Chapter
Thirty-Four

Raymond Allen had never worked so hard in his life.

While the others danced downstairs, the duke spent three hours with Mr. Young, alone, tending to the other man’s needs. He found that he didn’t mind the work so much, although he did wish he could be more confident about the way he was doing it.

At first, after Grace left them, it had been easy enough. Mr. Young, after all, had been asleep. So what was there to do but sit in a comfortable chair by his bedside? The duke had sat in many comfortable chairs in his lifetime, and while this one wasn’t quite as nice as the ones he had in his palatial bedroom back at his own home, it could’ve been worse.

But then Mr. Young had wakened. Despite the wounds to his arm and head, both of which had been bandaged, and despite the horror of having been…chewed upon, Mr. Young was calm and in a surprisingly chipper mood.

“You say the others are having a dance?” he asked in response to the duke’s own reply upon having been asked where Lady Grace had gone to. “How lovely.” Mr. Young closed his eyes, and a smile played around the corners of his lips as he said, “If I were down there, I think I should like to dance a Viennese waltz.”

“Who would you ask to dance it with you? Lady Katherine?”

Mr. Young opened one eye and regarded him with it. “A few days ago, I would have said yes. But now I think I would choose Lady Grace. Or possibly even Lady Elizabeth. That one looks like she might be fun and know a thing or two about dancing.”

“When you’re all better, perhaps there will be another chance, and then you can make your choice.”

“Yes, when I’m all better.” Mr. Young laughed, but it was without rancor. “As if even then there would be a choice for me, anyone who would say yes, among beautiful ladies.” Mr. Young moved his lips against each other, and the duke could see that they were very dry.

“Oh! I didn’t even think! Would you like some water?”

Mr. Young allowed as how that would be lovely.

The duke reached over to the bedside table and lifted a glass and a pitcher of water from it, filling the one from the other. He placed both back down and then he rose and, as gently as he could, raised the other man to a sitting position against the headboard. Then he held the glass to Mr. Young’s lips so that he might drink from it.

Look! he thought, as though he were someone else observing his own actions from outside his body. I’m helping someone! Oh, if only Mother could see me now—she’d see that I’m not just decorative, but that I can be useful, too.

When Mr. Young had had enough refreshment, he waved the glass away, and the duke found a napkin with which to wipe his chin. The napkin had been from a tray that had been brought up earlier, while Mr. Young was still sleeping, and it also had a bowl of soup on it and a silver spoon.

“Oh!” the duke said. “I forgot all about that, too! There’s some soup here.” He frowned. “I’m not really sure what kind, and I’m sure it’s grown cold, but if you like—”

“Perhaps in a bit,” Mr. Young said, waving a feeble hand to stop him fussing.

“All right.”

The duke reclaimed his seat, wondering: what to do, what to do…

He didn’t have to wonder for long, however, because, perhaps refreshed by the water, Mr. Young was now in a talkative mood. He told the duke story after story about his childhood, so different from the duke’s own and all of which the duke found fascinating.

Perhaps it was that, the duke’s surprising—to himself—interest in someone else’s life story that prevented him from noticing at first. But when he did, it was inescapably obvious: Mr. Young was nattering and nattering at an increasingly fast clip without ever stopping for any response from the other person, as one would normally do over the course of a conversation. And as he did so, perspiration sprang to his forehead, soon turning into rivulets of sweat coming down his face.

Mr. Young obviously had a fever and was perhaps even delirious.

What to do, what to do…

The duke leaped from his seat and commenced pacing the room in a dither.

What to do…

He could yank on one of the bell pull cords, summon a servant from the kitchen. But wasn’t everyone else at the dance, the servants, too?

He could run downstairs—the music room, he thought they said it was—but wouldn’t it take a long time to get there and back again with someone to help? And he didn’t want to leave Mr. Young alone, not for that long.

Besides, what could anyone else do? It wasn’t as though, even if he could run down there and back again, lickety-split, there was a doctor in the house for the duke to bring back with him. Nor was there a doctor anymore in the village to convey Mr. Young to. Or even a car to get him to the village if there were.

