Chapter Twenty-One
Alexandra didn’t let herself worry about Lisa until her aunt was safely tucked up in her own bed back at the house. Between herself and Aidan, they’d managed to get her back down the hill. Her face had been so pale and drawn that it made Alexandra’s heart squeeze to see it.
Lisa roused herself a bit once she was in bed, with brandy applied to her wrists and temples. Alexandra hovered over her, dabbing at her brow with a damp rag. Lisa blinked up at Alexandra, and then waved her off.
“Don’t fuss,” she croaked, her voice hoarse.
“I absolutely will fuss,” Alexandra retorted. “Why didn’t you tell me how ill you were?”
Lisa propped herself up on her elbows, struggling to sit up. Alexandra immediately tried to help her, steadying her with an arm about her shoulders, but Lisa shooed her away again. “I can manage,” she insisted.
Alexandra pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. Her aunt was a bull-headed woman at the best of times, but was even worse when she was incapacitated. Alexandra pushed her sleeve up so that she could feel Lisa’s forehead with her wrist.
“You’ve a fever,” she announced.
“I’ll be fine,” Lisa said. Her insistence was somewhat undercut by a round of hacking coughs that pulled her shoulders in. “I don’t need an audience,” she managed, looking pointedly around Alexandra.
Alexandra turned, following her gaze, and found the children and Aidan all crowded in the doorway, peering in. She made shooing motions with her hands as she moved toward the door. “Go on,” she said firmly. “I’m certain that you all can find something useful to do.”
“Will she be okay?” Gary asked, a finger in his mouth.
“She’ll be fine. We’ll get her some tea and soup, and that will set her right,” Alexandra said breezily. “Now, go on—you all have chores to attend to.”
Reluctantly, the children turned away and made their way downstairs. Aidan lingered, looking over Alexandra’s head to Lisa, who had leaned back against the headboard of her bed. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded over the quilt that was pulled up to her chest.
“She’s not well, is she?” Aidan said, less of a question and more of a statement.
Alexandra reached for the door and latched it closed with a soft click.
“Her lungs have been weak for a few years now,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’d hoped that the warm, dry air out here would help.
It’s the elevation I didn’t reckon on. I’m worried it’s becoming pneumonia. Croupous pneumonia, they call it.”
Aidan looked at her blankly.
“It’s a sickness in her lungs,” Alexandra clarified.
“We’d get outbreaks of it in the city every fall and winter.
I did a lot of reading on the subject, well, all maladies really, ever since my parents died of cholera.
You didn’t need to know that just now. But pneumonia, yes, the cause is yet unknown.
There’s a theory that bad air causes it, but that can’t be the case, as people in the countryside contract it as well, but then there’s the possibility that it’s spread through water—”
Aidan held up a hand, cutting her off. Alexandra pressed her lips together.
She had been reading about maladies since she was a girl, and it occurred to her, standing in a dim hallway in Nevada, that she had never once found the answer she was looking for.
Virginia City wasn’t Philadelphia, and there was no guarantee there was a doctor of any skill in the town.
“Just tell me what I can do to help,” Aidan said. His face was grave and sincere in the dim light of the hall.
“I’ll see about making her some broth,” Alexandra said. “I’ve heard some Chinese herbalists recommending ginger in tea to help, if we can get any. There’s a cough syrup made from raisins and vinegar that seemed to help her in the past.”
“I picked up a mustard plaster for her in town the other day,” Aidan offered. “And the raisins.”
“You did?” Alexandra said, surprised. “That was… kind of you.”
“It was nothing,” he said hurriedly, looking at his boots.
“It was not,” Alexandra said emphatically. “I’ll give this a try immediately. Hopefully that’s all that’s needed. If not, you may have to go for the doctor.” She paused. “I assume there’s one in town.”
“Two, actually,” Aidan informed her.
“Well, hopefully neither will be necessary,” Alexandra said. “I suppose we’ll see where the day takes us.”
By the time Alexandra had the soup on the stove and warmed the water for the mustard plaster, Lisa was sleeping fitfully. Her face remained ashen, her breathing shallow with a syrupy rattle.
