Chapter 23

… And when, dear child, are you bringing your wife to visit me? I am eager to meet her. You've been quite cryptic, but I know you. She must be fine indeed. By the way, I have the estate well in hand—stop sending so much money!

—from Josephine de Marigny, of New Orleans, Louisiana, to Peter Kent, the ninth Duke of Stanhope

On the third morning of his illness, Freddie's fever had not abated. Selina had persuaded Peter to sleep on the mattress Lu had dragged into Freddie's room their first night in the house. One of the children, it seemed, was afraid of the dark. Selina did not know which.

She thought about Lu over at Rowland House and hoped someone would have thought to leave her plenty of candles.

Thomasin would have thought of it. She hoped Thomasin had thought of it.

She'd convinced Peter to leave long enough to wash and change his clothes. When he came back, he'd brought her tea, too hot and too sweet, as she liked it.

She'd left them only when she had to. Belvoir's—she could not forget about the looming threat of Belvoir's, and the rumors that had begun to swirl about her family. Her banker had revealed that it was a woman who had investigated the ownership of the property, and Selina had cross-referenced her membership rolls and her brother's parliamentary opposition until her eyes crossed. Was it the wife of one of Nicholas's political enemies? The daughter?

She did not know.

On the afternoon of the third day, her family came: Nicholas and Daphne, Lu pale and grim between Aunt Judith and Thomasin. Selina made Daphne and Nicholas stay belowstairs—if there was contagion, she would not have them bring it to her nephews.

Lu wanted to see Freddie, and Selina thought that perhaps she wanted to see Peter as well. When they made it to Freddie's room, Lu stood in the threshold, motionless and silent.

"The doctor's seen him," Peter said. Selina's heart broke a little. It had been the only thing he'd wanted for his brother when he was a boy. It was the first thing he said to Lucinda.

Lu's throat worked, but she didn't speak. Her green eyes were wet. Peter moved suddenly toward her, as if to fold her into his arms, but she darted back from him, then fled for the stairs.

Thomasin started to move after the child, but Aunt Judith laid her hand on Thomasin's arm. "Let me."

Selina felt for a moment that what Lu needed was Thomasin's gentleness, her sweeping acceptance—but then, perhaps that wasn't it. Perhaps what Lu needed was Aunt Judith, stern and forbidding, to make her believe that everything would be all right.

Instead Thomasin went to the bed, and somehow persuaded Freddie to take a full cup of yarrow tea, when none of the rest of them had managed more than a sip or two. He slept easier after that, for hours after Lu and the Ravenscrofts had gone.

When Gabe Hope-Wallace returned, he looked at Freddie's drawn face, then briskly performed the same examination he had the day prior.

"Be patient," he said finally, flattening the tube of paper and sliding it into his pocket. "Give him time to heal."

It was hard for her to be patient, with Freddie thin and drawn in the bed, Lu belowstairs, and Peter frozen and terrified at her side. But she bit back her fear and walked Hope-Wallace to the door. He instructed her what to do if Freddie's fever were to break and told her he would come back again the next day.

She brought Peter supper on a tray, coaxed him to sit and eat. When he fell asleep with his head bent onto Freddie's sheets, she kept watch over the boy, and when Peter woke around dawn, she took herself to their bedchamber alone to write to Jean Laventille again and then, eventually, to try to sleep.

When she woke, the sun was high, and she sat bolt upright, alarm flooding her.

Why had no one woken her? She wrapped herself in her dressing gown, raking her fingers through her hair and not stopping to clean her teeth. Freddie's bedroom was a floor below the ducal chamber, and she darted down the stairs barefoot, clutching the smooth dark banister.

At the end of the hall, past the doors that opened onto Freddie's and Lu's chambers, she saw Emmie, wrapped in the embrace of Humphrey, Peter's tall, slender valet. She was crying.

Selina's fingers went nerveless. "Emmie?"

The maid and valet leapt apart. Humphrey looked the very picture of guilty alarm, but Emmie's face broke into a damp grin. "Oh, my lady—that is, Your Grace—" Tears threatened her words. "All's well! All's well with the boy."

Selina turned and pulled open the door to Freddie's chamber with still-numb hands.

