Страница 17 из 282
“Thank you, Mrs. Figg,” the duke interrupted, “I shan’t be … requiring …” He was trying to struggle up out of the chair and hadn’t enough breath to talk. I walked up to him and gave him my best piercing head-matron look.
“Harold,” I said in measured tones. “I am not merely your sister-in-law.” The term gave me an odd frisson, but I ignored it. “I am your physician. If you don’t—what?” I demanded. He was staring up at me with a most peculiar expression on his face, something between surprise and amusement. “You invited me to use your Christian name, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he admitted. “But I don’t think anyone has … actually called me Harold since … I was three years old.” He did smile then, a charming smile quite his own. “The family call me Hal.”
“Hal, then,” I said, smiling back but refusing to be distracted. “You’re going to have a nice refreshing sponge bath, Hal, and then you’re going to bed.”
He laughed—though he cut it short, as he began to wheeze. He coughed a little, fist balled under his ribs, and looked uneasy, but it stopped, and he cleared his throat and glanced up at me.
“You’d think I was … three years old. Sister-in-law. Trying to send me … to bed without my tea?” He pressed himself gingerly upright, getting his feet under him. I put a hand on his chest and pushed. He hadn’t any strength in his legs and fell back into the chair, astonished and affronted. And afraid: he hadn’t realized—or at least had not admitted—his own weakness. A severe attack usually left the victim completely drained, and often with the lungs still dangerously twitchy.
“You see?” I said, tempering my tone with gentleness. “You’ve had attacks like this before, haven’t you?”
“Well … yes,” he said unwillingly, “but …”
“And how long were you in bed after the last one?”
His lips compressed.
“A week. But the fool doctor—”
I put a hand on his shoulder and he stopped—as much because he’d temporarily run short of air as because of the touch.
“You. Ca
“Then the walk from the street to the door of the house—a distance of some twenty feet—threw you straight into a full-blown status asthmaticus; have you heard that term before?”
“No,” he muttered.
“Well, now you have, and now you know what it is. And you were in bed for a week the last time? Was it as bad as this?”
His lips were a thin line and his eyes sparking. I imagined most people didn’t speak to a duke—let alone the commander of his own regiment—like this. Be good for him, I thought.
“Bloody doctor … said it was my heart.” His fist had uncurled and the fingers were slowly rubbing his chest. “Knew it wasn’t that.”
“I think you’re probably right about that,” I conceded. “Was this the same doctor who gave you smelling salts? Complete quack, if so.”
He laughed, a brief, breathless sound.
“Yes, he is.” He paused to breathe for a moment. “Though in … justice, he … he didn’t give me … salts. Got them … myself. For fainting … told you.”
“So you did.” I sat down beside him and took hold of his wrist. He let me, watching curiously. His pulse was fine; it had slowed and was thumping along very steadily.
“How long have you been subject to fainting spells?” I asked, bending to look closely into his eyes. No sign of petechial hemorrhage, no jaundice, pupils the same size …
“A long time,” he said, and pulled his wrist abruptly away. “I haven’t time to chat about my health, madam. I—”
“Claire,” I said, and put a restraining hand on his chest, smiling amiably at him. “You’re Hal, I’m Claire—and you aren’t going anywhere, Your Grace.”
“Take your hand off me!”
“I’m seriously tempted to do just that and let you fall on your face,” I told him, “but wait until Mrs. Figg finishes brewing the tincture. I don’t want you thrashing about on the floor, gasping like a landed fish, and no way of getting the hook out of your mouth.”
I did in fact take my hand off his chest, though, and, rising, I went out into the hall before he could find breath to say anything. Je
“What’s going on out there?” I asked.
“I di
“That the British army is leaving? Yes. They are. And very likely half the Loyalists in the city with them.” I knew exactly what she meant by not liking the feel of things. The air was hot and thick, buzzing with cicadas, and the leaves of the chestnut trees along the street hung limp as dishrags. But something was moving in the atmosphere. Excitement? Panic? Fear? All three, I thought.
“Had I best go to the printshop, d’ye think?” she asked, turning to me with a slight frown. “Would Marsali and the weans be safer if I fetched them here, I mean? If there was to be a riot or the like?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think so. They’re well-known Patriots. It’s the Loyalists who will be in danger, if the British army is leaving. They won’t have any protection, and the Rebels may well … do things to them. And”—a very unpleasant feeling snaked down my backbone, like a cold, slimy finger—“this is a Loyalist household.” “Without even a door to shut and bolt,” I might have added, but didn’t.
There was a loud thump from the parlor, as of a body hitting the floor, but Je
“Will it put ye in danger, then, to have him here?” she asked, sotto voce, with a tilt of her head toward the parlor. “Maybe ye’d best come to the printshop.”
I grimaced, trying to evaluate the possibilities. The notes I’d sent with Germain would delay inquiries, and I could put off anyone who did come. But that also meant I could expect no immediate help from the army, if help was needed. And it might be; someone in that hostile crowd on Fourth Street might well have heard where I’d told the chairmen to come. That hostility now showed itself in a different light.
If the Rebels in the city were about to rise and turn upon the defenseless Loyalists—and the currents I sensed begi
“Someone might just show up on your porch wi’ a keg of tar and a bag o’ feathers,” Je
“Well, that wouldn’t help His Grace’s asthma a bit,” I said, and she laughed.
“Had ye maybe better give him back to General Clinton?” she suggested. “I’ve had soldiers search my house, wi’ a wanted man hidin’ in the bottom o’ my wardrobe and my newborn bairn in his arms. I di
“It probably is.” A gunshot smacked through the heavy air, flat and dull, from somewhere near the river, and we both tensed. It wasn’t repeated, though, and after a moment I drew breath again.
“The thing is, he’s not stable. I can’t risk taking him through streets filled with dust and tree pollen and then leaving him in the care of an army surgeon, or even that quack Hebdy. Were he to have another attack and no one able to get him through it …”
Je
“Aye, ye’re right,” she said reluctantly. “And ye ca