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“Oh, Belle, you are a miracle worker. I know that this will work. I feel it,” Heather cried hopefully.
Some hours later, neither one of Heather’s patients seemed any better. Heather sank into her chair and began to weep. Both Louise and Maurice were so pale and rarely opened their eyes, and then only when they were fitful and tossing.
What was she going to do? If this continued, they could die. They could die. Louise, who she adored as the sister she had never had. Maurice, who was friend…more than friend, not Godwin, but a man she did love.
She left Maurice’s side and went to Louise’s room, where she dismissed the maid to go for something to eat.
Heather sat beside the bed where Louise seemed to be sleeping more peacefully than usual. Heather reapplied the wet rag and whispered, “Oh, darling, my dearest friend in all the world, please, please, Louise, do get well.”
Heather was joyfully startled when at that very moment Louise’s eyes suddenly opened wide and a faint smile flickered over the woman’s face.
Heather cried out, “Louise, oh, Louise…no, no, don’t try to speak.” She picked up the bowl with the Tamarind soup and urged her, “Please, sip some more of this soup…do.” She held Louise up slightly and in position, and saw how weak the woman was as she helped her get down some of the dark potion.
Louise smiled and drifted off to sleep again, but Heather, feeling her friend’s head, was sure the fever had broken. She nearly ran to Maurice’s room and met Bunky in the hall. “Dear Bunky, I sent her ladyship’s maid to go and get something to eat. Call her back. I must attend Maurice. Louise’s fever has broken…she is better.”
“Aw, right glad I am of it. Aye…I’ll go fetch her maid to stay with her and meet ye in his lordship’s bedchamber in a few moments.”
“Yes, Bunky, yes. We need one more miracle now.”
Heather ran to Maurice’s room, but her heart sank to find his head still burning. He seemed no better, no better at all. Why was that? She and Bunky had gotten the Tamarind soup down his throat, he too should be better.
“Please God,” she prayed out loud. “Just one more miracle, please. If you spare him, I will stay, I will marry him…I will put my love for Godwin aside. Please, just don’t let Maurice die.”
Maurice was good and kind. He was a wonderful man, and he would be a superb father to her unborn child. She had been wicked to fall in love and bed a married man. What could have possessed her? This was her punishment. She was being shown very clearly how awful she had been, and how good she could be if only Maurice would not die.
“Maurice, this is my fault,” she told him as she held his hand. “You don’t want to get better. You were in a terrible state of mind and that is all my fault. I did this to you. Please, my darling, hear me. If you get well, if you try harder and you get well, I will stay. I will marry you. I promise. Maurice, hear me, get well and make me your wife. Please, Maurice, hear me.”
His body was ravaged with the swamp fever. He tossed fitfully in his bed as Heather continued to tend to him and whisper her promise.
Bunky had stopped at the doorway and sighed as he approached. “I’m sorry for it, Miss Heather, I overheard ye as I came in. I’m sorry for it. I know better than anyone else what ye have been through and how much ye want to get home, and I know ye think ye are doing the right thing, but I don’t know for certain that it is. I know that I wish we could stay on. I wanted ye to want to stay, but ye are doing it for all the wrong reasons, and that is because ye are a good woman, not because ye are wicked. I am sorry for it all and I make ye a promise that I will stand by ye always. If ye go, so do I…and if ye stay, though I don’t think it is right for ye to do so, I stay. That is the way of it.”
“Thank you, Bunky,” Heather said after a long moment. “Now help me hold his head up so I can get more of the potion down his throat.”
Heather spent the night tending to Maurice and repeating her promise to him, whispering in his ear, even telling him that she loved him.
Bunky stayed with him whenever she left the room to look in on Louise, who slept peacefully.
Bunky refused to leave Heather to catch some sleep and helped her tend to the comte as she forced the Tamarind down his throat.
During the small hours, Heather fell asleep in her chair, Bunky in his, until the morning sun’s rays filtered through the palms and into the room.
Heather woke with a start and sighed to see Bunky rubbing his eyes in the chair by the window. “Dear Bunky. Go on, get washed up and have a bite to eat below.”
“Aye, but what of ye, miss? I haven’t seen ye eat proper in days,” he answered worriedly.
“Yes, yes, if you like, you may bring me some tea and a pasty. I am hungry,” she said absently, and watched him depart.
Heather’s face went into her hands and then she drew a long breath before she approached Maurice and applied rosewater to his forehead and said, “Maurice, hear me, please, come back to me, be my husband…Maurice? I will marry you. I will marry you.”
He stirred and she cried out, “Maurice, darling…Maurice.” She realized then that his forehead was no longer burning and whispered, “You heard me, darling…you heard me.”
He choked as he tried to speak, his eyelids fluttered open and he finally got the words out, “Will…you?”
Heather dropped to his chest and sobbed. “Oh, thank God, thank God. Yes, yes, I will marry you, sweet man. All you need to do is get well. Concentrate on getting well.”
He smiled and fell asleep.
Bunky returned with a tray and suddenly Heather turned to him joyfully. “Bunky, his fever has broken. He heard me. We are staying.”
