“Miss Foxcroft.” One of the maids, Tillie, met Meg as she entered the anteroom. Sweat lined her forehead. Her clothes were rumpled, damp, and her eyes had a stricken panic.
Meg dropped the riding crop, lungs squeezing. “What is it?”
“Miss Violet. She …” Tillie hiccupped on a sob. “She be dying and Lord Cunningham be gone.”
CHAPTER 13
Blood dotted the white pillows and left a wretched smear of pink beneath Violet’s nose. Her curls were damp. Her breathing loud, labored in the silent room.
“No.” With a weak hand, she swatted something away from her face, eyes shut. “Get them off me. Hate them. Papa, please.”
“She has been doing this an hour.” Jenny settled a ceramic leech jar next to the bed, her jerky movements rattling the lid. “I have sent a manservant for the doctor, but who knows where he is. And Lord Cunningham departed early, as soon as …” Jenny’s sentence faltered and she glanced at Meg through accusing side eyes.
Guilt fissured like an earthquake ripping through ground. “He departed to look for me.”
“The servants cannot find him anywhere.”
“He shall return.” She swept to the bed. “Soon.” Ripped back the coverlets. Peeled off the leech in the crook of Violet’s thin, white-colored arm. “I need linens to staunch this blood flow and Cinchona bark powder. Hurry.”
“But the leeches—”
“Do more harm than good.” She wasn’t certain where the words came from. Something her uncle had believed, despite common practice? “Jenny, hurry!”
The maid whimpered but rushed from the chamber, the door crashing shut behind her.
Meg wiped at the blood with a damp rag. Her heartbeat galloped as she placed a finger beneath Violet’s earlobe and counted the dim pulse. The fever was too high. Some sort of infection. If they could diminish the fever, perhaps she would not …
Die?Meg nearly choked. She swept her hands along the girl’s soft, burning cheeks. “You shall be well, dear Violet.”
“Papa.” The girl squinted her eyes open, tears leaking down her face. “I want Papa.”
“He is coming.”
“I want him now.” Violet coughed and a fresh stream of blood trickled from her nose to her lips. She wept.
Mouth dry, chest tightening, Meg pulled back the coverlets and slipped in bed beside the child. She pulled Violet into her arms.Do not let her die.She kissed the scorched forehead and shuddered.Please, God. Please.
The corridor was silent, black, save for the dull light under Violet’s door.
Lord Cunningham had returned an hour after dark.
Mary had told him first. Then Tillie had brought him upstairs. Then Jenny had cried and asked if she ought not to have listened to Miss Foxcroft and taken away the jar of leeches.
Meg had still been in bed with Violet when Lord Cunningham burst in.
His hair had been wild, wet with the evening rain, and his eyes were strange and unreadable when they collided hers. “Please, leave us.” Not unkindly. Just tentatively, as if his voice were close to giving out and his composure near to demise.
Meg had departed the chamber and found the nearest hall chair. One by the window where a steadypitter-patterof rain tortured the panes.My fault.Lord Cunningham should have been here when his daughter awoke sick.
He would have been had Meg not disappeared.
She was thoughtless.
Rash.
Terrible.
Pulling her legs beneath her, she leaned her head against the hard wooden chair. Hours passed. She closed her eyes but did not sleep.
