Clara caught her breath. Theophile Oakley had cared for her family—as he did many of the elite families in London—since she was a child. “Dr. Oakley has been here?”
Radcliff hesitated, then nodded.
“For my father?”
Another nod.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Clara turned, flinging open the door of the bedchamber and rushing toward the stairs. Near the top, she gathered her skirts in a most unladylike bundle and fled down the steps, clinging to the banister for balance. On the first floor, she knocked once and entered her father’s study.
Jerome Durham looked up from his paperwork, peering at her over his spectacles, his eyes wide. “Clara?”
Clara stopped, dropping her skirts, her hands flitting in front of her. “Papa! Dr. Oakley—” She stopped unable to say anything more.
Her father returned his quill to its mount, leaned back, and released a long breath that rattled in his chest. His face seemed grayer and more sunken than usual. He cleared his throat, but his voice still rasped. “So you have heard?”
“Not that—only that Dr. Oakley—oh, Papa!” Clara put a hand to her mouth.
Durham motioned for her to sit, and Clara dropped into a chair in front of his desk. He took off his spectacles and set them to one side. “Dr. Oakley is doing what he can to make sure I am comfortable and as healthy as I can be. But there is not much at his disposal. My lungs are... too weak.”
Clara clenched her fists in her skirts, twisting the fabric. “This is what Mother did not want to tell me.”
“At my request.”
“Why? I could help—”
“Because I do not want you hovering over me, looking as if I just strangled that blasted kitten.”
Clara stared at him, chewing on her lower lip, fighting the heat of tears in her eyes.
Durham rested his forearms on the desk. “This is why I wanted you settled this season.” He straightened a bit but shivered in doing so. “Your mother tells me you have decided to try with the duke.”
Clara most definitely did not want to talk about Wykeham. “I have acquiesced as it is the right thing to do. What does the doctor say?”
“That the scarring from repeated pneumonias is irreparable. That I will continue to develop infections that will weaken me further.”
“So you are dying.”
Durham gave her a slow smile. “Daughter, we are all dying. Some simply do it faster than others.”
“Papa...”
“Do you remember sitting in my lap as a girl?”
She had to smile. “A much smaller girl than I am now.”
His eyes developed a slight twinkle. “But your sisters did not. Even as small children they were too proper. They would hug me, then stand to one side and wait for their nurse’s next instruction.”
Clara remembered. “They wanted to be like Mother. Starched and prim.”
“Whereas you would scamper to me and clamber up in my lap as if I were a mountain waiting to be climbed.”
“You always smelled like mint and tobacco. I loved to sniff your coat.”
Durham nodded. “My wildest child. Honora warned me you would be spoiled.”