He shouldn’t have to deal with this! Someone, anyone else should! Other people took care of such things—it was what other people were there for! But then, what was the point in spoiling everyone else’s good time?

What to do…

In the end, the duke realized that there was nothing for it but for him to handle it himself. He’d volunteered for the job, after all.

First, he dampened the napkin with cool water, laying it across the feverish man’s brow. Almost immediately, Mr. Young slowed his nattering, which the duke took as a good sign. But then, having drawn closer, he noticed that the sweat must have come out of the pores of Mr. Young’s entire body, drenching the nightshirt he’d been put in earlier and even dampening the sheets below. Now the sweat seemed to have subsided, but Mr. Young couldn’t just be left there in all those damp clothes and sheets like that.

What was a duke to do?

The duke did the only things he could do. He hurried to his own bedroom, not too far down the same corridor, and ripped the sheets from the bed there. Then he raced back with them. Upon reentering Mr. Young’s room, he located another nightshirt in the wardrobe. Then he removed his own jacket, waistcoat, tie, and cuff links, loosened his collar, rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, gently shifted Mr. Young’s body around until he was successfully able to remove the wet sheets, shifted him around some more to replace the wet sheets with fresh ones, and gently removed Mr. Young’s soaked nightshirt, replacing that with a fresh one, too.

Phew!

Being so close to Mr. Young’s body like that, the duke did notice a slightly unpleasant smell coming off him, and only politeness prevented him from pinching his nose against the sudden assault of it. He supposed it must be all that sweat or the wounds even—wounds could smell, couldn’t they?

Once he’d settled Mr. Young back down, everything nice and fresh again, the duke stepped back from the bed, relieved to be away from the closeness of that smell and guilty at feeling that relief.

“There!” he said with forced bright cheer. “As good as new!”

“Thank you, my friend,” Mr. Young said, clearly feeling better now, although he did look very tired. “You’re very kind.”

The duke was moved by his words. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when anyone had referred to him as their “friend.” And “kind”? If no one else had ever called him friend, he surely never would have thought to refer to himself as kind.

“I’m feeling a bit better now,” Mr. Young said. “Perhaps some of that soup…”

The duke fussed with getting the bowl and spoon and a napkin for any stray drips. Then he filled the spoon partway and held it to the other man’s lips.

“I’m sorry it’s cold now,” he said, “but my nanny always said that a good soup could cure just about anything, so I think you’ll find…”

The duke let the sentence trail off when he realized that now he was the one who was nattering on and he had no idea how to finish the sentence. What would Mr. Young find in eating soup? That it was, in fact, soup?

“Tell me a story,” Mr. Young said.

“A story?”

“Yes, you said you had a nanny, which is no surprise. I never had one myself, and I just wondered what that must be like. Surely you must have some happy stories about that time in your life.”

Did he? The duke racked his brain for one, finally settling on a story involving his nanny and him and a pony that didn’t end too, too badly for him. Well, he supposed, he could always leave out the ending part.

So the duke told the story to Mr. Young, between feeding him mouthfuls of soup. Before the bowl was empty or the story finished, Mr. Young had fallen asleep.

The duke, careful to do so quietly, set the bowl, spoon, and napkin down on the bedside table and then settled back into his seat, keeping his friend company while he slept.

They were still like that when Fanny came in.

“I came to see how Mr. Young is doing,” she whispered.

“He was a bit restless before, feverish, too, but he seems to be a bit better now,” the duke whispered back. “He took some soup.”

“That’s nice,” Fanny said. “Mrs. Owen always says that a good bowl of soup can cure just about anything. Since I’m here, though, if I may, I might as well just…”

She gestured toward the bed with both hands, and he nodded his permission, although he wasn’t quite sure what she had in mind.

Fanny stepped right up to the bed, her nose only wrinkling slightly at the smell he’d already grown accustomed to; it surprised him to think how quickly a person could get used to changing circumstances, whether it be a foul smell or even being called upon to take care of someone else when a person—a duke, no less!—had never done such a thing before.

