The man who came into the room several hours later was roughly of an age with Peter, and Peter—when he forced his gaze away from his brother’s thin, restless form—thought he looked vaguely familiar.
“Gabe,” said Selina, leaping to her feet from the chair on theopposite side of Freddie’s bed from Peter. “Thank goodness you’re here.” She caught the man’s arm in hers, bringing him to the bed beside Peter, who’d managed with an effort to bring himself to his feet.
“Peter,” she said, “this is Lydia’s brother, Gabriel Hope-Wallace. He’s a year out of the Royal College of Physicians. Gabe, this is my husband Peter, the Duke of Stanhope.”
The doctor was tall and fair, though the new growth of beard on his jawline was as red as Lydia’s hair. He bobbed a quick nod at Peter, his gaze already trained on Freddie. “How long has he been ill?”
“Since yesterday,” Selina said. “He fainted yesterday afternoon in the Park. He’s been feverish, and last night he started to cough.”
“Conscious?” the doctor said.
Peter felt his jaw tighten painfully. Once again, Selina responded. “Yesterday, he was. Today he’s been lucid at—at times.” Her voice broke a little.
“All right. Anything else?”
Selina shook her head wordlessly, and Hope-Wallace strode forward to examine Freddie. He felt along his body, rolled him to his side like a doll. He pressed his ear to Freddie’s back for a few long moments then stood, casting about with an expression of frustration.
“Have you a heavy sheet of paper?” he asked.
Selina darted for the door. “I’ll get one. I’ll be right back.”
Peter looked at the doctor, panic chasing circles in his chest. “Paper?”
“Mm,” said Hope-Wallace. He’d returned to the boy, lifting Freddie’s hand to examine his fingernails, cupping Freddie’s jaw to look into his mouth. “Helps me listen to the lungs when auscultation by ear is insufficient.”
Selina returned with an engraved sheet, and Hope-Wallace rolled it into a long, thin tube. He placed it against Freddie’s back and put his ear to it.
Mad, Peter thought. It seemed mad—the doctor, the fragile roll of paper. He bore no instruments, no lancets for bleeding or small glass jars of laudanum and oils.
Eventually the doctor stood, satisfied by what evidence had emerged from the paper tube. “Pneumonia,” Hope-Wallace said. “His lungs are inflamed.”
“Consumption?” Peter forced the word from where it had lodged, painful as glass, in his chest the moment he’d heard Freddie’s cough. His voice was raw.
Hope-Wallace turned to him, sharp blue eyes softening. “No. Not consumption at all. His symptoms are entirely different.”
Relief slid through Peter, making his joints weak.
“Consumption,” said Hope-Wallace, in the tones of one giving a lecture, “has symptoms for weeks—even months or years—before the crisis. His fingernails would be pitted and, at this stage, quite blue.” He gestured to Freddie’s hand. “See for yourself. A bit pale, perhaps, but those are healthy digits.”
Peter blinked at Freddie’s fingers, his vision hazed.
“All right,” Selina said hesitantly. “What can we do?”
There was a long silence, long enough for Peter’s vision to clear, for him to watch the tightening of Hope-Wallace’s whiskered jaw. “Nothing, I expect.”
“You can’t mean that.” Peter scarcely recognized his own voice.
The doctor turned to him, his expression kind. “He will likely recover. But bleeding, leeches, starving—I have hundreds of observational studies from my colleagues in England and India showing that they do not help in cases of catarrh and pneumonies.I have—” He broke off. “Keep him cool. Yarrow tea for the fever. I mislike willow bark for children. Laudanum or whiskey, if the pain takes him harder.”
“That’s it?” Peter said roughly. “You can’t cure him? You have no solution, not even something you cantry—”
Hope-Wallace’s mouth drew into a stiff line. “Certainly there are things I could try. All manner of tinctures I could sell to you with my name on them, and half a dozen ingredients that could kill as well as cure him. I could cut open his vein, if you insist.”
“Gabe,” said Selina. Her voice was reproachful, and the doctor looked chastened.
“My apologies,” he said. “It is—frustrating. Not to be able to do more. But I will not hurt this child out of impatience or stubbornness.”
“So we wait,” Peter said.