Trying not to wake her, Alexandra loosened the drawstring of Lisa’s chemise. Gently, she laid the warmed plaster on her chest. The acrid smell of mustard made Lisa wrinkle her nose and rouse herself, blinking wearily about the room. She glanced down at herself and spotted the plaster.
“Oh, wonderful,” she groaned. She coughed violently, wet and thick, before falling back against her pillows.
Alexandra sighed. “Stay still—it’s good for you,” she ordered.
Lisa said nothing in response, merely waving weakly. The fact that she didn’t have some snappy retort set off an alarm in Alexandra.
“Drina.” Lisa’s eyes stayed shut. “I nursed a good many chests in Philadelphia. I know which way this goes.” She said no more than that, and Alexandra did not ask her to.
Her aunt closed her eyes again, breathing through her mouth. Alexandra pressed the inside of her wrist to Lisa’s forehead again, and snatched it away quickly.
“You’re burning up,” Alexandra said, her face going cold.
She quickly went to the foot of the bed and uncovered Lisa’s feet.
“Just rest,” Alexandra instructed her, the sound of her own heart in her ears.
“I’ll be back with the tea. That’ll fix you right up,” she said, unsure if she was reassuring her aunt or herself.
Fever on top of lungs like hers was the one thing Alexandra had been dreading since they came west.
Alexandra slipped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her again.
She leaned back against it, letting her head fall back for a moment.
She closed her eyes, trying to gather her wits and her strength.
For all of her worry about Lisa, she couldn’t help but feel irrationally resentful that Lisa was too ill for Alexandra to be properly mad at her for telling Aidan about her romantic past. The thought was barely formed before shame followed it up the stairs.
“Mrs. Alexandra?” Danny asked.
Alexandra’s eyes flew open. Danny was standing at the end of the hall near the top of the stairs. He was clutching the banister, his face uncertain. Alexandra forced herself to stand upright, going toward him with a smile fixed on her face.
“What is it, Danny?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
Danny’s eyes flicked down the hall toward Lisa’s room, and then back to Alexandra. “Is she bad off?”
“She’ll be fine,” Alexandra said automatically, reaching out to ruffle Danny’s hair reassuringly.
“You’re lying,” he said quietly, his jaw tightening and his eyes narrowing. “Why do adults always lie about bad things?”
Alexandra sighed. Movement on the stairs caught her attention; Bella and Gary were stationed farther down, peering up at her.
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t trust you all—it’s simply that I don’t want you to worry.”
“Uncle Aidan says that worrying is what you do when you care about someone,” Bella offered solemnly from halfway down the stairs.
“That’s probably true,” Alexandra agreed. “Aunt Lisa is very sick,” she said slowly, addressing all of the children. “It’s important that I tend to her. I’m counting on you all to help keep the house going. It’s a big responsibility.”
Danny lifted his chin, then nodded. Bella continued to stare at Alexandra, her little hand curled into a fist. Gary, at the bottom of the stairs, looked dubiously in the direction of the kitchen.
“I’m not allowed to touch the stove,” Gary said solemnly.
“No,” Alexandra agreed, smiling down at him tiredly. “But I need you and Bella to make sure that we have plenty of firewood in the kitchen, and to collect the eggs and vegetables from the garden. Can you do that for me?”
The pair nodded, both of them dashing off to tend to their duties. Danny moved to follow them, but Alexandra waylaid him with a hand to his shoulder.
“Do you know where your uncle has gone?” she asked in a low voice.
“He’s running a draft horse to the mine,” Danny replied. “Said he’d be paid on delivery.”
“I need you to go and fetch him,” Alexandra said. “Do you think you can ride over there and get him?”
Danny hesitated, staring at Alexandra, before nodding. “Don’t you worry, Missus,” he said. “I’ll bring him back.”
“Be careful,” Alexandra told him, putting a hand on his head and pushing his hair back from his forehead. “I couldn’t bear having anything happen to you, too.”
She followed him downstairs, standing on the porch, her arms folded. Daylight was falling into evening as the sun descended. Alexandra waved as Danny rode down the drive on Bill. He waved back before nudging his horse into a jog.
Please, be all right, she prayed, unsure who she was praying for most. Her life out here, already fraught, was teetering on a knife’s edge; all it would take was the slightest push for it to all fall apart.
She thought, and made herself stop thinking, that a marriage such as theirs could still be undone.