Lord Amberley turned to his wife and his mother with a smile. The latter was looking thin and drawn, he noticed not for the first time in the month since he had been home. And even Alex had lost some of her bloom.
“Would you like to step into the library for a moment?” he said. “Was the park crowded?”
The two women exchanged glances as they followed him across the hall to the library. Neither answered his question. Edmund only ever smiled like that when he was troubled.
“Dominic?” the dowager Countess of Amberley asked as a footman closed the door behind them.
“Sit down, Mama,” the earl said quietly. “I have just had a letter from Madeline. It was written three weeks ago, if you would believe. Dominic is in Brussels. He has a quite severe chest wound and broken ribs and was in a high fever when she wrote.”
The countess crossed the room to his side and laid a hand on his arm.
“So he is not on his way to Paris with the rest of the army,” the dowager said brightly. “And we have been wrong to blame him for being thoughtless and not writing.”
“And Madeline’s silence is explained too,” her daughter-in-law said. “Everything has been chaos. She must have written immediately. So she is with him, Edmund?”
“Apparently not,” he said. “He is at the Rue de la Montagne with Mrs. Simpson. Madeline cannot leave Lady Andrea’s. It seems the house has been turned into a hospital, and Madeline is being rushed off her feet.”
“But he is in good hands,” the countess said. “You would like her, Mama. She is quite charming and very calm and sensible. Did Madeline say if Captain Simpson is well, Edmund?”
“Killed, I am afraid,” he said.
“Oh.” His wife looked, stricken, up into his face. “How dreadful. They were so devoted.”
The dowager countess rose restlessly on her feet. “The news is three weeks old, Edmund?” she said. “And he was badly hurt. And fevered. The news is so old.”
“Will you go to him, Edmund?” his wife asked. “Oh, I wish now that I had insisted that you stay.”
“The chances are that he is better by now and on his way home,” the earl said, covering her hand with his own. “But, yes, I think I will go, my love, if you will not mind being left.”
“Foolish!” she said.
“I am going too,” the older lady said, her voice trembling quite noticeably. “I should have gone earlier in the spring and stayed. It just seemed that if I remained in the sanity of London, everything would be all right. You must take me to Brussels, Edmund.”
“It is a long and tiring journey to make just to find that perhaps he has gone already, Mama,” the earl said.
“Gone!” she said. “But he is my boy, Edmund. My son. I am going to him even if I have to go alone. I must go home immediately to get ready.”
The earl crossed the room to her and put an arm firmly about her shoulders. “We will leave in the morning, Mama,” he said. “You and I together. There will be plenty of time to have your bags packed. I shall order the carriage in a little while to take you home. But first you must sit down and have tea with us. You see? Alex has rung the bell for it already. And that is an order from the head of the family, my dear.”
His mother collapsed against him. “I thought I would be relieved once I heard,” she said. “No matter what the news was. As long as I knew, I thought. But I still do not know. Three weeks, Edmund. And he had a high fever.”
He kissed her forehead and held her to him. “No, don’t choke back your tears, Mama,” he said. “I shall feel remarkably foolish for my own if you succeed in controlling yours. Tomorrow we will be on our way. Then at least we will be doing something. And soon enough we will know.”
He looked at his wife through his tears as he held his mother’s head to his shoulder and rocked her against him.
Chapter 10
HE WAS STILL SLEEPING WHEN SHE WOKE UP. It was a deep and peaceful sleep. There was none of the tossing and turning of his head and the heightened color and the mutterings that she had become used to in two weeks of nursing him. He was sleeping. He was going to get well again.
Ellen was feeling cramped from lying on the hard floor. But she did not move for a while. She lay still and looked at him. Would she even call him handsome if she were to see him now for the first time? His normally fair wavy hair had not been washed in two weeks, except at the forehead and temples with the damp cloths she had used so often to cool his face. He had a two-week growth of beard. And his face was thinner than it had been. Even his arm and hand, flung out on top of the covers, were thinner.
But he had come home, and she had fought for his life. And he was going to live. The question of whether he looked handsome or not was supremely irrelevant.
Ellen gazed at Lord Eden for a long time without moving. It seemed that she had slept for the first time in a long, long while. And she felt refreshed. There was a deadness somewhere inside her, an enormous load that might weigh her down if she dwelt upon it. But she would ignore it for the present. It was not time yet to take it out and explore it. She had slept and she was refreshed and she would allow herself to regain strength and energy before looking too far inward.
She had washed and changed and was folding the last blanket that had covered her on the floor when she turned her head to find him looking at her.
“You are awake,” she said.
“Did you sleep there?” he asked. “It must have been very uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps it was,” she said. “But I was sleeping too soundly to notice.”
A ghost of his old grin flashed over his face. “Have I been a hard patient?” he asked. “I can remember only that the furniture was walking about the room. Most disconcerting, I assure you.”
“You have not been a difficult patient,” she said.
He looked keenly at her for a few moments. “Two weeks I have been here?” he said. “There have been others too? You look run into the ground.”
“There have been others,” she said. “There still are in the other part of the house. They are all recovering.”
He closed his eyes.
“You should not talk,” she said. “You are very weak.”
“And will be as long as I lie here sleeping and saying nothing,” he said, opening his eyes again. He felt his jaw. “Ugh! I must look like some sort of monster. May I trouble you for some water and a towel, ma’am? And can you possibly lay your hands on some shaving gear?”
“I will bring them,” she said, picking up her blankets and pillow and leaving the room. But when she came back with the things he had asked for and took hold of his blankets to fold them back, she found one of his hands on each of her wrists.
“I shall do this myself,” he said. “I gather that for the last fortnight you have cared for every single one of my needs. It quite puts me to the blush to think of it. But no more, ma’am. I thank you, but I shall see to my own bodily needs from now on.”
“You are weaker than you think,” she said. “You will exhaust yourself.”
“Then I shall sleep afterward,” he said. “I have a comfortable bed in which to do so.”
Ellen hesitated.
“I am ravenously hungry,” he said. “Do you have any food in the house, ma’am? Do you have any money? I am afraid I have no way of knowing if I do. Do I?”
“The surgeon said you are to have only tea and toast,” she said. “I shall bring you some. He is coming sometime today to bleed you again.”
“Devil a bit!” he said. “I feel as weak as a baby. I don’t think I can spare any surgeon one drop of my blood. I need it all myself, and a beefsteak and some porter sound altogether more palatable than tea and toast.”
Ellen felt herself smile. “Perhaps some eggs with the toast,” she said. “And some milk instead of the tea.”
When she entered the room next, he was lying on the bed, his eyes closed again. But he was clean-shaven, and his hair was damp and clean. He was looking very pale.
“I feel as if I had done a week’s work,” he said. “Damnation! This weakness. Pardon me, ma’am. My brain must be addled. Can’t think what I am about, using such language in a lady’s hearing.” He did not open his eyes.