Page 99 of Again, Scoundrel

“Rest,” she murmured softly to herself. “And perhaps the world will look brighter tomorrow.”

Her eyelids finally drooped closed. She couldn’t remember having ever been so tired in her life. She felt truly dead on her feet, an expression she’d heard a million times over but hadn’t registered its true meaning until now. She wasn’t even on her feet, and she still felt dead.

Alistair awoke to the sound of footsteps running down the hall. He, his family, and the staff had done as Violet asked and spent the last twenty-four hours in their rooms, each fortified with bread and cheese and drinking water.

The sparsity of rations was nothing to Alistair, but he imagined it was the hardest living the Marquess had ever experienced. Alistair had been shocked his father had agreed to the isolation at all.

Violet was right.

She’d known what his father would do, while he, who had presumably known the man all his life, had not.

He dressed quickly and flung open the door to find Jenkins outside it. “What is it?” he asked. “Darius?”

“No,” the maid shook her head and shoved the note at him. He read it quickly. Darius was recovering. It was Violet who was ill.

He rushed to his mother’s bedchamber and knocked furiously on the door.

“Mother!” he called. “Darius has woken.”

Jenkins, meanwhile, did the same on his father’s and did not seem at all surprised when both his parents emerged moments later from his father’s bedchamber.

“That is not isolation,” Alistair all but growled at them, to which his father only arched his eyebrow while a faint blush colored his mother’s cheeks.

“We’re married,” she said. “We isolate together. Now come and see your brother with me.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I need the footman. The one who supplied Miss Goodwin. Where is he?”

“Jasper, my lord,” Jenkins said.

“Jasper?” his mother asked. “Whatever for? What is going on?’

“Violet’s ill. She needs the footman’s sister.” Alistair tried and failed to keep his voice level. “Now!”

Chapter

39

Violet awoke some hours later hot and restless and tangled in the linens and blankets from her bed. Her body and hair were covered in a slick of sweat that made her night clothes damp and uncomfortably clingy.

She twisted and turned in their confines, unsure where she was or why. She felt confused and hot. So very hot that her body burned in the sheets as she drifted back to sleep again.

When she awoke next, she was shivering, her teeth shaking from the cold. She curled into a small, tight ball, trying to keep herself warm. Her head felt untethered, as if her thoughts had to travel great distances to arrive at the forefront of her mind, and even then, they were muddled and unclear.

She tried to sit up in bed but found she could not. When she shifted, the world careened in a dizzying spin that made her nauseous. She lay back down, her teeth chattering, and stared at a single spot on the ceiling. She thought if perhaps she kept her head perfectly straight and her gaze focused on that one spot, she could keep her mind clear.

She dozed in and out of fever fits instead, miserable and afraid for the rest of the night. At some point she lost the thread to reality entirely and couldn’t understand where she was or how she’d gotten there. Or why she was so, so cold.

Eventually, she heard the door open and felt a cool breeze on her hot face, as if someone had cracked the window. She didn’t know or care who was in her room, as long as they could help her.

Violet opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find the strength to do it. All she could do was let out a low, soft moan. And then she heard the door close again and knew she’d failed. She was alone once more.

She closed her eyes and fell back into the delirium that was trying to overtake her.

Alistair opened the window and wrapped his face in linen as instructed, and then he paced back and forth like a caged animal while they looked for Jasper. He could barely drag his eyes away from Violet, sick in the bed. Her skin was sallow and pale, and her forehead sweaty with fever.

He longed to touch her, but he wouldn’t. He would follow her instructions; he would find the midwife. He would see her back to health. And then, damn it all to infernal hell, he would tell her that he loved her.

He’d nearly lost his brother with too much left unsaid between them. He would not make that same mistake with Violet.