by KJ Charles
“It’s my house,” Philip retorted, without thought.
“And I’m so sorry to inconvenience you with my unwanted presence in it!” Frisby snapped. “I dare say you’ll be delighted if I’m not here long!” He turned on his heel even before he’d finished speaking, almost as if hiding his face, and hurried off in the direction of the kitchen. Philip stared after him for a moment, shrugged to himself, and went to bed.
SINCLAIR BROUGHT THE news with his morning tea. “Lady’s in a bad way.”
“Lady—you mean, Miss Frisby?” Philip sat up, yawning.
“We ain’t got any others. Dr. Martelo was up all night. Bad fever, he says. Not sure she’ll pull through.”
That jolted him awake. “Are you serious?”
“Not a joking matter, is it? The doctor’s that worried. Mr. Frisby’s sent for Dr. Whatsisname, you know, the old snot we had yesterday, but Dr. Martelo says if he tries bleeding or purgatives he’s going to kick him out so hard he bounces. That’s Dr. Martelo kicking Dr. Whatsit out,” Sinclair amplified helpfully.
Philip knew all about David’s obstinate opposition to bleeding. They’d had trouble with this before, since it was the treatment of first resort for most doctors, whereas David ranted about admitting infection and causing unnecessary damage to an already weakened constitution. He’d lay ten pounds that Dr. Whatsit would want to bleed Amanda Frisby. Any doctor would.
“Oh God,” he said.
“I should say so. Oh-oh, carriage on the drive,” Sinclair added, cocking his head at the sound of wheels. “That’ll be the other quack, I expect.”
“Oh God. Shut up and get me dressed. Quick.”
Even with Sinclair doing his impressive best, it took too long for Philip to be ready. The argument was in full swing by the time he half-ran along the hall to the Blue Drawing-room.
“This woman is in a high fever!” Dr. Bewdley was saying in a kind of subdued shout. “It is vital that we relieve the inflammation by drawing off blood at once!”
“A decoction of willowbark will bring down the fever,” David retorted. “Bleeding her will simply drain her body of strength.”
“Nonsense. You suggest nothing more than old wives’ remedies—”
“She’s already weak enough! Why do you want to exhaust her further?”
Philip glanced past the warring doctors. The subject of their disagreement looked, to his inexpert eye, as sick as a dog. She was a nasty sort of colour, pallid and sweating. Frisby crouched over her like a mouse at bay, eyes darting between his sister and the doctors. He was patting her forehead with a wet cloth, and his grey face and dishevelled state suggested he hadn’t slept.
“Nonsense!” David shouted at Bewdley. Amanda Frisby moaned, eyelids fluttering, and Frisby’s eyes met Philip’s just for a second. They were hazel-green, full of fear and misery and, unquestionably, a plea. Perhaps it was a plea to some deity rather than to Philip, but unfortunately none of those were available.
“Gentlemen,” Philip said, pitching it loud enough to cut through the doctors’ row. “Take this professional dispute into another room, now. And don’t come back until you have reached a civil conclusion.”
“Sir Philip, I—”
“I said, take it elsewhere. Will I be obliged to summon footmen to remove you both? Get out. And don’t let me see either of you until you can speak like gentlemen.”
Dr. Bewdley’s mouth dropped open. David snarled, “Very well,” and marched to the door. Dr. Bewdley, evidently feeling he had gained ground, turned to Philip and opened his mouth.
“Out,” Philip said. He filled the word with command and contempt mixed, and the doctor went, leaving Philip, Frisby, and the supine woman in a room.
Frisby was staring at him. “What—what will happen now?”
“I expect they’ll continue that endless and unanswerable argument,” Philip said. “I shouldn’t dream of trying to sway you, but I will observe that David kills significantly fewer patients than most doctors of my acquaintance, and he never bleeds.”
“He told me about it.” Frisby’s voice had the vague quality of exhaustion. “He explained why he wouldn’t and it sounded awfully convincing but—Dr. Bewdley’s always been our doctor. Always.”
“The decision is yours. If you want her bled I will remove David from the premises while it’s done, although I can’t promise he will be polite about it afterwards.”
