Georgiana glowered at Ludlow, a man who was her butler, yes, but who had also become her friend in the last few months of London loneliness. She didn’t care that it wasn’t done. Did not care that he was her servant. Ludlow was one of the finest men she had ever met, and she was unabashedly American in her sensibilities, remaining unafraid of befriending anyone worthy of the title, regardless of his or her social class.
But on this subject—the subject of her bedridden, feverish husband’s presumed demise—she differed with him quite vehemently. “He will not die.”
“I have seen death before, and he is taking on the look of it.” As usual, Ludlow did not mince words.
“He will beat this,” she insisted in a sibilant vow.
“I have more experience than you, Duchess. Trust me in this matter, I beg you.” Ludlow paused, his expression grave, sympathetic. “You will not wish to be present for the end. It is ugly. Putrid. Grotesque. Go now and have the doctor sent for. I shall attend him in your stead.”
Georgiana swallowed against a wave of nausea. On the matter of death, she knew instinctively that her butler spoke from deep experience. They had never discussed his life before he had come to work for her—highly recommended, in what she had then and still suspected to this day, were forged letters of reference.
His scowl had been more pronounced then, his overall affect dark as Beelzebub. Georgiana had taken one look at him and had instantly seen yet another stray worthy of her care. Even if he didn’t seem to know much about a butler’s duties, and he was far too familiar and outspoken. Even if he glared and offered his obstinate opinion at every turn.
She had learned over the course of the last few years that friends were a precious commodity wherever and however they could be found in a world where most people were willing to smile to someone’s face with a dagger hidden behind their backs, waiting for the moment to attack.
Still, she refused to think that any creature in her care—be it mouse or rotter of a husband—would not survive. Saving things was what made her feel alive. And she would save the fever-wracked miscreant in the bed before her if it was the last thing she did.
“I am staying, Ludlow, and that is that.” She cast an eye back at her husband, whose shuddering chest was adorned with an ungainly white cat who was about to birth her kittens any day and who did not wish to move from her perch. Efforts by both Georgiana and Ludlow to remove the feline from Leeds’s chest had only resulted in growls and hissing and the digging in of claws. “I will remove Lady Philomena Whiskers, and I shall need you to take her wherever you initially suggested.”
“The morning room,” he supplied.
“Yes.” She frowned. “And see that the doctor is called, but not Dr. Shilling this time, if you please. Send for Dr. Gage instead.”
“But Your Grace, Dr. Gage is an animal doctor.”
“A veterinarian, yes.” She raised a brow, daring Ludlow to gainsay her. She was aware that her request was unusual, but over the last few days since his arrival, Leeds had not been lucid. She had called for his personal doctor as he requested, and none of the physician’s actions or orders had provided results. Morphine and a milk diet had not cured her husband, and Leeds seemed to slip further and further away from life each passing moment. “He is also very skilled, as you have seen yourself when he saved Havisham from the injuries she sustained after being trampled by a hackney. I trust his judgment.”
And she did. Havisham was a sweet, gentle spaniel cross-breed—that had come to them with horrible injuries that had been left to fester for a week—about to perish. Dr. Gage had cured the infection by draining the wound and cleaning it with an antiseptic solution. Havisham now thrived and had even regained the use of her once crippled hind legs through the veterinarian’s repeated treatments and ministrations.
Yes, Dr. Gage could heal, and that was one of her motivations.
But there was also the troubling realization settling inside her with the weight of a boulder that reminded her she had nothing left to lose. Dr. Shilling’s orders had not ridded Leeds of the infection that was slowly claiming his body. Ludlow’s warnings were all too real. If they did not do something to improve Leeds’s condition, and soon, he would die.
The notion left her bereft. She was not meant to feel tender emotion for a man who had thought nothing of abandoning her on the very day of their wedding, but it was not in her to wish him ill. Surely there was a good side to him. Surely someone worthy hid beneath his harsh exterior.
Or perhaps that was just fanciful thinking on her part.