Sunlight poured through the open casement window, and caught in the beam of light lay Freddie, burrowed beneath the coverlet that had earlier been tossed aside. Peter lay stretched out beside him in the big bed, fully dressed, one arm thrown across his own face, and the other hand resting on Freddie's head. At the foot of the bed, eyeing her scornfully, was the gray kitten.

Cautiously, she approached the bed. Freddie's face was thin, but no hectic spots of color burned on his cheeks. She laid a hand across his forehead, very gently.

Cool. His skin felt cool. He moved a little, his eyelashes fluttering and a cough breaking free—but less racking than it had been. As she watched, he slipped back into a deeper sleep. The corner of his mouth quirked up.

She gave a little gasping half sob, and sat down hard in the chair beside the bed. Peter stirred, then lifted his hand from Freddie's hair and sat up. His curls tumbled over his forehead.

"He's going to be all right," she whispered.

Peter's warm brown eyes—his beloved grin—

"Yes," he said.

She was lost. She couldn't break her gaze from his, couldn't stop searching his face. Relief, she saw there. Exhaustion, elation. Something else.

"Go back to sleep," she said, afraid of what she might say, afraid of what she wanted so much she could almost imagine it into being. "I'll hurry to Rowland House. I'll get Lu."

He still looked at her. She could pick out the motes of dust in the light spilling through the window.

"Thank you." His voice was thick with sleep and emotion.

She nodded a little and swiped at her eyes before she fled.

Peter left Freddie's room with one final glance at his brother. Freddie still slept, but it felt different—a deep, comfortable sleep, his breathing a little raspy but unhurried. No longer the desperate gaspiness of lungs unable to take in enough air.

Outside the door, he saw Humphrey's tall form, dressed rather absurdly in worn buckskin breeches and the formal coat that Selina had acquired for him before the nightmare of Freddie's illness had begun. Peter stifled a laugh, but it filled him, buoyant and delighted.

Humphrey jerked around, startled, and Peter had a momentary glimpse of Emmie, Selina's maid, nestled beneath Humphrey's long, bony arm, before she squeaked and darted for the stairs.

When had that happened? The bubble of mirth swelled in Peter's chest.

"Your Grace!" said Humphrey, and his voice creaked alarmingly on the words.

"Humphrey," said Peter gravely.

"Emmie—that is, Her Grace's—er—she—" Humphrey sounded strangled. "She says your brother's getting on better."

"He is."

Humphrey's head bobbed in a nervous nod. Then another. He opened his mouth and, when no words emerged, shut it again.

Peter took pity on him. "I'd like to wash and change clothes before my wife returns with my sister."

Humphrey appeared to sag with the relief of having some direction. "Of course, Your Grace. I'll get some hot water—let me go to your bedchamber—" Still speaking, he turned and made his way to the staircase, Peter following in his wake.

Freddie was going to be all right. As Peter bathed, as he let Humphrey lather and scrape away the three days' growth of whiskers on his face, the words bounced merrily through him, an India rubber ball of happiness.

Freddie was going to be all right, and Lu was coming home and he could tell her so.

He met her on his way down the stairs. Lu was coming up, her hair a wild tangle of curls, one pin sticking straight out over her ear. She met his gaze. Little white lines bracketed her mouth, and she didn't speak. She turned down the hall and made for Freddie's bedroom.

Selina was only steps behind Lu, and when Peter met her at the landing, she tilted her head after his sister. "Go," she said. "Be with them."

He hesitated, looking at her. She still looked weary. He moved toward her, cupped his hand behind her head and kissed her hard on the mouth.

"Thank you," he said when they broke away from each other. "For bringing her. Go rest. I'll come for you."

"Call me if you need anything," she said. "With Freddie or Lu or… anything."

He squeezed her shoulders once before turning toward the door Lu had disappeared behind. A part of him wanted to tow Selina behind him. She understood Lu better than he ever had. She was like Lu, vivid and ferocious, and she would know how to tell Lu everything he didn't know how to say.

But he couldn't. Somehow it seemed important that he do it himself.

He pulled open the door. Lu stood awkwardly by the side of the bed, her hands tucked into her armpits. Even from behind, he could see that her body was stiff. She wasn't crying.

He came over to her and let his hand rest on her shoulder. "He's going to be fine."

"How do you know?" It was a challenge and a demand.

He looped one of her ringlets around his finger. "We had the doctor out. Selina's friend. She says he's some kind of prodigy, cleverer than all the other medical men put together. He says Freddie's lungs are inflamed, but now that the fever's gone, he just needs to rest and get better on his own."