“Why is it mine?” Frisby demanded. “I don’t know what’s best!”
“Nor do I. I would, myself, leave it to one or the other doctor, but not both.”
“I suppose you mean it was foolish to call Dr. Bewdley in.”
“That was exactly what I meant, yes. Did you sleep at all?”
“No. I—Amanda—”
“If you don’t sleep you’ll make bad decisions,” Philip said. “Let me order a bed made up for you. You won’t be of any use to your sister or to David if you knock yourself up.”
“I need to stay with her. You must see. I have to.”
“I will have an appropriate attendant come and sit with her. My word of honour.” It ought to be inconceivable that anyone would spread gossip about a woman lying desperately sick; he well knew it wasn’t. Worse, Philip had a vivid image in his mind: both Frisbys in his house at death’s door, needing nursing for months or, even worse, dying in Rookwood Hall, whence the last baronet had set out to ruin their mother. He enjoyed his reputation, but he liked to keep it fictional. “I insist, Mr. Frisby. Make your decision as to which doctor you trust and I will implement it. Meanwhile, get some sleep and you will be better placed to sit with her tonight if her fever has not broken by then.”
“I...” Frisby blinked. At the dizzy stage of exhaustion, Philip guessed. “You promise she’ll be looked after?”
A Frisby, trusting a Rookwood to care for a woman’s virtue. It was enough to make a cat laugh, except that there was nothing funny about the fear and pain on Frisby’s face. “I give you my word. I will order you a room and a bite to eat, and then you shall lie down and recover yourself.” Philip rang the bell and gave swift orders when the man appeared. “And send me Cornelius once the food is ready,” he added. “Very well, that’s done. Have you reached a conclusion about the bleeding?”
“I don’t know.” Frisby’s voice was tremulous. “If I say yes and it weakens her—or no and the fever worsens—”
“You can’t make the right decision,” Philip told him brutally. “You don’t have sufficient information. What we need is another patient with a similar injury. Bleed one and not the other, and observe the results in both.” Frisby was looking at him with wide-eyed horror, as though he expected Philip to break someone’s leg on the spot. “I speak purely theoretically,” he felt obliged to explain. “At the moment almost all patients are bled, and some live and some die. In order to see if bleeding is truly effective, we need to ensure more patients with similar ailments aren’t bled, and to observe the results.”
“But if you deny people the right treatment, that would be murder.”
“Negligence, surely. Notwithstanding, I grant your principle, but how else are we to test the thesis?” Frisby gaped at him. Philip sighed. “Never mind. What would you like the doctors told?”
“I want them to do their best,” Frisby whispered. “I want them to know the right thing to do, and do it. Only they won’t agree what that is, will they?”
“No.”
“What would you do?” Frisby asked, and looked startled at his own words.
Philip felt equally startled. “I couldn’t possibly make a suggestion as to Miss Frisby. It is hardly my place.”
“No. Of course not. I shouldn’t have asked.”
He looked wretched, and the misery in his big green-brown eyes was discomfiting, and Philip had, as he had often been told, no shortage of opinions. “However,” he said, and watched those eyes widen fractionally with hope. “However, were it my decision, I should compare the chance of doing harm through action or inacti
on, and I should probably choose the latter. And I should also bear in mind that David Martelo is a remarkably intelligent and determined man, with a wide education and varied experience.” Frisby looked slightly dubious at that. Philip reminded himself that cosmopolitan ways were not generally considered an advantage outside sets like his own. “I’d trust David with my life, or my sister’s if I had one. You have no reason to. But I would.”
“Well,” Frisby said. “Uh. Thank you.”
There was a knock: Cornelius, as commanded. “Breakfast is served, sir, and the Small Rose Chamber is made up for Mr. Frisby.”
“Thank you,” Frisby said. “Uh— Sir Philip, could you—that is—no, I should—”
“Would you like me to tell the doctors your decision?” Philip suggested. “It might be awkward for you to offend one of them, whereas I won’t care in the slightest.”
