“Yes. You wait.”
“Will you attend him tomorrow?” Selina asked.
A half smile touched the doctor’s lips. “For anyone else, I would say that you’ve no need of me. But—yes, Selina. I’ll come back tomorrow night for your boy.”
Hope-Wallace moved briskly to straighten the bedsheets around Freddie, to change the lukewarm water for fresh. He looked out the window, and asked after the housekeeper so that he might make a list of what herbs she ought to acquire from the apothecary. Selina offered to take on the shopping herself.
And all the while, Peter sat, motionless, at the side of the bed.
While Selina was gone, her maid, Emmie, came into the room, bearing fresh bedlinens and clothing for Freddie. Wordlessly, Peter helped her lift his brother’s small body. Freddie felt as hot as a brand to the touch, and when Peter peeled off his sweaty shirt, Freddie coughed so hard his body nearly came out of Peter’s grip.
“Sorry,” Freddie mumbled. “Sorry, Lu—the kitten.”
“Hush,” said Peter, pushing Freddie’s dark damp hair back from his forehead. “Hush. Everything’s all right.”
When he slipped the fresh shirt over Freddie’s head, the boy didn’t protest.
“Your Grace,” said Emmie hesitantly. “I’m happy to watch the child for a few hours. I’ve a small sister of my own—I’ve sat by her many a night, whilst she’s been fevered.”
“No,” Peter said.
“As you wish. Only—that is, Her Grace. She would have you take your rest.”
“No,” Peter said again. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Emmie nodded and slipped from the room, and Peter was alone again, but for the small boy in the too-big bed.
Perhaps he dozed. It felt like only moments had passed when he felt the cool touch of a hand at the back of his neck, but it was full night. No candles winked in the darkness, and the weather was warm enough that no embers glowed in the fireplace.
“Any change?” Selina said softly at his side. Her fingers petted the nape of his neck, then both hands came to his shoulders, kneading into the muscles there.
“I don’t think so.” Freddie’s face was drawn into sharper lines, and when Peter tried to run a wet linen along his cracked and reddened lips, he whimpered and turned his head away.
“Come to bed,” Selina said. “You need to lie down.”
“I can’t.”
“Peter. I will stay with him.”
“Ican’t.” His voice snapped out like a whip, but Selina didn’t flinch back.
“You aren’t helping him if you make yourself ill as well, Peter. You need food and rest. You need—”
“I can’t leave him. He might wake. He might need me. When your physician comes back, I want to be able to tell him if Morgan has—”
He choked off the words as he heard them. Too late.
Selina didn’t respond for a long time. She stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs tracing circles on his shirt.
When she dropped her hands and stepped away, he clenched his jaw and didn’t speak. Shame surged in him. He had failed Morgan, had failed Freddie and Lu. Even now, he could not do what needed to be done. He wanted to curl into his wife and lay his head in her lap, wanted to beg her not to leave him alone.Selfish. Reckless. Weak.
And then she pulled a chair from the other side of the bed around to sit beside him.
“How old was Morgan when he died?”
It was so dark in the room. He could barely hear Freddie’s raspy breathing, barely see his own hands tangled into the white sheets before him.
“Twelve,” he said. “We were of an age. Which should tell you something of our father—he married my mother and fathered Morgan and me within the same trip to New Orleans.”
