Just Like Heaven

Chapter Nine

Honoria woke the following morning in pain. Her neck was stiff, her back ached, and her left foot had fallen completely asleep. And she was hot and sweaty, which, in addition to making her uncomfortable, made her feel remarkably unattractive. And possibly fragrant. And by fragrant, she meant— Oh, bother, she knew what she meant, and so would anyone else who came within five feet of her.

She’d closed the window after Marcus had dozed off. It had nearly killed her to do so; it went against all common sense. But she was not confident enough to defy the doctor’s instructions and leave it open.

She shook out her foot, wincing as tiny needles of pain shot through her. Blast it all, she hated when her foot fell asleep. She reached down to squeeze it, trying to restore her circulation, but this just made her entire lower leg feel as if she’d set it on fire.

With a yawn and a groan, she pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the ominous creaking in her joints. There was a reason human beings didn’t sleep in chairs, she decided. If she was still here the next night, she was taking to the floor.

Half walking and half hobbling, she made her way over to the window, eager to pull back the curtains and allow at least a little sunshine in. Marcus was sleeping, so she didn’t want to make it too bright, but she was feeling a rather urgent need to see him. The color of his skin, the circles under his eyes. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with this information, but then again, she hadn’t been sure of anything since she’d entered his room the night before.

And she needed a reason to get out of the bloody chair.

She pulled back one side of the curtains, blinking in the flood of early morning light. It couldn’t be too much past dawn; the sky was still hung with wisps of pink and peach, and the morning mist was flowing softly across the lawn.

It looked lovely out there, gentle and fresh, and Honoria cracked the window open again, even pressing her face up to the small opening, just to breathe in the cool moisture.

But she had a job to do. So she took a step back and turned around, with every intention of laying a gentle hand on Marcus’s forehead to check if his fever had returned. But before she’d taken more than two steps, he rolled over in his sleep and— Good God, had his face been so red the night before?

She hurried to his side, stumbling over her still tingling left foot.

He looked awful—red and puffy, and when she touched him his skin was dry and parched.

And hot. Terrifyingly hot.

Quickly, Honoria ran to the pitcher of water. She didn’t see any towels or handkerchiefs, so she just dunked her hands in, then laid them on his cheeks, trying to cool him down. But it was clear that this was not going to be a tenable solution, so she dashed over to a set of drawers, yanking them open in turn until she found what she thought were handkerchiefs. It was only when she shook one out to dunk it in the pitcher of water that she realized it was something else altogether.

Oh, dear Lord. She was about to put his unmentionables on his face.

She felt her own face go red as she squeezed out the excess water and hurried back to his side. She mumbled an apology—not that he was sensible enough to understand it, or the offense she was about to commit—and pressed the wet linen against his forehead.

He immediately began to toss and turn, making strange, worrisome sounds—grunts and half-words, sentences with no beginnings or ends. She heard “Stop,” and “No,” but she also thought she might have heard “Facilitate,” “Monkfish,” and “Footbridge."

She definitely heard him say, “Daniel."

Blinking back tears, she left his side for a moment to bring the pitcher of water closer. He’d knocked the cooling cloth from his face by the time she returned, and when she tried to reapply it, he pushed her away.

“Marcus,” she said sternly, even though she knew he wouldn’t hear her, “you have to let me help you."

But he struggled against her, thrashing this way and that until she was practically sitting on him just to keep him down. “Stop it,” she snapped when he pushed up against her. “You. Will. Not. Win.

And by that”—she jammed down hard on one of his shoulders with her forearm—“I mean that if I win, you win."

He jerked up suddenly and their heads knocked. Honoria let out a grunt of pain, but she didn’t let go. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she ground out. “And by that I mean”—she put her face close to his —“you will not die."

Using all her weight to keep him down, she jabbed one arm out toward the pitcher of water, trying to resoak the linen. “You’re going to hate me tomorrow when you realize what I put on your face,” she told him, slapping it back down on his forehead. She hadn’t meant to be so rough, but he wasn’t really offering her any opportunities for gentle movement.

“Calm down,” she said slowly, moving the cloth to his neck. “I promise you, if you are calm, you will feel much better.” She dunked the cloth again. “Which really pales in comparison to how much better I will feel."