“I—no. I’ll do it.” He pulled himself upright. He wasn’t such a bad figure of a man, Philip realised: not tall, but compactly built, and his mouth was decidedly well-shaped. He wasn’t precisely striking, but he might be presentable under other circumstances. “Where are they?”
“In the study, next door on the right.” Philip could well see the rubicund old bully Bewdley reproaching Frisby into a morass of uncertainty. He had no intention of letting that happen, having spent quite enough time on this already. “I will meet you there shortly.”
Frisby went off, visibly steeling himself. Philip turned to Cornelius. “Right, where’s the female attendance?”
“I regret, Sir Philip—”
“For God’s sake! I promised Frisby we’d look after her. How hard can it be to find a woman in this blasted country?”
Cornelius coughed in a manner that made his displeasure clear. “I regret, Sir Philip, that an attendant will not be available until the early afternoon. I have secured the services of one Mrs. Fossick, who will arrive once her daily tasks are performed. She is not medically experienced except, she informs me, in the delivery of infants, but I judge her highly qualified to sit on a chair.”
“While drinking gin? Marvellous.”
“Unfortunately, I was unable to find an alternative candidate willing to visit Rookwood Hall. Sir.”
“And we all know whose fault that is. Stick your master with a pin for me when you next dress him.”
Cornelius coughed again, this time with a nicely judged tone of breaking bad news. He had what Corvin sourly described as a complete wardrobe of coughs for all occasions. “The female individual demanded a half-guinea for her services.”
Philip winced. “It’s a tribute to propriety, we’ll pay it. Thank you.”
David stuck his head through the door. “Philip, there you are. I’ve left Frisby trying to get rid of that elderly ass. I’m busy, go and help him.”
Philip muttered, but duly headed studywards, where he found Frisby stammering miserably as Dr. Bewdley upbraided him. “Excuse me,” Philip interrupted without compunction. “Are you the lady’s relative, Doctor?”
“No, sir, I am her physician, and have been since her childhood.”
“Whereas this gentleman is her brother, so his wishes will be respected. You heard what he told you. Or do you need it repeated more loudly, perhaps with an ear trumpet?”
“I shall wash my hands of Miss Frisby’s welfare,” Dr. Bewdley said, very red. “If my experience is to be dismissed in favour of this damned foreign nonsense, I shall not return to this house to be further insulted.”
Philip bowed low. “If your self-esteem is of greater concern to you than your patient’s welfare, then I can only conclude your absence is for the best. Good day.”
He waved the gobbling doctor away, packed Frisby off to breakfast, and went back to the sickroom, where David was in place. He gave Philip an absent smile, his focus on the sick woman. “You have done good work. Thank you. Is there news on a nurse?”
“We may have to find one ourselves. It’s possible I may have offended Dr. Bewdley.”
“You amaze me. Where’s Frisby?”
“I persuaded him to take some rest by assuring him his sister would have female attendance.”
“Some drunken sot to mumble in a corner? I can’t see the use of it, but as long as your damned proprieties don’t get in my way... I don’t like this, Phil. She’s running a very high fever. Will you help me sit her up so she can sip the decoction?”
Philip could think of nothing he wanted to do less than manhandle Eleanor Frisby’s half-clad daughter. “Just a moment.” He rang the bell and ordered the footman to summon Mr. Sheridan Street. David’s eyes were rolled ceilingwards when he turned back. “Yes, I know it’s ridiculous,” he snapped. “I gave my word, blast it.”
Sheridan arrived a few moments later. “Can I help?”
“I don’t know,” Philip said. “I promised Frisby his sister would be appropriately attended, expecting Cornelius to magic up a woman to sit with her, and she won’t arrive till this afternoon.”
“Ah,” Sherry said. “And you want me to be Mrs. Salcombe? Drat. I’d be happy to, but I didn’t bring any of my petticoat wardrobe with me.”
Sheridan had inadvertently caused the freethinking but personally conventional Harry a great deal of confusion when the older man found himself falling hopelessly in love with his beardless apprentice. In the end, Corvin had had a quiet word with both parties to clarify matters, following which they had married privately and swiftly. Sherry kept to his masculine identity for professional and personal convenience, was Mrs. Harry Salcombe when needful or desired, and regarded the whole business with indifference. He was a geologist and Harry’s partner in life; anything else was, in his opinion, trivial.
