The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

t to a trickle. He was patient. She drank the entire cup. Then she moaned again. He laid her back down and began again to stroke the cloth over her body.

At the end of an hour, the fever was down. She soon began to tremble and shudder with cold.

Douglas didn’t hesitate. He crawled into bed with her and drew her against him. She sought him out then, trying to burrow inside him, her legs pushing against his, her face under his right arm. He smiled even as he tried to straighten her body. He was soon sweating but he didn’t pull away from her; he pulled her closer, trying to cover every inch of her. Odd that she was so hot yet felt so very cold inside. This is very strange, Douglas thought as he leaned his cheek against the top of her head. Her hair, at least, was now dry. He was fully aware that she was his responsibility, fully aware that his hands were stroking up and down her back.

Damnation.

She moaned softly, her nose pressing against his rib, very close to his heart. He felt something altogether strange and unwelcome as her warm breath feathered against his skin.

He came awake when it was dawn, a gray dull dawn with the rain still pounding down, lessening but a little bit. He wouldn’t be able to take her back to the hall. A carriage couldn’t drive up to Tom’s front door and he couldn’t risk carrying her back to the road. She was too ill.

He forced more tea down her, cajoling her, threatening her, until the cup was empty. Tom left for the hall to get medicine from Mrs. Peacham and clothing for them both.

Douglas continued to hold her and wipe her with the wet cloth. Her fever rose and fell in cycles, endless cycles that scared him to death.

He was so scared he was praying.

He’d rather expected Mrs. Peacham to return with Tom, for she’d nursed all the Sherbrookes during his lifetime, but she didn’t. Only Finkle, his one-time batman and valet, came back with Tom. Finkle, fit and strong, just turned forty, and nearly as short as Alexandra, said without preamble, “The idiot doctor is in bed with a broken leg. I will assist you, my lord. I’ve brought all sorts of medicines. Her Ladyship will be well in a trice.”

Douglas tended her, alternately bullying her into drinking tea or eating Tom’s thick gruel, and bathing her. Toward the end of one of the longest days of Douglas’s life, he knew she was going to live. He’d forgotten his own headache and was surprised to feel the lump over his left ear where he’d struck the rock when he’d fallen.

He stood over the bed, staring down at her, knowing that the fever had broken, knowing that if only she would try, she would get well.

“Don’t you dare give up now,” he told her. “I’ll thrash you but good if you dare to give up.”

She moaned softly and tried to turn on her side. He helped her, then nestled the blankets snugly against her.

“She’ll do,” Finkle said matter-of-factly from the doorway. “She’s got guts worthy of a Sherbrooke.”

Douglas walked to the door and quietly closed it after him. He turned to his valet. “Don’t give me any of your damned impertinence. She’s only a temporary Sherbrooke, only a Sherbrooke through guile and betrayal, and just because she’s ill, it doesn’t make her my wife by default.”

Finkle, in His Lordship’s service for eleven years, said, “You aren’t thinking clearly, my lord. She will live, thank the good beneficent being who dwells above us, and it is you who have saved her. Once you save a person’s life, you cannot discard the saved person like an old boot.”

“I can do whatever I wish to the damned deceitful chit. Do you so quickly forget what she and her father and my dear cousin Tony did?”

“Her sister, Lady Melissande, said her ladyship, the temporary one who lies here, was never ill. She said it was most likely a ruse to gain your sympathy, but that she said it was her duty to come and see for herself.”

“Oh God,” said Douglas, whipping around toward the door, as if expecting Melissande to appear at any instant.

“She’s not here, my lord.”

“How did you stop her?”

“I told her if Her Ladyship wasn’t pretending illness, it was very possible that she could catch the fever herself and that a fever immediately ruined a lady’s looks for the rest of her life. I told her a fever always left spots on a lady’s face.”

Douglas could only stare at his valet. “My God, that was well done of you.”

“Lord Rathmore agreed that this was so, that he himself had witnessed such phenomena as nursing spots many times before. He said that it shouldn’t deter her, though. He commended her on her selflessness. He nicely inquired if she would like him to drive her here to see her sister, to tend to her herself if she was indeed ill and not playacting. Lady Melissande shrieked. Quite loudly. Lord Rathmore laughed.”

“You did well, Finkle, as did my cousin, the bounder. Now, since I must, since there is no one else, I will go back to the chit and see to her. Why didn’t Mrs. Peacham come with you?”

“She and Hollis decided it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“Ha! Hollis decided that and you know it, damn his interfering hide! Why he wants this chit to remain as the Countess of Northcliffe is beyond me. You’d think he would remember where his loyalties should lie.”

Finkle merely looked at his master. “You disappoint me, my lord,” he said and left Douglas to himself.

“Well, hell,” Douglas said. Within minutes he was under the covers next to Alexandra, knowing even before realizing it that she was cold again. Cold from the inside out.