“Rose, I will need a fresh supply of boiled water every hour. Perhaps … broth. I would like some broth brought up.”
The maid nodded, looking relieved to have a specific task.
Audrey cupped Julius’s head, raising him so she could help him drink his brew. His eyelids fluttered in response. “I need you to swallow, Julius.” She placed the cup to his lips, and he obeyed, swallowing it down in a couple of gulps.
“’Tis foul,” he murmured, falling back onto his pillow.
Straightening up, Audrey found Patrick still waiting for instruction.
“I need to raise him to remove the bandage.”
The servant nodded, hurrying over to lift Julius, who mumbled in protest. Audrey unraveled the bandage, putting it aside. She collected her jar of honey and the teaspoon she had brought up from the kitchen. Returning to the patient’s side, she sat in the armchair that Patrick had brought over, opened the jar, and scooped up the honey to dribble it over the reddened sutures. Then she used the back of the spoon to smear it, careful to ensure the entire wound was doused with the sticky paste.
Audrey rose to wash the sticky substance from her hands at the washstand before returning to the bed. Patrick helped lift Julius again and, after covering the wound, she reached around his firm torso to wind the bandage in place—secure, but not too tight.
“No one must be aware we are here.”
The servant nodded, still waiting for something more as he gazed at the feverish patient lying in the bed. Julius was a character who left an indelible impression on all he met, and Patrick’s worry was evident as he rubbed the back of his neck with a pained expression.
“Is there a robe for me to change into? My things are damp and I need to get dry.” A strong breeze blew in from the gaping windows, chilling her in her damp gown. Audrey wished to prepare a new brew that she would formulate from her father’s notes, but if she did not dry off, she might battle a fever of her own.
Patrick nodded, crossing to the wardrobe and pulling out a banyan robe and loose-fitting pants. “I’ll be in the ’all.” He exited, closing the door behind him.
Audrey retrieved the garments, and standing behind a dressing screen, she undid her gown, contorting her arms intoawkward positions and fighting with the dampened buttons, exhaling in triumph when the weight of it dropped into a pool around her feet. She pulled on the pants, rolling the top down twice to shorten their length and tying them off with the tapes. Next, she pulled the banyan on, knotting the sash around her waist. Picking up her things, she walked back to the door.
Patrick took her things to dry, along with directions to bring the broth and tray up at regular intervals. She also requested cloths and cold water to use on the patient. Audrey needed to keep Julius drinking fluids through the night and to cool him down with dampened cottons.
Propping the door open to aid with the breeze rushing in from the window, she returned to her valise and dug around for her copy ofCulpeper’s Complete Herbal. The book had her father’s neat notes written throughout. Some of the printed lines were crossed out, with her father’s findings written in their stead. She needed to brew a herbal tea for her patient, but first she must determine which ingredients would be best for the situation he was in.
Taking a seat in an armchair by the window, she picked up one of the books that was stacked on the mahogany table, raising her eyebrows in curiosity—Aus den Memoiren des Venetianersby J. Casanova. She was holding volume one.
The memoirs of the infamous Venetian adventurer seemed somehow appropriate, given the room’s resident. She could envisage Julius making his escape out the second-story window of a paramour’s boudoir. Not only was he handsome, he had an irrepressible air to his flippant fashion and affectations. His choice to investigate a murder to aid his friends seemed both in and out of character, but she did not know him all that well.
Putting the book back on the table, Audrey licked the tip of her finger and began to leaf through the pages of her own book to read her father’s notes, with the valise on the table next to her.
On page 128, she read about oak.“The same is singularly good in pestilential and hot burning fevers; for it resists the force of the infection, and allays the heat: It cools the heat of the liver, breaking the stone in the kidneys, and stays women’s courses …”
Pulling the little bottle of ground-up oak bark from her valise, she continued to skim through the pages, noting that My Lady’s Thistle could be of aid applied as a compress. “The seed and distilled water is held powerful to all the purposes aforesaid, and besides, it is often applied both outwardly with cloths or spunges to the region of the liver, to cool the distemper thereof, and to the region of the heart, against swoonings and the passions of it.”
Alongside the lines, her father’s notes guided her as to the efficacy of the printed treatments. She could imagine his voice in her ears as she assimilated the recommended alterations based on Papa’s experiences.
She pulled out My Lady’s Thistle and set it down next to the oak. Methodically, she formulated a treatment plan for the coming hours until she had her ingredients for the tea she was brewing. And when the compresses arrived, she would be ready for those, too.
Collecting her bottles, Audrey prepared the mixture in the teapot and poured out a cup. Tasting it with a tentative sip, she pulled a face. It was both earthy and grassy … not to mention bitter.
Hmm … Perhaps adding a little honey would not go amiss.
Once the brew was ready, she returned to Julius’s side and made him raise his head to drink it while she could. If he became insensate, she would have only the compresses to place over his liver while she washed him down with the cold, wet cloths. It was imperative to have him swallow as much of themedicinal concoction as possible while he was still responsive to her directions.
It was her first time treating a feverish patient without her father standing by her side, and Audrey had to fight back the nervous apprehension that this caused. There was no time for her emotions. She must remain resolute and see to her patient’s needs. She had assisted her father countless times, and he might not be there to help, but his training was embedded in her very blood and she had his notes and journals to guide her through the coming hours.
Besides, what choice did she have?
She could not allow some physician to treat Julius with a barbaric bloodletting which would almost certainly result in his death, considering how much blood he had already lost.
When it came to doctors, common sense was all too often left to wither on the vine in favor of their autocratic dogma. Papa had eschewed such dogma, testing the efficacy of treatments firsthand for the benefit of his patients. Then, too, Lord Stirling had sought treatment from Papa for over three decades, so she had to believe that in the earl’s absence, she was following his wishes in regard to his heir. She needed to trust herself and follow her father’s fastidious notes.
Nevertheless, the weight of responsibility was a heavy mantle upon her.
