Chapter 18
On the fifteenth day of Blackwood’s fever, Dr. Grimsby arrived by stagecoach at a posting inn. He was met by a driver and a footman and escorted to Wyndmoor Manor in the duke’s carriage.
Bella and Coates greeted Grimsby expectantly at the door. A score of years younger than Dr. Muddleton, Grimsby had a long bony face with a nose that resembled a wedge of cheese.
“Where is the duke?” Grimsby asked.
Coates opened the door wide. “Upstairs, if you please.” Bella and Coates were close on Grimsby’s heels as he rushed up the stairs and swept into the duke’s bedchamber.
The surgeon’s gray eyes were like silver lightning as he took one look at his fevered patient. James lay motionless as he slept, his eyelids almost waxen in the beam of sunlight from the parted drapes. His pallid color resembled fireplace ash, save for the bright spots on his cheekbones and forehead.
“He’s in a bad way. It’s good you summoned me,” Grimsby said. He lifted James’s arm and spotted the short cuts of Muddleton’s blade and the swollen telltale signs of the leeches. A frown creased Grimsby’s high brow. “He’s been bled?”
“Dr. Muddleton said it was the only way to fight the fever,” Coates explained.
“Then he’s a bloody fool!” Grimsby snapped. “The fever is from the infected wound, not any imbalance in his blood. Bloodletting has served only to weaken him.”
Bella met Coates’s concerned look, and an unmistakable meaning passed between them. Had they in their ignorance allowed Dr. Muddleton to further harm the duke?
Grimsby seemed to read their minds. “No sense blaming yourselves for an incompetent country surgeon.”
Grimsby withdrew a rectangular case from his medical bag. He opened the mahogany lid to reveal a dozen surgical instruments. Razor-sharp knives with ivory handles, needles, forceps, trephines, and a saw that could only be used to amputate limbs.
A wave of nausea enveloped Bella.
“Summon your strongest footman,” Grimsby ordered.
“Whatever for?” Coates asked.
“I must reopen and clean the wound, and the duke needs to be restrained,” Grimsby said.
Sweet Lord!
Bella thought.
How will he survive the pain?
James slept on, completely unaware of what the surgeon intended for him.
At Coates’s stunned look, Grimsby prompted, “Go on, man. Get the footman and a basin of hot water and clean cloths while you’re at it.”
Minutes later, Coates arrived with a burly footman and the hot water. Bella assumed the water was to wash James, but Grimsby did the most peculiar thing; he used it to scrub his hands and a select number of instruments.
“I treated a soldier at Waterloo who survived after I washed away the grime of travel,” Grimsby said as he lathered his hands. “Medicine is not a perfect science, you see. When one thing works, even if you don’t understand the specific reasons, you do it again until you do. Some call it superstition. I call it good medicine.”
The surgeon picked up his knife. “It’s time to hold him down. You at his shoulders,” he directed the footman, “and you at his legs,” he told Coates. Grimsby’s eyes snapped to Bella. “I could use a good nurse to hand me my instruments. Do you have the stomach for it?”
Bella’s heart pounded against her rib cage. She didn’t think she had it in her, but if Grimsby needed her, then James needed her. She had seen to James’s needs thus far; how could she turn away now?
She swallowed her terror and took a deep breath, meeting the surgeon’s steely gaze. She nodded curtly, then watched in horror as Grimsby lowered the knife.
James was floating. The fever that he had feared and battled for days had worn him out until he could not recall why he had fought so hard. His heavy lids had finally slipped closed. Sleep was a sweet haven, a place where he could hear Bella’s voice as she talked, calming and soothing. At first he had recognized the Bible chapters she had read from John and Luke, and then the stories had jumbled in his mind like complex legal statutes until he could only hear her voice. Later still he comprehended nothing at all, but he had
sensed
her presence. He had come to depend on her and her cool touch on his brow. He longed to touch her in return and kiss her beautiful lips, but that would require the effort of waking. Instead he allowed her comfort to ease his pain, and he had slept on.
Until the screaming woke him. His eyes flew open. Someone was skewering him alive, slicing into his side and innards. The screaming, he realized, was his own.
“Jesus,” he gasped. “Sweet Jesus.”
There were men hovering over him. A large beast holding down his shoulders, another his legs, while an emaciated-looking butcher was cutting into his side. James bucked, tried to throw them off, but the blade twisted and his vision blurred. Intense agony seared his brain—unlike anything he had ever experienced—and threatened to make him black out.
“Almost done,” the butcher said. “I’ve never seen so much pus. It’s a wonder the infection didn’t do him in days ago.”
James was stopped from answering by another wave of pain.
The man uncapped a black jar, and for an instant James thought the bastard meant to pull out the dreaded leeches. But it was worse; he rubbed a substance on his wound that burned like the fires of hell. “Bastard!” James bellowed.
“Easy, Your Grace. The worst is over now.”
James was dimly aware of the surgeon stitching him closed. Then he was no longer being held down. He tried to move, but the racking pain was still present, and his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Beads of sweat ran down his brow into his eyes.
The surgeon handed the jar to Coates. “This is a healing salve made of pitch and moneywort. You must apply it to the wound twice a day no matter how much he hollers. Understand?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“At Waterloo many a soldier was not as fortunate as His Grace to have survived two weeks of improper care. He’s a strong one, he is. But there’s no guarantee he’ll survive the infection and the bloodletting. The next few days will tell.”
Three days after Dr. Grimsby’s arrival, Bella’s prayers were answered and James’s fever subsided. He would survive, thank the Lord, and for the first time Bella could breathe easy. Another week later, James’s color and appetite had returned, along with his arrogance, pride, and surly disposition after having remained in bed for so long.