The next time she managed to get the wet cloth on his chest, which she’d long since ceased to notice was bare. But he didn’t seem to like that; he pushed back against her, hard, and she went tumbling off the far side of the bed, landing on the carpet with a jarring thud.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she muttered, ready to come back with all she had. But before she could scoot around the bed to the water pitcher, he thrust one leg out from under the covers, catching her in her belly.

She stumbled, flailing her arms forward in a desperate attempt to catch her balance before she hit the floor again. Without thinking, she grabbed the first object with which her hand connected.

Marcus screamed.

Honoria’s heart slammed into triple speed, and she let go of what she now realized was his leg. Without anything to hold her up, she fell back to the floor, landing hard on her right elbow.

“Owwwww!” she cried, letting out her own shriek of pain as electric spasms shot down to her fingertips. But somehow she pushed herself to her feet, clutching her elbow to her side. The noise Marcus had made . . .

It had been inhuman.

He was still whimpering when she reached the side of the bed, and he was breathing hard, too—the kind of short, shallow breaths people made to ward off pain.

“What happened?” Honoria whispered. This wasn’t the fever.

This was something far more acute.

His leg. She had grabbed his leg.

That was when she realized her hand was sticky.

Still clutching her elbow, she turned her free hand over, twisting until her palm faced up.

Blood.

“Oh, my God."

With an unsettled feeling in her stomach, she stepped toward him. She didn’t want to startle him; he’d already knocked her down twice. But the blood . . . It wasn’t her blood.

He’d pulled his leg back under the covers, so she carefully lifted the blanket, pushing it back until his leg was bare to the knee. “Oh, my God.” A long, angry gash split the side of his calf, oozing blood and something else she didn’t even want to consider. The leg was terribly swollen and discolored, the skin near the wound red and glistening with a horrible sheen. It looked awful, like something rotting, and with horror Honoria wondered if he was rotting.

She dropped the blanket and lurched back, barely able to keep down the contents of her stomach.

“Oh, my God,” she said again, unable to say anything else, barely able to think anything else. This had to be the cause of the fever. It had nothing to do with the chill and his cough.

Her mind spun. He had an infected wound. It must have been when he’d cut off his boot. But he hadn’t said that he’d been cut.

Why hadn’t he mentioned that? He should have told someone. He should have told her. A light knock sounded at the door, and Mrs. Wetherby poked her head in. “Is everything all right? I heard a tremendous crashing."

“No,” Honoria answered, her voice shrill and panicked. She tried to quell the rising terror within her. She needed to be rational.

She was no help to anyone like this. “His leg. Did you know about his leg?"

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Wetherby asked, coming quickly to her side.

“His leg. It’s terribly infected. I’m sure it’s the cause of the fever. It has to be.” “The doctor said it was the cough. He—oh!” Mrs. Wetherby flinched when Honoria lifted the blanket to show her Marcus’s leg.

“Oh, my dear heavens.” She took a step back, covering her hand with her mouth. She looked as if she might be sick. “I had no idea.

None of us did. How could we not have seen it?"

Honoria was wondering the very same thing, but this wasn’t the time to point fingers. Marcus needed them to work together to help him, not to argue over who was to blame. “We need to summon the doctor,” she said to Mrs. Wetherby. “It needs to be cleaned, I would imagine."

The housekeeper gave a quick nod. “I’ll send for him."

“How long will it take for him to get here?"

“It depends on whether he is out seeing other patients. If he’s at home, the footman can be back with him in less than two hours."

“Two hours!” Honoria bit her lip in a belated attempt to muffle her shriek. She’d never seen anything like this, but she’d heard stories. This was the kind of infection that killed a man. Quickly.

“We can’t wait two hours. He needs medical attention now."

Mrs. Wetherby turned to her with frightened eyes. “Do you know how to clean a wound?"

“Of course not. Do you?"

“Nothing like that,” Mrs. Wetherby answered, eyeing Marcus’s leg with a queasy expression.

“Well, how would you take care of one that is smaller?"

Honoria demanded. “A wound, I mean.” Mrs. Wetherby wrung her hands together, panicked eyes darting from Honoria to Marcus. “I don’t know,” she sputtered. “A compress, I imagine. Something to draw out the poison."

“The poison?” Honoria echoed. Good God, it sounded positively medieval. “Summon the doctor,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “Now. And then come right back.

With hot water. And towels. And anything else you can think of."

