Page 74 of Against the Wind

Chapter 25

Fever could kill! The words were a shout in Kit’s mind, reminding her what a thin thread held Martin to this earth. She’d refused to leave his bedside when, shortly after they arrived at Chatsworth House, his temperature began to rise.

The next morning, Martin’s face was flushed with the fever that consumed him. He faded in and out of consciousness, restless in the huge and elaborate bed he’d been given. Bathing his sweating body with cool wet cloths and changing his bandage, Kit cared for him the best she knew. She had taken care of her sister and her mother in their last months of life, and the foreboding she experienced tending her husband was a familiar constant worry.

She kept watch by his bed should he wake and need her. When her fatigue proved too great, she sat on a chair and leaned onto the edge of the bed, resting her head on her folded arms. Occasionally he woke and looked at her as if through a haze, only to fall back into a restless sleep. In his dreams, he murmured of France and relived the night his wife Elise was killed. It pained Kit to hear him cry out for the young woman, but it told her what a horror that night had been and why he felt so responsible, why he had been so concerned for Kit’s own safety.

Tonight he rambled about the man named Oliver. “Sidmouth’s spy” he called him, and the man Brandreth, the one she knew as the Nottingham Captain. The duke had told her much of what happened and she could still scarcely believe it. All those Derbyshire men led astray by a treacherous viper.

“Must get a message to Prinny. Must do something,” he mumbled over and over.

From what she had learned, all along he had wanted to prevent the rebellion that was eventually stopped by the King’s Dragoons. She watched as he became more agitated, tossing and turning on the bed. Fearful lest his bandage come off, she drew close to soothe him, but his head rose off the pillow and his glazed eyes stared straight ahead, not seeing her.

“Kitten!”

Wiping the moisture from his fevered brow, she gently lowered his head to the pillow and took his over-warm hand between hers. “I am here, darling. I won’t leave you. I love you.”

At some level he must have heard her, because he calmed and succumbed to a deeper sleep.

If it were possible to fall more deeply in love with him, she did. It didn’t matter he was unkempt, sweat-soaked and smelled as if he long needed a bath. He was hers, and as his fever raged, the thought she could lose him caused tears to flow unimpeded.

The duke’s servants were ever gracious, looking in on her and Martin several times a day, bringing food and asking if they could help.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, child? There’s a bedchamber just next door you can use,” said an elderly servant one night, stopping to inquire of her needs and frowning at her disheveled condition.

“I will when his fever breaks,” she promised the gray-haired woman. “I don’t want to leave him until then. He is often delirious, and bathing him with the cool water you bring seems to help.”

“I am only too pleased to help the duke’s friends. There’s more water on the side table when you have need of it.”

“Thank you,” Kit said, but she kept her eyes on her husband.

Making ready to leave, the woman said, “The lad John Spencer has arrived, my lady. He brought your trunks. If you will allow it, I will bring you a change of gowns.”

“Certainly,” Kit said, grateful to be free of such duties.

“There’s a tray of food on the table, should you be hungry, and some broth for Sir Martin if you can get him to take any. You must keep up your strength, child. His Grace has been most insistent that we see to your health as well as your husband’s.”

John stopped by shortly after Kit changed gowns, concerned about Martin and agape at the grandeur of Chatsworth. “’Tis a palace, my lady. Have ye seen it all?”

“No.” She smiled. “But I can imagine the rest from the halls and rooms I saw when I first arrived.”

“Should you wish to take a walk, I will stay with Sir Martin,” the young man promised. “’Tis my duty, and he is my friend. I’ll never be far.”

“There is little to do, John, save watch him, feed him broth when he’ll take it and bathe him. I will let you know should I need your assistance.”

Too tired to keep up the conversation, after hearing of the meals John was sharing with the duke and the luxurious bedchamber he’d been assigned, she sent him away. She knew from the servants he never went far.

She refused to allow the physician to bleed Martin, telling the affronted man, one Dr. Wendell, that her husband had lost enough blood already. The next night, however, when she removed the bandage, what at first appeared to be a normal wound—though awful as one could imagine sewn-up flesh to be—had become a red swollen mass seeping pus-like liquid with a foul smell. Feeling the rising heat of Martin’s body, Kit’s concern rapidly turned into alarm.

He could die!

Panicked, she wondered if the doctor had closed the wound too soon; she recalled her father telling her of men who died of battle wounds when the surgeon in his hasty attempt to deal with too many wounded men at one time failed to properly drain an injury before stitching it up. She was no doctor, though she had cared for her sister until the end. But her efforts to save Anne had ended in her sister’s death. Would she be equally unsuccessful in trying to save Martin?

Calling for a servant, she asked for a clean sharp knife and someone knowledgeable in herbs. She would do all she could. He had to live.

A woman she’d not seen before appeared a few minutes later with John Spencer behind her.

“What has happened my lady?” John asked.