“Is it necessary to dress up?” Philip asked. “It’s all lip service anyway, her virtue is safe with us. But if you’d be willing to play Mrs. Salcombe at a later date if any testimony is required, then I won’t have entirely broken my word to Frisby. Stretched it to snapping point perhaps, but not broken.”
“Of course I will. It may be a nonsense, but convention is the last thing the poor woman or her brother should have to worry about at the moment. I shall sit here unmoving until the actual attendant arrives, and I shall Respectable Matron the very hell out of anyone who doubts it after. Can someone send for my book?”
IT WAS A LONG DAY. The promised woman arrived, freeing Sherry, and proved to be exactly the bosky, gin-smelling sort of character that Philip had predicted. David relegated her to a corner. Frisby slept through it all, emerging from his room around three, and was persuaded to borrow a hack, ride home, and talk his maid or housekeeper into attending on Miss Frisby during the day. Sherry’s tolerance was limited, the exercise would do him good, and David wanted him out from under his feet. The boy was a fretter.
Philip spent several hours going through account books and crop yield reports and tried not to feel that he was shirking something important. Frisby took over from David in the sickroom around seven, which meant that the possibility of inviting him to join them for dinner once again did not arise.
“You’ll do it at some point,” Corvin said. “I know you. Conventionality will creep up on you when you least expect it.”
“It’s about the last thing on Frisby’s mind, I should think,” Sheridan said. “She’s awfully sick and her leg is the most horrible colour. Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to let the bad blood out, David?”
“Shall we not start that hare now,” Philip suggested firmly. He was having second thoughts himself. It had been absurd to put his tuppence-worth into Frisby’s deliberations. He’d done it because the poor fellow had looked desperate for some sort of certainty, but now he was having trouble not thinking of the consequences if the woman died on them with the most standard treatment left undone. Amanda Frisby was a damned nuisance and Guy Frisby was worse, and Philip wanted the whole business off his hands.
David went to bed early, getting some sleep in case he was needed during the night. The rest of them played whist, keepin
g the noise down, and retired around midnight. Corvin let the others go first, then came up and sank down beside Philip’s chair. “Hoi, you. Look at me.”
Philip did. It wasn’t a hardship. He’d known that face from childhood, seen his friend grow from boyish roundness through angularity and ghastly spots into his adult good looks. Corvin had reddish-brown hair, when he would have far preferred a suitably Gothic black, but at least he could boast steep brows, a striking pair of dark brown eyes, and a general appearance of handsome untrustworthiness. He was the very model of a heartless rake, to people who didn’t understand. “Very well. What am I looking at?”
“One who loves you. You’re taking this all rather seriously, Phil.”
“It’s the blasted Frisbys. You must see the problem.”
“I see their problem. I’m wondering why it’s yours.”
“Because their mother died,” Philip said. “Because James persuaded a married woman to abandon her children and reputation, and then drove off a cliff with her. James’s stupidity enriched me and deprived them of everything.”
“True, but I don’t recall he consulted you about it.”
“It’s as though the name I bear is a blight on their family. A Rookwood trespasses against them and they lose a parent—two if you count their father, drinking himself to death. They set foot on Rookwood land and calamity strikes. I feel like a curse, V.”
Corvin put a hand on his, without comment, and Philip interlaced their fingers. “I’m being absurd. You needn’t say so.”
“You are, rather. Might I observe that if there were a family curse it wouldn’t really be your business anyway?”
Philip used his free hand to bat at Corvin’s head. “Rot you. Why aren’t you in bed with John?”
“Twice in a row? Please. John wouldn’t, and I couldn’t.”
That was a flippancy, though John undeniably tended to be rough with Corvin: Philip had watched and winced often enough. He wondered if he might like to watch tonight and decided not. He wasn’t in the vein, for that or anything else, and in any case it seemed a little bit indulgent with a possibly dying woman in the house.