A bad chill during the winter had left her grace with a weakness in the chest, the man gave as his opinion when he appeared in the library sometime later. Her health had always been delicate. It probably always would be.
“I would recommend a quieter life and less of the outdoors, your grace,” he said. “Perhaps a month or two at Bath partaking of the waters would effect a significant improvement in her grace’s health.”
“She coughs constantly,” the duke said. “She suffers from frequent fevers. She has lost weight. It is all the result of a severe chill that just did not go away?”
The doctor shrugged expressively. “There are certain ladies who have delicate constitutions, your grace,” he said. “Unfortunately, your wife is one of them.”
His grace dismissed the man and stood looking out through the window for a while. He should, he supposed, have insisted on sending for a more learned physician from London. But Sybil had always been adamant in her refusal to hear of any such thing.
He drummed his fingers on the windowsill and turned away. She had refused to admit him the night before. This time he did not wait after tapping at the door of her bedchamber. He let himself in, as he had early the evening before, when he had caught his brother almost in the act of making love to her.
He looked at her grace’s maid, who curtsied and withdrew to the dressing room.
“Good morning, Sybil,” he said. “Are you feeling any better?”
She had turned her head aside on the pillow at his entrance. She did not answer him.
He walked a little closer. “The fever still?” he asked, laying the backs of his fingers gently against one of her cheeks. “The doctor suggested Bath and a course of the waters. Would you like me to take you there?”
“I want nothing of you,” she said. “I am leaving with Thomas.”
“Shall I bring Pamela down for a few minutes?” he asked. “I am sure she is longing to tell you about Timothy Chamberlain’s birthday party yesterday.”
“I am too ill,” she said.
“Are you?” He smoothed back her silver-blond hair from her face. “I shall entertain our guests for today, then. You must lie quietly here and not worry. The doctor has given you some new medicine? Perhaps you will feel better by tomorrow.”
She said nothing, and he crossed the room to the door. But he paused with his hand on the knob and looked broodingly at her for a long moment.
“Would you like me to send Thomas?” he asked.
She neither turned her head toward him nor answered. He let himself quietly out of the room.
The ladies were on their way into Wollaston with Sir Hector Chesterton and Lord Brocklehurst. His grace joined some of the gentlemen for billiards. Lord Mayberry, Mr. Treadwell, and Lord Thomas Kent had gone fishing.
After luncheon, when the duke suggested a ride and picnic at the ruins, most of the guests accepted with delight. Lord Brocklehurst, though, with Sir Hector, expressed his intention of remaining at the house, since he had been invited to call upon Sir Cecil Hayward later in the afternoon, whom they had met in Wollaston that morning.
Before leaving for the stables, his grace assigned the footman Jeremy to patrol the upper corridor outside the schoolroom and to escort Miss Hamilton and Lady Pamela wherever they might choose to go during the afternoon.
And he found himself half an hour later in the midst of an encounter that he had planned to postpone until the following day.
“It seems that you and I are doomed to ride together, Adam, since everyone else is paired off,” Lord Thomas Kent said. “Perhaps it is as well. I shall probably be leaving tomorrow or the next day.”
“Alone?” his grace asked.
His brother looked across at him and smiled. “I cannot think you were serious in the suggestion you made the other day,” he said.
“I would not have made it if I had thought for one moment that you would take it seriously,” the duke said, his eyes directed forward to where Sir Philip Shaw was flirting quite openly with Lady Underwood.
“There,” Lord Thomas said. “You see what I mean? Of course I could not take it seriously, Adam. How could I take Sybil away, knowing what scandal she would be facing? She has lived a sheltered life and can have no conception of what would be in store for her. And of course, women are incurable romantics. They are never prepared for cold reality.”
“I think you left her with a large dose of cold reality the last time,” the duke said.
Lord Thomas shrugged. “Besides,” he said, “she is unwell. I would not be at all surprised to find that she is consumptive.”
His grace’s lips tightened.
“And the child, of course, must be my primary concern,” Lord Thomas said. “How could I take her from you and from this home, Adam? And how could I take Sybil and not the child? Sybil’s heart would be broken.”