’d taken from the house. He guessed she’d brought it to help warm him from the storm.
But the ice inside of him could not be warmed.
“Stay back,” he warned her. “I’m not safe to be around right now.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered. “And I know why you’re angry. You’ve a right to be.” She continued walking toward him, and he stood his ground amid the broken pieces.
“I don’t need pity right now.”
“I didn’t come here for that.” She reached out and put the blanket around his shoulders. “I came because you need someone right now.” Then she rested her face against his heart and put her arms around his waist.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The soft scent of her hair and the touch of her body against his were an offering he didn’t want to deny.
“I care about her, too,” she said. “And I refuse to believe that she’ll die.”
He took her hands away from his waist, holding her wrists. “I’ve seen it happen before, Amelia. And this is exactly what death looks like.”
Her green eyes filled with hurt, but she stared back at him. “We can’t lose hope.”
“I lost hope six years ago.”
“Don’t push me away, David,” she said quietly. “I may not be the woman you wanted. But I love you, and I won’t walk away when you need me.”
He relaxed his grip, tensing even more at her words. “You don’t love me, Amelia.”
“I know that your pain is mine. I see what you’re enduring, and I need to help you.”