This Duchess of Mine(108)
“If only I had six months!” Withering cried, wringing his hands.
“Might you perhaps gather some notes in case we decide to try this remedy?” Elijah said to the doctor.
Withering looked at him blindly. “I wish you had not found your way to my chambers!”
“We wouldn’t have,” Jemma said, “but Elijah is as well-known to the poor in Spitalfields as you are.”
“Doctor, will you give us a moment alone?” Elijah asked.
“I’ll write it down, but I don’t approve; I don’t approve!” The doctor trotted from the room, still wringing his hands.
“You’re determined, aren’t you?” Elijah asked Jemma.
She looked up at him. “It’s your only chance.”
“What if, in years hence, you come to doubt your actions?”
She was so frustrated that she actually reached out and tried to shake him, except that he was so large as to be unshakable. “We’re both in this marriage, Elijah! You and I are both here. I will be with you. You don’t have to make all the decisions yourself. Please!”
“It seems to me that you are making this decision.”
“Rule number three of marriage,” she said, “is never to allow an ocean to come between us again. Death is a great deal wider than the English Channel, Elijah. I am fighting for that. For that rule.”
His face eased. “I know.”
“You may die tonight,” she continued steadily. “But I will be with you. And if you die, I will live knowing that we tried every single remedy we could to steady your heart and to give you more time on this earth.”
They just held each other until Withering came back in the room. And they left with a scrawled sheet of paper and five small vials containing a boiled solution of Dead Men’s Bells.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jemma moved through the next hours as if she were in a dream. Fowle had a meal waiting, so they ate. She felt curiously observant. The fish tasted of the sea. There were pickled peaches that tickled her tongue with the memory of summer.
Her lips kept parting, as if she had something to say to Elijah, and then closing again, stiffly, the words unsaid.
At last the meal was finished. She heard Elijah telling Fowle, as if from a long way off, that they would retire early. And then he asked for a bath.
Jemma knew what he was doing. Elijah would not want to put his servants to the work of washing his dead body. He would prepare himself.
She walked upstairs and felt their decision burning fiercely in her heart.
“I believe I should drink half a vial,” Elijah said on entering her chamber following his bath. He was wearing a dressing gown, and had brought a small brandy glass with him.
“Didn’t Withering give his last patient a full vial?” They had read the doctor’s scrawled description in the carriage.
Elijah nodded.
“Then why don’t we start with a quarter vial?” Jemma suggested. “If it has no effect, you could take another quarter.”
“That seems reasonable,” Elijah agreed. He poured a quarter of the vial’s contents into the glass. The concoction looked cloudy, and seemed innocuous. Jemma found herself wishing desperately that there were more ingredients—perhaps a magic feather, or a touch of dew. It seemed preposterous to entrust one’s continued existence to a single flower.
Elijah set the glass carefully on the mantelpiece and then pulled her into his arms. “I am fortunate to have loved you.”
“We are fortunate. I am just so sorry that I—”
His hand gently covered her mouth. “We have already made our apologies for the time we lost.” Then he cupped her face, his strong fingers gentle on her cheeks, and looked into her eyes before bending his head. They spoke to each other in that last kiss. Jemma tried to give him a lifetime’s worth of love and devotion. She felt the same fierce love burning in his tender touch.
Too soon, he pulled back. “You may feel nauseated, but you will not die,” she told him.
“Because you won’t allow it?”
“I am a duchess,” she said, not even smiling.
He kissed her again, fleetingly but so sweetly that her heart would have broken except that it had turned to something strong and like stone. Wordlessly, he emptied the glass.
They sat down together to wait. Jemma kept a hand on his chest. Two or three times she began to hope, and then would feel a double beat or a missed stroke.
“I think I should take another quarter vial,” Elijah said ten minutes later. “Withering’s patient, the one who took a full vial, is described as a plump man. Unless he was very tall, I am quite likely to weigh more than he does.”