"He's never been sick like this before."

"I'm sorry," Peter said. "I know how hard it is to see him this way."

"What do you know?" Lu asked sharply. "What do you know about anything? You're not from here—you don't know us—not Freddie—or me—"

"Lu. Little one. It's all right."

"No," she said. "No! You made me—you made me leave him!" The words came out furious and torn.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't want you to take ill too. I wanted to protect you. Lu, I never left him alone. Not for one minute. I promise you."

His fingers cupped her thin shoulder, and she reached up and flung off his hand, her body rigid and trembling.

" I protect him. I take care of him." Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

"You do," he said. "You have done. You've done a good job, Lu."

Her small square hand—so like Morgan's—came up to cover her eyes. She sobbed, once, and then stopped on a gasp. "He's going to be all right?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes."

He folded her into his arms and this time she let him.

"I won't leave you either, Lu."

"How do you know?" she said into his chest. "How do you know ? Our mother died. Our guardian. Great-great-aunt Rosamund. Everyone left."

"I won't leave you," he said fiercely. "We're a family, Lu. Me and you and Freddie and Selina. The Ravenscrofts. That infernal kitten."

He'd been so afraid. He realized that with sudden clarity. So afraid that he couldn't make Lu trust him, that he couldn't force the Court of Chancery to make the children his. But more than that, he'd been afraid of what would happen if he did get them. If Lu trusted him. If Freddie loved him. How could someone like him deserve the keeping of two small, fragile, beloved children?

How could he keep himself from breaking them? How could he protect them from any kind of hurt?

He couldn't. He saw that now, as clearly as he saw Freddie, deeply asleep in the too-big bed. They would be hurt. They would get sick. They would be afraid.

And he would love them through it. He would sit up all night, watching the shadows on their faces change with the slow crawl of the moon. That was what mattered.

That he loved them. That he stayed.

"You can hug me back, you know," he said into Lu's tangled hair.

There was a long pause. And then, very decisively, Lu said: "No."

A laugh unspooled itself from his chest, an unfettered exclamation of delight loud enough that Freddie, in the bed, turned his head toward them and coughed.

Lu ducked under Peter's arm and sat gingerly on the bed beside Freddie. She stroked back his hair and deftly tucked his blankets around him.

He cracked open one hazel eye. "Lu," he sighed. "Finally. Thirsty." The eye closed again.

Lu didn't look up from where she stared down at her brother, but Peter could see the fat splotch a tear made in Freddie's hair. "Didn't you hear him? He needs more tea."

"I heard him. I'll ring for it."

"He'll want Peter too."

Peter blinked at her. "I'll stay. Of course I'll stay."

She angled a glance up at him through dark curly lashes. He had the distinct impression she was biting her cheek to keep her lips from curving into a smile. "Not you, you idiot. His cat."

He reached forward and pulled the stray pin out of her hair, stuffing it into his pocket. "I'm going to tell Selina to fire your fencing master if you don't rename that fuzzy monstrosity."

He was certain she was biting her cheek now. "You shouldn't have given him to us if you weren't prepared for the consequences."

He moved to the windowsill and plucked the kitten up from where it was curled in a square of afternoon sun. "Keep your claws away from my brother," he told it firmly, then deposited it on the pillow beside Freddie's head.

The kitten sniffed delicately at Freddie's face, then picked its way over his chest to curl up beneath his arm.

"He's biding his time," Lu said. "Keeping his claws sharp for you."

He brushed a hand over her mess of curls. "He's in good company then." He moved to the stack of fresh linens one of the new maids had brought earlier that morning and changed the case on the pillow beside Freddie's head for a fresh one. "For you, if you want to nap."

He felt a little foolish as he did it. She was twelve—not a small child who napped. She toyed with the embroidered corner of the pillowcase, and then looked up at him. Her bright-green eyes were suddenly, unaccountably soft.

She nodded, just once. Then she looked down at Freddie and smiled.

Peter felt his heart beating steadily against his ribs. He thought that perhaps he had done all right.

He closed the door to the room gently when he left, whistling a Spanish tune from his childhood. He had tea to fetch for Freddie. A sandwich for Lu, if she managed to stay awake for it.

And after that, he needed his wife.