Andrew did not want to release the baby. The instinct was so strong it startled him. His arms tightened fractionally.
Frances touched his sleeve. “Andrew.”
He looked at her.
“She needs him to examine her.”
He forced himself to nod and handed the child over. The physician worked with maddening composure. He checked her temperature, listened to her breathing, examined her throat, her chest, her ears. He asked questions of the nurse, then of Frances, then of Andrew, though Andrew found his own answers brief and uneven.
How long? Had she fed? Had she coughed? Had there been any change in her breathing?
The baby cried through much of it. Andrew stood rigid near the foot of the cradle, with one hand braced against the carved rail. Frances was beside him, close enough that her sleeve brushed his.
Finally, Dr. Meredith straightened.
Andrew spoke first. “Well?”
The physician’s expression was reassuringly grave, which Andrew immediately despised.
“It is a cold, Your Grace.”
“A cold,” Andrew repeated.
“Yes. A feverish one, but not uncommon. Her lungs are clear. Her breathing is strong. She is distressed, certainly, but I see no sign of immediate danger.”
Immediate danger.
Andrew seized on the word he disliked most. “But there may be danger later.”
“There may always be complications with infants,” Dr. Meredith informed him carefully. “But I do not expect them here if she is watched closely. Keep her warm, but not overheated. Encourage feeding. Use the drops I shall leave if the fever rises again, and send for me if her breathing changes, if she refuses nourishment entirely, or if the fever does not ease by tomorrow.”
Andrew stared at him, trying to force the words into meaning.
No immediate danger, only a cold.
Beside him, Frances exhaled. It was so quiet he might have missed it had he not felt the movement of her shoulder near his arm.
“She will be well?” she asked.
Dr. Meredith’s face softened. “I believe so, Your Grace. She has given you a fright, that is all.”
A fright.
Andrew almost laughed at the inadequacy of it.
The physician left the medicine and repeated his instructions twice, once to Mrs. Carter and once to Frances, who listened with fierce attention. Andrew heard the words, but distantly. He watched the baby instead. She lay in the nurse’s arms now, exhausted from crying, with her face still flushed but quieter. Her mouth trembled in sleep.
When Dr. Meredith at last departed, the room eased by degrees. The maids moved more softly. Mrs. Carter took control of the basin and linen. The nurse settled into the chair with the baby tucked securely against her.
Andrew remained standing. He could not quite convince himself to leave. Frances stood beside him for a long moment. Neither of them spoke. The quarrel from earlier seemed to belong to another life, another house, another pair of people who had not stood together listening for the shape of a child’s breathing.
Frances looked at him then. Her face was tired, and her hair was slipping further from its pins. Her eyes were shadowed with fear and relief. She looked nothing like the composed duchess who had faced Lady Ashford across a tea tray. She looked like a woman who had been frightened for a child.
Andrew’s throat tightened.
“I lost my head,” he said, the confession rough and unwilling.
Frances’ gaze dropped briefly to his hands. They were steady now.
