“The baby,” Frances divulged, and the words seemed to catch in her throat. “She has a fever. She will not stop crying.”
For one beat, Andrew heard nothing else. The corridor shifted. He stood in Sinclair House, beneath the soft glow of wall lamps, with his wife before him and the scent of wax and dying flowers in the air. Yet something old opened beneath his feet all the same.
A dim room, drawn curtains, a cradle too near a bed, and a weak cry that stopped too soon. He was ten again.
Then the baby cried. The sound came from the nursery, thin but furious, and it snapped him back with brutal force.
“Carter!” Andrew shouted.
The butler appeared at the far end of the hall almost immediately, as though he had already sensed trouble.
“Your Grace?”
“Send for Dr. Meredith at once,” Andrew ordered. “Now. Wake a groom, send the fastest horse. Tell him it is urgent.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And send up hot water. Clean linen. More lamps. Wake Mrs. Carter.”
Carter bowed and was gone before the last command had fully left Andrew’s mouth.
Andrew turned back to Frances. “How long?”
“I do not know precisely. She was restless after supper, then warm, and then she began crying and would not settle. The nurse thought perhaps wind, but then–”
He was already moving. Frances followed him into the nursery. The room was too bright and not bright enough. One maid stood near the hearth, white-faced and useless with panic. The nurse held the baby against her shoulder, murmuring soft nonsense, but the child’s cry rose over it, broken and hoarse.
Andrew crossed the room in three strides.
“Give her to me.”
The nurse obeyed at once. The moment the child was in his arms, Andrew felt the heat of her through the blanket. She was too warm. His hand went to her forehead. Her skin burned beneath his fingers. The baby cried harder, with her body straining against the swaddling as though fighting some enemy none of them could see.
Andrew’s breath shortened.
“Open the window,” he said. “No, only a little. Not a draught. Move the cradle away from the fire. Where is the water? Why is there no water?”
“The footman is bringing it, Your Grace,” the maid stammered.
“Then bring it faster.”
The maid fled. Andrew shifted the baby, trying to loosen the blanket, then tightened it again, then seemed unable to decide whether she was too hot or too exposed. His hands would not obey him properly. He knew what ought to be done. He had read enough, asked enough, endured enough years of refusing to care and caring regardless. A fever in an infant could mean anything…everything.
His fingers fumbled at the edge of the linen. The baby screamed. A sound went through him like a blade.
“No,” he said under his breath. “No, no, no.”
“Andrew.”
Frances was beside him. He scarcely heard her.
“Her breathing,” he murmured. “Listen to her breathing. Is it too quick? It is too quick.”
“She is crying,” Frances told him. “That will make it quick.”
“She is too hot.”
“Yes.”