“I will remove Lady Philomena,” Ludlow clipped, opposing her after all.
“I will—”
“You have tried, unsuccessfully.” His lips firmed into a forbidding frown. “I will see to it, Your Grace.”
She regretted her decision not to remove the recalcitrant, heavily pregnant cat from her chamber upon first settling her husband there. After he’d lost consciousness, the household had scurried into a flurry of activity, and the cat’s extraction had fled from her mind. Having established a comfortable corner of the chamber where Lady P. could observe her lying in, Georgiana had been loath to disturb her. But today, the feline had inexplicably decided to make a nest for herself on the duke’s chest. Subsequent attempts to remove her had proved not only fruitless but laden with throaty growls and full-bodied hisses.
Meanwhile, the duke slumbered on, at times restless and at other times deathly still, his breathing shallow, his pallor gray, and his skin covered with a fine sheen of sweat. He was out of his head with fever, and that was the only reason he had called her name earlier, the rasp from his dry throat almost unrecognizable. Certainly he had never called her by her given name before.
But he had murmured it with such raw need. Georgiana. She could hear it still. It had pierced her heart. More fool she, for no one knew better the sort of man the Duke of Leeds was: heartless, ruthless, and bitterly cold. Not necessarily in that order.
Had she forgotten arrogant?
Yes, there was that, too.
“Very well,” she said on a sigh. “You may remove Lady Philomena. But please make haste in sending for Dr. Gage. I wish him to come as soon as possible to aid the Duke.”
Ludlow bowed. “Of course, Your Grace. It would be my honor.”
Odd time for him to find his deference, she noted. “Thank you, Ludlow.”
Her husband thrashed on the bed then, and Lady Philomena Whiskers gave a plaintive yowl of protest, sinking in her claws deeper. “Bleeding hell,” she muttered.
But Ludlow was ever a man of action. He descended upon the fluffy, fat white cat with two massive hands. One caught her by the scruff and the other scooped her up in one deft swipe. He cradled the disgruntled cat against his chest as if she were formed of delicate crystal.
“You see, Your Grace?” Ludlow raised a challenging brow in a most un-butlerlike fashion. “Had you allowed me to gather this beast from the beginning, you could have spared yourself a great deal of effort.”
It never ceased to amaze her how proficient he was with stubborn animals. “Thank you. Dr. Gage, if you please.”
“As you command, Duchess.” He turned on his heel and stalked toward the door, presenting a picture she would have smiled at on any other occasion—strong, broad, huge, scarred man carrying a plump white cat against his heart.
When Ludlow and his ungainly cargo had gone, Georgiana went to her husband’s side. He was still once more, his face—unfairly handsome despite the obvious ravages of his illness—in such repose that she held her hand over his lips for a full minute to convince herself he still breathed.
He did, thank the Lord.
Perhaps the removal of Lady Philomena had given him peace. She hoped so. With another sigh, she plunged a cloth into a bowl of iced water, wringing it of excess before applying it to his fevered brow. She hesitated for a moment and then lowered the bedclothes to inspect the extent of the damage the cat had done upon his person. One of the servants he�
��d brought from America had helped him into a night shirt, and she made a note to order the man to change it daily, for it appeared as if it had not been recently refreshed.
A careful peeling back of the loose neckline of his garment revealed a scattering of red dots marring his otherwise well-honed chest. She tried not to stare. Tried to still the tremble in her hand as she traced over the puncture wounds the cat had left upon him.
And then he said it again. Her name.
“Georgiana.”
More moan than question or statement. Perhaps a groan. As if she tortured him or haunted him, or as if he needed her. Mayhap even all three.
Her bare hand splayed over his pectoral muscle. A light dusting of dark chest hair stippled skin that was impossibly firm. Burning with fever. Marked by an angry cat about to give birth.
“Georgiana.”
He said it again, louder this time, though his eyes remained closed, and he was trapped in the throes of whatever feverish delusions had been claiming him these last few days. In that moment, she vowed that she would see him well again. She would nurse him back to health, chase away his infection however she must. She would once again see him vibrant and handsome and filled with life.