“Shall I bring your mother?"

“My mother?” Honoria gaped at her, not because there was anything particularly wrong with having her mother in the sickroom.

Rather, why was Mrs. Wetherby thinking of it now? “I don’t know.

Whatever you think is best. But hurry."

Mrs. Wetherby nodded and ran from the room.

Honoria looked back at Marcus. His leg was still exposed to the air, the furious gash facing her like a seething frown. “Oh, Marcus,"

she whispered. “How could this have happened?” She took his hand, and for once he didn’t pull away. He seemed to have calmed down a bit; his breathing was more even than it had been just a few minutes earlier, and was it possible that his skin wasn’t quite so red?

Or was she so desperate for any sign of improvement that she was seeing things that weren’t there?

“Maybe,” she said aloud, “but I will take any sign of hope.” She forced herself to look at his leg more closely. Her stomach roiled dangerously, but she pushed down her distaste. She needed to start cleaning the wound. Heaven only knew how long it would take the doctor to return, and although a compress would be better with hot water, there didn’t seem any good reason not to start with what she had.

Marcus had flung the wet linen she’d been using to cool him across the room, so she went to his bureau and retrieved another pair of his unmentionables, trying not to notice anything about them other than the fact that they were made of reasonably soft linen.

She wound them into a loose cylindrical shape and dunked one end in the water. “I’m so sorry, Marcus,” she whispered, then touched the wet cloth ever-so-gently against the wound.

He didn’t flinch.

She let out the breath she’d been holding and looked at the cloth. It was red in spots from his blood, and yellowish, too, with the infection that was oozing from the wound.

Feeling slightly more confident of her nursing abilities, she adjusted the cloth to a clean area and again pressed it against the wound, applying a tiny bit more pressure than the first time. It didn’t seem to bother him overmuch, so she repeated the procedure, and then again, until there was very little clean cloth remaining.

She glanced worriedly at the door. Where was Mrs. Wetherby?

Honoria was making progress, but she was sure she could do a better job with hot water. Still, she wasn’t about to stop, not while Marcus remained relatively calm.

She went to the bureau and got another pair of Marcus’s unmentionables. “I don’t know what you’re going to wear when I’m through with you,” she said to him, hands on hips.

“Back in the water,” she said to herself, dunking the cloth. “And back on you.” She pressed, harder this time. One was supposed to press on cuts and scrapes to stop the bleeding, this much she knew.

He wasn’t exactly bleeding now, but surely the pressure couldn’t hurt.

“And by that I mean hurt you in a permanent manner,” she said to Marcus, who remained blessedly unconscious. “I’m quite certain it will hurt you right now."

She dunked the cloth again, finding a nice clean patch of linen, then she moved to the part of the wound she knew she’d been avoiding. There was a spot near the top that was uglier than the rest —quite a bit more yellow, definitely more swollen.

She dabbed lightly, trying not to hurt him, and then, when he did nothing but mutter in his sleep, pressed a little harder. “One step at a time,” she whispered, forcing herself to take a calming breath.

“Just one.” She could do this. She could help him. No, she could fix him. It was as if everything in her life had led to this moment. “This is why I didn’t get married last year,” she said to him. “I wouldn’t be here to nurse you.” She thought about that for a moment. “Of course, one could make the argument that you wouldn’t be in this situation if not for me. But we’re not going to dwell upon that."

She kept up her work, carefully cleaning his wound, then paused to stretch her neck from side to side. She looked down at the cloth in her hands. It was still disgusting, but she wasn’t bothered by it any longer.

“There, you see,” she said to him. “It must mean I am getting better at this.” She thought she was doing better, too. She was trying to be so very matter-of-fact and practical, but then, out of nowhere, right after she so jauntily declared that she was getting better at “this,” a huge choking sound burst from her throat. It was part gasp, part hideous wheeze, and it surprised her completely.

Marcus could die. The reality of this slammed into her with smothering force. He could die, and then she would be truly alone.

It wasn’t even as if they’d seen much of each other in recent years, except for the past few weeks, of course.

But she’d always known he was there. The world was simply a better place, knowing that he was in it.

And now he might die. She’d be lost without him. How had she not realized that?

“Honoria!"

Honoria turned. It was her mother, bursting through the door.

