She called, “Maurice!” and hurried towards him, putting the tray down on the nightstand so she could reach and pull the bellrope. She yanked hard several times before she hurried back and knelt beside the comte. She touched his wrist and noted his pulse was slow, very slow. “Oh, no…Maurice.”
Bunky, who had been talking with one of the household servants, was the first to appear. “Miss Heather. What is it, what has happened?”
“He has the fever. Bunky…we need to get him to his bed,” Heather cried, and then watched the big black man, Roan, and Bunky manage the comte between them.
“Aye, we’ll see to him, get him into bed, and then what do you want us to do?” Bunky asked worriedly.
“I will be there in a moment. Take off his shirt and boots…make him comfortable, and I will be there as soon as I can get this into Louise.”
As she sat beside Louise, she felt a fear clutch her heart, but pushed it aside as she helped Louise lift her head so she could pour some of the lukewarm tisane into her.
Louise choked and cried out, “No…you are killing me. NO.”
“It will do you good,” Heather said. “Now…just a little more, darling, just a little more.”
Louise did manage to get some of the brew down before she fell back against her pillows.
Heather jumped to her feet and ran towards Maurice’s bedroom. Her beloved Louise and Maurice were in trouble, serious trouble, and she had to do something to make them well. She simply had to!
~ Sixteen ~
TWO DAYS DRAGGED BY AND neither Maurice nor Louise showed any signs of improvement. Heather was near exhaustion as she worked between them.
Bunky, ever ready to help, had relieved her so she could get some sleep, but she felt this overwhelming need not to be far from their side, and sleep did not come easy or enough.
It broke her to hear Maurice call her name. She whispered calming words as she wiped his burning forehead with the cool wet rag. She reassured him as best she could. “I am here, Maurice…dear Maurice, I am here.”
“Don’t go,” he said in his delirium. “Heather—stay…s’il te plais.”
Bunky had arrived and heard this. He touched Heather’s shoulder. “Miss…ye know he purchased two suites, one for each of us, on the passenger ship back to Cornwall. He told me and bade me keep the tickets safe when he got back from town. It leaves in three more days.”
“You take your ticket and return home, Bunky, but I cannot leave them like this. I simply cannot,” Heather said.
“No, I go where ye go. That is the long and the short of it,” Bunky said. “And if ye gave me my druthers, I love it here at Brabant. I do.”
She squeezed his hand and returned to wiping Maurice’s face, neck, and chest.
Belle appeared with a tray of crackers and sage tea, which Heather had been forcing down both her patients’ throats to no avail. The cook eyed Bunky, who was forever in her kitchen, always hungry and stealing something to eat. He had quickly become a favorite. “Eh, no change?” Belle asked.
“None, the sage tea is not helping at all, and I am at my wits’ end.” Heather was near to sobbing.
“Mistress…m’instincts tell me to trust ya, so I will. This tisane won’t help. It jest won’t, cuz it be the swamp fever, that is the truth of it. M’master and his sister have to get better. I knows I said there was something that might help the swamp fever…but, I’m well…there are those that will hold me to it if it goes wrong.”
“No, that isn’t so, Belle. I have made you a promise and I keep my promises. Anything we do will be completely on me,” Heather said on a hushed note. “Will you make the potion? Will you make it now?”
“Yessum, as I told ya, we grows it right here a
t Brabant and I have already mashed and brewed it. If ya want…mistress, I can have it ready in jest a few minutes.”
“Of course, oh, Belle, thank you for trusting me. You will never regret it,” Heather said.
Belle smiled broadly as she threw her hands excitedly about and started out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “Jest a minute, mistress, and I’ll be back.”
Heather and Bunky watched the cook as she left and turned to one another. “Do ye think this potion thing will work, Miss Heather?” Bunky asked.
“What I think, Bunky, is that thus far nothing else has worked and so we must give it a try,” Heather answered.
It seemed a very short while and Belle was back with a plate of the dark pulp. Heather watched as Belle put a pot of boiling water on the nearby table and dropped the pulp into it. “We got to let it sit, then we’ll strain it. After it cools, we can make ‘em swallow it every two or three hours. That will break the fever, Lord help us, let it break the fever.”