“What’ll you be wanting for supper, then? I got a cold boiled ham, but I was thinking to make a chicken fricassee, William liking that so much.” She cast a bleak look at the hallway, where the bloody smudges on the wallpaper had now turned brown. “You think he’s coming back for his supper?” William had an official billet somewhere in the town, but frequently spent the night at the house—particularly when Mrs. Figg was making chicken fricassee.
“God knows,” I said. I hadn’t had time to contemplate the William situation, what with everything else. Might he come back, when he’d cooled down, determined to have things out with John? I’d seen a Fraser on the boil, many times, and they didn’t sulk, as a rule. They tended to take direct action, at once. I eyed Jenny speculatively; she returned the look and casually leaned her elbow on the table, chin in hand, and tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her lips. I smiled privately at her.
“Where is my nephew?” Hal asked, finally able to take note of something other than his next breath. “For that matter . . . where is my brother?”
“I don’t know,” I told him, putting my own glass on Mrs. Figg’s tray and scooping his up to add to it. “I really wasn’t lying about that. But I do expect he’ll be back soon.” I rubbed a hand over my face and smoothed my hair back as well as I could. First things first. I had a patient to tend.
“I’m sure John wants to see you as much as you want to see him. But—”
“Oh, I doubt it,” the duke said. His eyes traveled slowly over me, from bare feet to disheveled hair, and the faint look of amusement on his face deepened. “You must tell me how John . . . happened to marry you . . . when there’s time.”
“A counsel of desperation,” I said shortly. “But in the meantime we must get you to bed. Mrs. Figg, is the back bedroom—”
“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. Cannot. Breathe. Yet. On. Your. Own,” I said, separating the words for emphasis. “Listen to me, Hal. Look what’s happened this afternoon, will you? You had a fairly severe attack in the street; had that crowd on Fourth Street decided to set upon us, you would have been quite helpless—don’t argue with me, Hal, I was there.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He did the same back at me but didn’t argue.
“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.”