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Maidie gave a little laugh. “I seem to be fated to make you miss parties.”
“I know. How shall I survive it, I wonder?”
“Well, I did not mean to interfere in your life,” Maidie said, a little aggrieved by this sarcasm.
“That is past praying for.”
Maidie sneezed, caught her handkerchief to her face, and announced in muffled accents, “You do not seem to me to be unduly discomposed.”
“I beg your pardon? If I heard you aright, it is obvious you have no notion of the life I led before you thrust yourself into it.”
“Then go back to that life! I am sure I have no wish to prevent you.”
“It may have escaped your notice, but at this precise moment that is exactly what you are doing.”
Maidie sniffed back threatening tears. Her headache had assumed vast proportions. She put up her fingers to her temples, and kneaded at them. “Had I known you had the intention of coming with me,” she managed to say, “I would have told you not to trouble. I could quite well have gone on my own.”
“In this state? I do not think so.”
Another fit of sneezing prevented her from making any immediate reply. It so much exhausted her she was only able afterwards to groan, sinking her aching head against the squabs.
“You will do better not to talk,” Delagarde advised. “We will be at Charles Street in a moment.”
“It’s well for you to say that,” Maidie returned, making a valiant effort to sit up straight again, “after you have succeeded in making me feel guilty. It is not my fault I have caught a cold.”
Delagarde pushed her back. “For God’s sake, lie back and rest! And you are palpably to blame. You were bound to catch a cold if you hung about your duenna’s bedside.”
Maidie sniffed, and clapped the handkerchief to her nose again, retorting in muffled accents, “I suppose you would have had me leave poor Worm to fend for herself?”
Delagarde was silenced. He could not think why he was behaving in this fashion. He was as sulky as a schoolboy, and all for no reason at all. Of course it was not Maidie’s fault she had caught cold. Nor was it troublesome to him to come with her—in fact, he had offered to do so the moment his great-aunt had expressed, very mildly, a slight disappointment in having to leave just then. What should take him to carp at the poor girl?
To his relief, the carriage began to slow down, and he saw they were negotiating the turn into Charles Street. In a moment, the horses had drawn up outside his house. He did not wait for the steps to be let down, but jumped out as the door opened and turned to assist Maidie.
She seemed to have difficulty in getting to her feet. But as he reached in to help her, she struck his hands away. “I can manage, thank you.”
He stepped back, a flame of anger shooting through him. He watched her struggle up, holding fast to the doorframes at either side. She wavered a little, caught his glance, and reached out blindly. “I think I am going to…”
Delagarde leapt forward as her eyes rolled shut, and she collapsed into his ready embrace.
Maidie had not quite lost consciousness and, as she felt herself lifted, she dragged her eyes open again. She focused on the odd angle of Delagarde’s face.
“You n-need not c-carry me. I am sure I can very well w-walk.”
“You may as well save your breath,” he said, moving swiftly up the steps and into the house. “Lowick, send someone up to warn Miss Wormley!”
Maidie subsided somewhat thankfully, and rested her head against his convenient shoulder. In her current state, for a blissful few moments, it felt like the most comfortable position in the world. But all too soon the journey was ending, and she was released to the ground and made to sit upon a chair while the Worm and Trixie hastily prepared her bed, clucking the while.
Realising Delagarde’s supporting arm was still around her, Maidie roused herself to try and thank him.
“Be still! You can talk again when you are comfortably between sheets.”
Maidie was indeed still so faint with the sudden onset of fever she hardly noticed him leave, and was only half aware as the new muslin gown of leaf green, put on for the first time that night, was removed and she was put to bed. But after some minutes of rest upon the softness of her banked pillows, she began to revive a little, and was able to open her eyes and give an account of herself to the Worm.
“To think it is my fault you are laid low!” mourned this worthy, shedding tears even as she bustled Trixie into turning the bedchamber into a sick-room, with a plethora of cordials and comforts collected from her own chamber next door.
“Don’t fret, Worm. Lord Delagarde says I was bound to catch it if I hung about you, so it is quite my own fault.”
But this Miss Wormley would by no means allow, and she continued to upbraid herself at each of Maidie’s intermittent sneezing fits, until the unexpected re-entrance into the room of Lord Delagarde himself.