Bella opened the door to his bedchamber to find James struggling to kick the covers from his legs. Coates was frantically trying to dissuade his master from rising.
“I want out of this damned bed!” James boomed.
“But Dr. Grimsby’s orders, Your Grace!”
“Tell him to sod off. I feel better, good enough to rise.”
Bella shut the door behind her and Coates looked up, his gaze desperate and pleading at once. “Mrs. Sinclair! Perhaps you can talk some sense into the duke.”
Bella nodded at Coates. They had grown fond of each other over the course of James’s illness. Dr. Grimsby continued to check on his patient daily, but it was Bella and Coates who had shared the main burden of caring for James, and most importantly, the goal of wanting to see him healed.
Their motives, however, were of an entirely different nature. Coates was a dedicated manservant, while she felt guilty and responsible for the duke’s suffering. But if she was truthful to herself, she knew there was more behind her altruistic behavior. She cared for James, genuinely cared.
“Hiding behind a woman’s skirts, are you, Coates?” James said gruffly.
“Give me the jar and I will apply the salve and bandage him,” Bella offered.
The relief was so evident in Coates’s expression that Bella bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“You’re an angel in disguise, Mrs. Sinclair,” Coates said as he rushed to hand her the salve on his way out of the room.
A chuckle came from the bed. “I suppose Coates knows you will have no problem keeping me in bed,” James said, the unmistakable gleam back in his eyes.
Bella’s grip on the jar tightened a fraction. “I see you truly are feeling better. Allow me to spare your manservant and see to your wound myself.”
“The wound is closed and healed.”
Bella placed her hands on her hips. “Perhaps, but at the moment I fear Dr. Grimsby more than you.”
He grinned, and Bella’s heart lurched at the devastating effect.
“Never let it be said I denied a lady,” James said.
She set the jar down beside the bed and pulled up a chair. His charm had returned with his health, and she feared she was even more affected by it. He wrapped his hands behind his head and eased back down on the pillows.
James wore a loose white shirt and breeches, and Bella was thankful that Coates had had the foresight to dress his master before her arrival. Now that the danger of the fever had passed and James was lucid, she realized it was improper for her to tend him much longer in the privacy of his bedchamber. A fevered and deathly ill duke was one thing; a healthy virile duke was quite another.
Yet she suffered an odd twinge of disappointment at the thought of no longer seeing to his needs.
She raised his shirt and her pulse quickened. He had lost weight during his illness and his body was whipcord lean. She had never felt this instinctive awareness of him when he had lain unconscious. He had healed, and along with his renewed health her senses had leapt to life.
“Bella.”
At the sound of her name, a tingling started in her limbs. “Yes?”
She thought she detected a flicker in his intense eyes, but he turned his gaze to the jar resting on the bed side table. “You best get on with it,” he said hoarsely.
“Of course.” She felt her cheeks warm, and she returned her attention to her task and carefully unwrapped the bandage. The wound no longer bore the scarlet streaks of infection, rather a raised rope-like scar where the stitches had been removed.
“See? It’s healed,” he said.
“Yes, it is remarkable. Dr. Grimsby was right to reopen the wound.”
“I have a memory of you reading a letter requesting Grimsby’s services. But when I woke to him hovering above me with a knife slicing into my side, I thought you had summoned a St. Giles butcher.”
“It turned out that Dr. Muddleton was the butcher,” she said.
His expression turned fierce. “You’re right. For as long as I live, I shall never forget those horrendous leeches.”
Bella picked up the jar and dipped a clean cloth into the salve.
James lay back and watched as she dabbed at his wound. Her hands were infinitely gentle. Tendrils of silky hair escaped her bun, framing her heart-shaped face and drifting her lavender scent in its wake. She worked quickly, her expression one of intense concentration.
The wound stung, and he sucked in a breath.
“I’m sorry if it hurts,” she whispered.
“Anything is better than the fever.”
Her eyes lifted to his, the clear jade hypnotic. For the hundredth time he wondered why she had remained by his side. His fevered memories were a jumbled mixture of dreams, but throughout them all he was certain of one thing—Bella’s presence. She owed him nothing, least of all her loyalty, yet she had stayed.
He wanted her. His desire had nothing to do with any prior plan to seduce her and bend her to his will. This need was fierce and all consuming, encompassing every fiber of his being. His near escape from death had served to heighten his awareness of life, his awareness of
her.
“Let me change the bandage,” she said.
The task required her to lean closer. She bit her bottom lip as she worked, tying a fresh bandage firmly around his torso. His blood heated; his muscles tightened as raw lust rushed through him. He pictured her hands on him in erotic ways. Her hair trailing down his abdomen, her soft, white hands caressing his rock-hard manhood.
Her gaze snapped to his. “Am I hurting you?”
Yes, I’m throbbing with need for you.
His voice was gruff. “No, it needs to be done.” He breathed in deeply, willed his body to relax, but succeeded only in inhaling her sweet lavender scent more fully into his nostrils. He had to clear his thoughts. Now was not the time for his cock to rule his head. There were other more pressing matters that needed to be resolved.
“Coates tells me they never found the attacker,” he said.
“The horse thief?” she asked a little too eagerly.
“Was it someone you know, Bella?”
She sat back in the chair. “No. You asked me this before and my answer is unchanged.”
“You accused me of having you followed. You were quite adamant about it as I recall.”
“I told you I was mistaken.”
He didn’t believe her, not for a second, but he didn’t press her. He had asked Investigator Papazian to look into the matter. He had not heard back from the wily Armenian, but then again, if the investigator had called upon him while he lay fevered, he would never have known. James made a mental note to summon him as soon as possible.