Yes, she would fight for him. She took the cloth from his forehead, dipped it back into its bath of ice water, used it to cleanse the tiny wounds on his chest, pressed it back to his brow. She would fight for him so that when he was fully healed, she could look him in the eye, tell him what a rotten, lying scoundrel he was, and demand that he divorce her.
lackness shrouded him. He was boiling. Mouth dry. Body trembling.
Where was he? Who was he?
For a beat, he could not even recall his name. His training emerged in odd ways. He’d been taught to withstand torture, to reveal nothing, to die with a closed mouth and save the lives of his brothers at arms.
Facts returned to him, along with a slow burst of consciousness. He was Christopher Anthony Harcourt. Duke of Leeds. Agent for the Crown.
Double-crossed agent for the Crown.
Memories sifted through him, blurring with the pain, meshing with nightmares. He felt again the report of the pistol, bullet slamming into his flesh. The agony of it. The rage that he had been set up. Sent to an abandoned building in a seedy New York City rookery.
And now he would never get his answers or his retribution.
He was dying.
Or dead.
Nothing about the state he found himself in was right. The weakness, the inability to move his limbs, the confusion numbing his mind. He had forgotten his own damn name. He didn’t know where he was. Or why. Or how.
More memories returned. The sweet voice of an angel. The low rumble of the devil. A creature tearing at his chest. The certainty he had descended to hell. Yes, perhaps he was dead after all.
Yet somehow, the bed embracing his body was soft, its linens fine against his skin. Were there beds in hell? Was this heaven after all? Or a brief respite to heighten his torment before he fell once more back into eternal suffering?
The cold, when it came, was sudden, jarring him to the bone. His teeth chattered, spasms wracking his body as a chill swept over him, chasing away the heat.
And then pain seared through his thigh, bringing him from the depths of darkness into a chamber filled with light. He was alive. Christ on the cross, he was alive. And his eyes were open, and someone—some bloody stranger—was cutting into his flesh with a scalpel.
An animalistic roar emerged from his lungs. A primal scream. Desperation, agony, and anger mingled into one violent burst. But he was impotent. He could not free himself or escape. Here was the reason he could not move his arms and legs, why he felt weighted down.
He had been tied.
To the fucking bed.
“Who the hell are you?” he rasped at the stranger intent on carving him up like a roast pheasant.
The bastard looked up at him, his eyes dark, his expression imperturbable. “I am Dr. Gage.”
Dr. Gage. He knew no Dr. Goddamn Gage.
“Do. Not. Touch. Me.” He tugged at his wrists, but it only served to make the knots holding him tighter.
“He will need the chloroform, I’m afraid,” the sawbones announced to someone Kit could not see. “Are you able to assist, Your Grace?”
“Of course.” There was the soft voice, resonating in his memory. That beautiful alto. That American accent.
The silken rustle of skirts alerted him to her presence before she moved into sight, a goddess in a serviceable gray gown. Her startling green gaze burned into his. Her expression was stricken. She was so beautiful. Such a duplicitous bitch.
“Madam,” he roared, out of his head—nay, out of his bloody mind—with desperation. “Remove these bonds. Where the hell is Dr. Shilling? D-do not allow that leach to c-cut me.”
He did not trust anyone. Not the stranger he’d been forced to marry to save the duchy from impending financial ruin, not a single bloody soul from the League, and certainly not the man hell-bent upon cutting him apart.
What the hell was happening to him? Why could he not stop shaking? Why was he so cold?
“Shock,” the supposed doctor said. “Make haste.”
She was at his side then, the angel from his feverish dreams, the wife he had not wanted. And she smelled of the breeze on a summer’s day redolent with rose blossoms and lavender. And the fucking quack had brandished his scalpel once more. And Kit could see the blood, could smell it. His blood. His life source.