“I came as quickly as I could,” Lady Winstead said, hurrying across the room. Then she saw Marcus’s leg. “Oh, my God."

Honoria felt another one of those gaspy, wheezing noises blowing up within her. There was something about seeing her mother, about her mother seeing Marcus. It was like the time when she was twelve, and she’d fallen off her horse. She’d thought she was fine; she’d walked all the way home, bruised and achy, her face bleeding where she’d scratched it against a rock.

And then she’d seen her mother, and her mother’s expression, and she’d started to bawl.

It was the same thing. She wanted to bawl. Dear God, all she wanted to do was push back and turn away and cry and cry and cry.

But she couldn’t. Marcus needed her. He needed her to be calm. And capable. “Mrs. Wetherby is getting hot water,” she told her mother. “She should be back soon."

“Good. We’ll need lots of it. And brandy. And a knife."

Honoria looked at her mother with surprise. She sounded as if she knew what she was doing. Her mother.

“The doctor is going to want to take off the leg,” Lady Winstead said grimly. “What?” Honoria hadn’t even considered that.

“And he may be right."

Honoria’s heart stopped beating. Until her mother said, “But not yet."

Honoria stared at her mother in shock. She could not remember the last time she’d heard her speak with such decisiveness. When Daniel had fled the country, he’d taken a piece of their mother with him. She’d been utterly lost, unable to commit herself to anything or anyone, even her daughter. It was almost as if she could not bring herself to make any decisions, because to do so would mean that she accepted her life as it now was, with her only son gone, possibly forever.

But maybe all she had needed was a reason to wake up. A critical moment.

Maybe she’d needed to be needed.

“Stand back,” Lady Winstead said, pushing up her sleeves.

Honoria stepped aside, trying to ignore the tiny pang of jealousy that flared to life within her. Hadn’t she needed her mother?

“Honoria?"

She looked at her mother, who was watching her with an expectant expression. “Sorry,” Honoria mumbled, holding out the cloth in her hand. “Do you want this?"

“A clean one, please."

“Of course.” Honoria rushed to do her mother’s bidding, further depleting Marcus’s supply of underthings.

Her mother took the cloth, then looked at it with a confused expression. “What is . . ."

“It was all I could find,” Honoria explained. “And I thought time was of the essence."

“It is,” her mother confirmed. She looked up, her eyes meeting Honoria’s with grave directness. “I have seen this before,” she said, her shaky breath the only sign of nerves. “Your father. On his shoulder. It was before you were born."

“What happened?” Her mother looked back at Marcus’s leg, narrowing her eyes as she examined the wound. “See if you can shed more light on this."

And then, while Honoria went to the windows to pull the curtains fully open, she said, “I don’t even know how he cut himself. Just that it became horribly infected.” Very softly, she added, “Almost as bad as this.” “But he was fine,” Honoria said, returning to her mother’s side.

This was a story to which she knew the ending. Her father had had two perfectly strong arms until the day he died.

Her mother gave a nod. “We were very lucky. The first doctor wanted to amputate. And I—” Her voice broke, and it was a moment before she continued. “I would have let him do it. I was so concerned for your father’s life.” She used the clean cloth to dab at Marcus’s leg, trying to get a better look. When she spoke again, her voice was very soft. “I would have done anything they told me to."

“Why didn’t they take his arm?” Honoria asked quietly.

Her mother let out a short puff of a breath, as if expelling a bad memory. “Your father demanded to see another doctor. He told me that if the second agreed with the first, he would do as they asked.

But he was not cutting off his arm because one man told him to."

“The second one said they didn’t have to?” Her mother let out a grim chuckle. “No, he said he almost certainly would have to cut it off. But he told your father they could try cleaning the wound first. Really cleaning it."

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Honoria said in a rush. “I’ve got quite a bit of the infection out, I think."

“It’s a good start,” her mother said. “But . . .” She swallowed.

“But what?” Her mother kept her attention firmly on Marcus’s wound, pressing it lightly with the cloth as she examined. She did not look at Honoria when she said in a very low voice, “The doctor said that if your father wasn’t screaming, we weren’t cleaning it well enough.” “Do you remember what he did?” Honoria whispered.

Lady Winstead nodded. “Everything,” she said softly.

Honoria waited for more. And then she wished she hadn’t.

Her mother finally looked up. “We’re going to have to tie him down.”