His Californian Countess. Kate Welsh
took a deep breath. “You give me little choice if he is to have any chance, Dr…. uh … what is your name? I think I should know the name of the man coercing me to do something so far beyond my experience and propriety.”
“I am Dr. Bertram Bennet, late of New York, and ports east, west, north and south.”
“Fine, Dr. Bennet, what do I do?”
“Bathe him with cool water to lessen the fever. I will see nourishing broth is delivered to keep up his strength and—” he whipped off his worn black neckcloth “—put this on the door if he perishes.” His eyes softened a bit. “We will have to consign him to the deep if he does. It is the way of the sea.”
“Have you no powders or remedies?” she demanded as the doctor made for the door.
He stopped and sighed. “I will send something for the fever, but it rarely works for a pernicious disease such as scarlet fever. Mostly I believe such illnesses must run their course.”
“Doctor … what … what about his … um … his clothing?” she managed to ask, her cheeks burning like fire. She was sure he would need to be undressed. How else would she bathe him? How had she gotten herself into this? Oh, yes. She’d forgotten adventures often lead to difficulty.
The doctor considered her, raising one of his eyebrows. Her cheeks heated further. “Perhaps you don’t know the gentleman as well as we all believed. Just cut his clothing off. He can afford the loss. The earl is as rich as Croesus. I will have your trunk pushed in here. I am sorry your life has been thrust on this new path. Do you know why he insisted upon a cabin near yours?”
“From his ramblings, I have deciphered that he was a friend of … my father.” She hesitated. Lying was difficult for her.
“That is what he told the steward, but no one believed it,” Dr. Bennet said.
“He was apparently with my … uh … father at his death. It has left him feeling some duty to see to my safety.”
The doctor nodded. “I hope for Adair’s sake he has the chance to fulfill his mission.” Then he turned away sharply and left, closing the door with such a resounding thud that Amber jumped. It felt as if the door had closed on every plan she’d made for the rest of her life. As if nothing would be the same again.
She turned back to the bed and took a deep breath. The earl didn’t look very lordly at the moment. He looked rumpled and sick. And he needed her help. She wanted him to get well, but if he did, she wouldn’t look forward to his learning of the ruse that had put both of them aboard this ship.
If he was to get well, she first had to deal with his clothing. After the dreams she’d had all night long, she didn’t know how she would care for him so personally and not think of them. But she had no choice.
He murmured and tossed on the bed as she rummaged in his trunk. She found only a straight razor and a rather nasty-looking double-edged knife. The latter didn’t look as if it should be part of the accoutrements of an English earl and that gave her pause. What kind of man was he really? She especially had to wonder after not finding any sort of nightshirt. That, too, was outrageously scandalizing—at least to her.
She walked back to the washstand and wet a cloth to place it on his burning forehead, then, using the razor, split his seams, unable to just destroy such fine clothing. She had just finished when a cabin boy quickly shoved her trunk into the room. She rolled her eyes. There was a perfectly acceptable pair of scissors that would have made the job ever so much easier.
Next arrived the powders the doctor had promised. By the time she got the powder mixed with water and into him, her blouse was soaked. Since it had gone nearly transparent with the water, she decided to change. While she rummaged through her badly packed things, the earl called out for the woman named Mimm and someone named Meara.
Amber quickly changed her blouse and put on an apron. She thanked God she’d added her serviceable clothes to the spectacular wardrobe
Helena Conwell had given her. Then she pulled out her grandmother’s carefully written book of remedies and medicines. Her aunt, the wonderful woman who’d raised her from an early age, had added some of her own. She quickly looked through it for any reference to scarlet fever. What she found worried her. He was in for some hard days ahead.
And so was she.
She dropped the book in her lap and sighed. The healing book hadn’t contradicted the doctor, but it did add some suggestions. She quickly went to the door and asked the cabin boy stationed there to request several herbs she was supposed to make into a tea.
“Oh, my head,” Amber heard the earl mutter as she turned away from the door. He stabbed his hand into his hair as he tried to sit. “What in God’s name did I drink last night?”
She rushed to the bed and pushed him back down. “You are quite ill with scarlet fever.”
“Pixie. What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice very hoarse and a little slurred; she saw that it pained him to speak.
“I heard you earlier. You’d collapsed. I foolishly entered your cabin and sent for the doctor. He quarantined me in here with you. I’ve been named your nurse, your lordship,” she said, leaving out the embarrassing, yet pertinent, facts.
This time he managed to sit up. “Oh, please, do lay off the your lordship business. I’ve become rather fond of American lack of deference.” He looked down at himself, then back up at her. “It seems as though we should be on a first-name basis.” He glanced again at his lap. She had left him in only his underdrawers. The sheet slid to his waist, leaving his torso quite bare, and she couldn’t look away from the sight of his muscular chest.
Then he sank back to his pillows. “Devil take it! I cannot be ill. My daughter was, but I thought myself above it.”
“Do calm down,” she begged, noting his overly bright eyes and the very scarlet look of the rash covering his body. “You’ll get well. See if you don’t.”
“I won’t see anything at all if I don’t,” he grumbled crossly.
Her grandmother’s book had warned of nervous irritability and this was certainly a change from what she’d seen of him on deck. “I don’t know much about caring for the sick, but I promise to follow all the doctor’s instructions. And I have my grandmother’s healing book for guidance, as well.”
“Are you speaking of that drunken sot I met the day I booked passage?”
“He was quite sober today, I think.”
“Oh, lovely!” he groused and tried to sit up again. “My life is in the hands of a drunken doctor and the observations of a backwoods grandmother and her granddaughter who is barely out of the schoolroom.”
“Well!”
His over-bright eyes widened and he grimaced, then put a shaking hand to his forehead. “I am so sorry. I’m not usually so easily annoyed. Where have my manners gone?”
“You’re sick. But perhaps you’re hungry. I have some broth for you.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not in the least hungry. What I am is worried for my daughter.”
So he was married. That should make caring for him easier. She set to bathing his face and neck to lessen the fever. “What is your daughter’s name?” she asked, needing to learn as much as possible about him in case a letter had to be written to his kin.
“Meara,” he said quietly. “She’s only seven years old. I’ve raised her here with the help of my old nurse.”
“Do mothers in England not help raise their children?”
“She died a few months after Meara’s birth.”
“I am so sorry. I understand your worry for your child. But have you no family to care for her? Not that I think you will not survive,” she added quickly.