When he’d been shot, his hands had been covered, soaked and warm and slippery. He had been convinced he would bleed to death that day. But he had been wrong, for he was going to die here. In England. Beneath the auspices of his own bloody disobedient wife.
“I am so sorry, Leeds.” Her face hovered over his, a pensive line of worry bisecting the faultless beauty of her creamy forehead.
A cloth came over his nose and mouth. He attempted to hold his breath, to abstain from breathing in the poison that would render him unconscious and incapable of defending himself.
But there she was, lovelier than any female had a right to be, possessing the temerity to look concerned. “Breathe, Leeds. You must get through this. Please.”
He choked out a breath. Inhaled. Damn her. Exhaled. Could not resist. The dimming of his senses alerted him to the inescapable fact that he was about to… Damn her, he thought again.
He inhaled. Returned to the darkness once more.
Georgiana’s hands shook.
Her former life, the one before she had become an heiress with a king’s ransom as a dowry, before she had lived on the most exclusive street in New York City in a house large enough to encompass an entire county, before she had become a duchess—that former life her husband so disparaged—had equipped her to withstand the stress and horror of this day.
The sight of blood did not make her feel faint. Nor did the smell of it. Neither did a sharpened blade cutting through flesh. She had helped to birth calves. Had milked cows. She had gathered chicken eggs, butchered more than her fair share of roosters. She had walked through pig manure, worked until her hands were roughened and red.
But no part of the life she had once led had prepared her for assisting in surgery upon her husband. The crazed gleam in his eyes, the misery and desolation, haunted her. She did not like him, it was true. He had not given her cause to feel even a modicum of tenderness toward him.
And yet, he had been so very human in that brief moment of lucidity. So desperate, exuding wildness and determination to escape, rather like a caged beast. The swift onset of her emotion had surprised her. Not just pity, but something else, something stronger.
Something she didn’t want to feel, not for him.
She laced her fingers together before her as if in prayer, forcing herself to heed the words of Dr. Gage, as he cleansed and repacked his instruments. Her husband was still on the bed before them, his skin ashen. Ludlow’s warning returned to her.
You will n
ot wish to be present for the end.
Damn Leeds for being deceptive. For getting himself shot. For turning back up in London, bleeding and ill. For abandoning her in the first place.
“I’ve applied a bichloride solution as antiseptic to the wound and allowed for drainage,” Dr. Gage was informing her, reminding her that despite her roiling emotions, despite the trembling of her hands, despite her resentment toward her husband, that man depended upon her now. The doctor’s instruction was paramount. “I will return daily to change the dressing and apply more antiseptic until I can be assured that the infection has been diminished. Fortunately, there is no evidence that septicemia has set in, but the next few days will be the true test. If the duke’s condition deteriorates any further before I return tomorrow, send for me at once. At present, I fear he is too weak to be moved, but should he suffer another setback, it is imperative that he be treated at hospital.”
She nodded. “Of course, Dr. Gage. Thank you for making this call.”
“I came for you, Duchess.” He paused, glancing up from his task to catch her gaze. “I would remind you that I am a veterinarian and not a physician by trade, and that His Grace would be better served to be seen by someone whose field of study is more suited to the two-legged rather than the four-legged variety of beast.”
She thought of the white-haired Dr. Shilling, who had likely overseen the wellbeing of the last two Dukes of Leeds, judging from his age. He had not been incompetent, but his methods had seemed far from progressive in her estimation. And his instruments had not appeared clean, nor had he taken the time to examine and cleanse the duke’s infected wound.
Georgiana shivered. “I am more than aware of your area of expertise, Dr. Gage. But believe me, your practice is a great deal more modern than His Grace’s personal physician’s in regards to infection. I did not care for his treatment, and when the duke’s condition worsened, I would turn to no one other than you.”
Dr. Gage finished packing up his instruments, his mouth a grim line that bespoke his prognosis for Leeds better than anything else. “I will expect to hear a report from you in the morning, whether or not there is a change in the patient, and I shall return in the afternoon for the wound redressing.”
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 3