But as Fanny’s confident hands flew around, tucking and straightening a sheet here, plumping a pillow there, all without disturbing the sleeping patient, the duke saw that those hands were far more capable than his had been.

And he saw something else.

“Your hands!” he said. “Have you hurt yourself?”

The little maid launched into something of a speech then, a whole litany beginning with “Today, yesterday, and every day before that” and ending with something about rubbing a large block of salt through a sieve to create the household’s daily supply. In between, there were a lot of other things, about boiling water and about copper pots and even vinegar. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t followed it all because, well, it was a lot to take in. And clearly, it was a speech she’d given before.

When he didn’t immediately reply upon her completion of it, she held her hands away from her, studying their backs before offering them to him, presumably for inspection.

“Not exactly a fine lady’s hands, are they?” she said with a rueful grin.

“No,” he said honestly. “No, they are not.” Then he thought about what he’d just seen those hands do—flying all around Mr. Young, helping and never hurting—and he thought about something he’d never given any consideration to before at all: how much the life of someone like Fanny was spent taking care of other people, and how many hours spent in simple good, honest labor. “But they’re beautiful hands all the same,” he found himself adding.

Before she could respond, the footman entered. Or was he the valet, his personal valet now? No, he was back to being the footman. It was so hard to keep it all straight. Best to just think of him as Daniel.

Daniel, too, just wanted to see how Mr. Young was doing.

So the duke and Fanny filled him in, and just as they were finishing, Lady Grace entered, too.

If she was surprised to find him there in his shirtsleeves, she didn’t show it, but then she caught sight of Fanny and Daniel.

“Oh!” she said with a surprised smile. “I didn’t know there was a second party going on up here!”

There was nothing censorious in her expression or the tone with which she invested her words, but Fanny must have imagined one there, for she dipped a quick curtsy, bowing her head as she said, “I’m ever so sorry, Your Ladyship. I know I should’ve asked permission before coming up here. Only I wanted to see how Mr. Young was doing, and I didn’t want to bother anyone by asking. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, Fanny,” Lady Grace said. “Your concern does you credit.” She turned to Daniel. “I suppose you came for the same reason?”

Daniel simply nodded—rather stiffly, the duke thought, even for him. Was there something about Lady Grace that made Daniel feel particularly awkward?

No doubt deciding they were no longer needed now that Her Ladyship was there, Fanny and Daniel moved to depart the room.

“Oh, Fanny!” the duke called her back.

Fanny turned.

The duke indicated the pile of discarded laundry, including the sheets he’d removed from the bed earlier and Mr. Young’s sweat-soaked nightshirt.

“I took the sheets from my own bed to replace his,” he finished, after explaining why he’d removed them in the first place. “I hope that was all right?”

“It’s fine,” Fanny said, gathering up the heap that practically dwarfed her behind it. “I’ll be sure to get some fresh ones for your room right away.”

Then she was gone.

“You changed the sheets?” Lady Grace said, sounding amused.

“Yes, and his nightshirt, too. Oh, and I also gave him some soup.”

“How enterprising of you! And kind, too.”

He felt himself sitting straighter in his chair at her words as a rare feeling of pride came over him.

“Yes, well,” he said. Then he gave her a full report on his night of nursing, ending with, “He looks to be more peaceful now. He might even sleep through the night. I think the worst is over.”

“That’s a relief. Now, why don’t you give up your seat and let me take over.”

Peculiarly, he found himself reluctant to leave. It was rather nice feeling useful.

“I could stay…”

“Nonsense. You’ve done your part. The others are still dancing. Why don’t you join them?”

“I suppose I could. But why don’t you come with me? I really do think he’ll just sleep now.”

“I promise I will. I’ll even dance with you when I do. I just want to sit with Merry for a bit.”

“All right then, although I suppose I should put on a fresh shirt first.” He gathered up his rumpled jacket, tie, and waistcoat, and his cuff links, and headed for the door.

Once there, he turned back.

“When Mr. Young and I were talking earlier, just the two of us,” he said, “he told me the most amazing story.”

“And what was that?”

“Did you know he made his own fortune? I always thought people just inherited them. What an extraordinary man!”