Roses and Flames

Chapter 34

Especially if it was one that was likely to inflict harm or cure itself, no matter what he might do. But he was concerned that you would be frightened by the extent of his illness.

Ambrose made a huffing noise, as though diminishing the Duke’s concern. “The Duke should not be wasting the energy. You will care for him and he will be fine.”

At least for the moment, she had forgotten that she was angry with Patrick. She needed his help. And she was looking at him with the worship full confidence she had held when he was her hero and she was a troublesome little pest. If he had acted on his base desires to do away with the deal, she would discover it. She would look once into his eyes and would know, and she would never look at him like this again. If he also shared thorns duplicity, that man would lose her trust as well. The punishment was deserved. But some things were too cruel to be just.

He gave her a solid nod. “He will be fine.”

She cast a worried glance down the hall to the sick room. “Would it help, if I sat with him for sometime?”

Patrick shrugged. “It would not hurt. If it gives you comfort to do so, then I have no objection.” Not as a physician, at least. He was properly envious of any man will walk to an Angel at his bedside. “If he’s asleep, do not wake him, but if he awakes on his own, do not allow him to become excited.”

 She turned from him and hurried towards the room that held her by throat, eager to tend to him. Her father cast a worried glance after her.

“She will be fine,” he assured the man again. “But you must keep your distance. If you feel any symptoms of the illness, notice them in others. Notify segregate the affected persons to this floor of the house.”

“Is it really so serious sickness, then?” Thorne was worried for his daughter’s future and the possible into his carefully constructed plans.

“So bad enough so that I would not wish it on any otherwise healthy man. Chances are excellent he will recover.”

“But a full recovery…” Thorne gave him another look which was worried. “I have heard of men who have had this difficulty. And they lived, of course but they were there were consequences.”

 Patrick noted, for he could not lie when they confronted with the fact. But for now, their differences where mood compared to the reassurance he owed this man on the health of his guest. “We will not know the problems until much later. It is why I insist on the quarantine and not upsetting the patient. He’s already brooding on the possible outcome. And he should not, until he stronger.”

Thorne nodded in agreement. “You are right in this. Better that we let Ambrose keep his spirits up than to have a ring or worried faces by his bedside.”

“Very good. Now go,” Patrick said, as gently as possible. “We will send word if there is a change. But it will do him no good if you’re sick and as well. Trust us. Trust me. he shall have the best possible care.”

 “And about before?” Thorn gave him another worried look.

“Now is not the time to continue that particular discussion,” Patrick said, fighting the rage and disgust that was there and still boiled beneath his professional,.

“If you are alone with Ambrosia and she should learn…” Thorne was hardening again, trying to regain control. His tone was both warning and threat. Although what he had left to threaten with, Patrick was not so sure.

“At the moment, the past is the last thing I wish to speak of. I have a patient, Sir, and you have a guest who is ill. We must do what is best for him. There is nothing more between us than that.”

“And Ambrosia?” He asked again. “Do you want what is best for her as well?”

“I fear we disagree on what that might be,” Patrick said. “For I would not lie to her, as you did to me. But neither will I dredge up the past, to win her. I will not speak on it.” Still Thorne hovered, as though he expected Patrick’s betrayal before he could reach the second floor landing. “You have my word,” Patrick added, his jaw clenching, “as the son of the late Duke of Mayburry.”

The oath was foreign to him. But he felt the weight of it as it left his lips. Family honour. How strange to have founded, after all this time.

“Now go.”

Without another word, Thorne turned and went down the stairs.

The Duke looked terrible. Ambrose could see why he wanted to protect her from the truth. She had dealt with disease in children, but in a grown man it looked far worse. If she had been the sort of weak woman he expected, she would have been shocked by the extent of swelling and burst into sympathetic tears. She would have upset herself and made it more difficult for everything and everyone involved. Instead, she sat in a chair at the bedside and gathered his limp hand into her own. He slept on out aware of her presence.

