Lord Benedict had been in a rage all night. Yelling at the steward, the doorman, the poor maid sent up to clean, and his son—though the latter was in the next room being tended by a doctor. Lord Benedict yelled at him too.
Clement, woozy and unsteady, rose with daybreak to find his father slumped on the chaise lounge. The exhausted doctor, packing his portable apothecary away, looked up and put a finger to his lips and waved Clement back to his room.
Seeing his father was still alive, Clement nodded and went to his bed. He’d had a dream that his father had been stabbed through the heart with a stake and thrown into a raging river. Silly, really, he knew, but anxiety ravaged his nerves and set fire to his skin. He’d needed to check.
‘Now then,’ the doctor said as he came in. ‘That bump o