Oh, Samuel, what am I going to do with you? Although she had not wanted to admit it, this engagement was a mistake. She should have never yielded to father’s insistence. She should have found another way. But it was quite possible that choosing Patrick instead would be exchanging a bad mistake for a worse one. In some ways, he was just as she remembered. At the commissure and she felt around him had faded. He was erratic, come one moment, shouting the next, hitting her father while he claimed to love her, offering no explanation as to why he had gone and why he found her suddenly irresistible once she belonged to another. She needed time to think and it appeared that she would have at least a week trapped with a pair of them to sort her feelings. She gave Samuel’s hand a good squeeze, but he barely stirred. For a good measure, she spawned his hot forehead with water from the basin, adjusted his covers and put her head to his chest to listen to his breathing. It was deep and regular. Patrick had been right. There was nothing that she could do about it right now.

She left the room and went out into the hall, glancing down it to the open door at the back of the house. It was a bedroom with a partner that would be a logical place for the pair of them to sit while waiting for the Duke to awake. She gave an involuntary shiver at the thought. She had been eager to be alone with Patrick a week ago, but now she was not sure how she felt full stuff still eager, apparently, for the shiver had been one of excitement. But she felt guilty as well. Or Samuel was no one but the two of them. And he was ill. It was very bad to be thinking of her own wants and needs, while he suffered. Patrick was sitting by the table by the fireplace, his medical bag at his feet, giving a text, and looking like a competent healer he was. Despite the strange way he acted towards her, he was a good man as well. She did not wish to interrupt him in his work. But really, how much study would he need to handle something so common? And was such intense concentration necessary?

“Are you trying to avoid talking to me?” She asked.

He smiled into his book at being caught. “I have been reading the same page over and over for an hour, waiting for you to return. How is the patient?”

“Still asleep.”

“Very good. I’ll look in on him later.” He closed the book and set it aside, then looked at her expectantly. What did you want her to say?

“Thank you for this,” she said, in a somber voice.

“For doing my job?” He asked.

“For doing this particular job. I’m sure it must be hard for you.”

“The Duke requested me,” Patrick said, deliberately misunderstanding her. “After making the initial visit, it makes no sense to turn the case over to another.”

“I mean because of me,” she said.

“On the contrary,” he was smiling again, “I am quite at ease in your presence, Lady Ambrosia. I think it is you who are uncomfortable.”

It was true, of course. It he was being deliberately provoking in pointing it out.

“I will manage,” she said, not allowing herself to be baited. ”And you can leave off calling me lady ambrosia. Things are difficult enough without that. His lips twitched. Very well, Ambrose. It is good that we are all here together.”

She gave a firm nod. “It will give you a chance to know your brother better. And show some sign of love for him, so that she did not feel quite foolish in insisting that they know the truth. I’m sure that once you have spent time with him…”

“that the same problem will exist between us,” Patrick finished. “He is engaged to the woman I love.”

“You are most free with that word of late,” she said.

“Better late than never.” He was treating his newfound love as if it were a joke.

“But still, it is still quite different from the six years of silence and the last you claimed on your return.”

“Anything I said, was said because I wanted what was best for you,” he replied.

“And you have changed, now that I’m engaged to another?”

 “I have changed because I recently discovered that what was best for you was to be married to me.” He sounded very calm pretty sure of himself. It was really no answer at all.

“If you mean because of the business at dinner the other night, I do not believe you. You started speaking words of love a full day before that.”

He shook his head. “I came to the conclusion before then. Dinner simply confirmed it.”

“Are you implying that Samuel did something to render him self less than suitable match for me?”

Patrick laughed. “No. The brother you found for me continues to be perfect. He is not just perfect for you.”

“And you are?” She had thought so herself, until very recently.

“No man is perfect,” he said. “But I would try to be, for your sake.”

“That is not very different promises that time will meet to me when he was courting me,” Ambrose said. But his was never made her heart flutter as Patrick’s words did.

“And how is that working so far?” Patrick asked innocently. “Since he is already deemed a saint, it does not seem likely he will have to alter much. But you, Ambrose?” He smiled again. “You are most delightfully flawed. And I would not change a bit of you.”

It was just as she had thought, on the day he arrived. He was more honest than flattering. But there was so much love for her behind his words that she would rather hear criticisms from him than compliments from another.