“I can’t lollygag about, I’ve work to do, your work now that you’ll be locked up in there,” Molly quipped shortly, eyeing her with wary gray mistrust as she stood with her bundle. “You weren’t about to add to it, were you?”
Imogen gave her a conciliatory look. “I was going to ask if you’d send Nurse Gwen Fitzgibbon to Lord Anstruther’s room on your way to the laundry. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the North Wing and back in time.”
“Might as well,” Molly said acerbically after a moment, and Imogen was almost surprised she agreed. “Those other of us always used to envy you fourth-floor girls, you know, working up here with your betters. But now that I’ve a taste of what it’s like, I’ll never complain again.”
Imogen very much doubted that, as complaining seemed to be a particular talent of Molly’s. Though it was nice to hear that someone appreciated the stressors that came with treating the rich and demanding, not to mention living up to the impossibly high standards of conduct expected of the fourth floor.
It was, in a word, exhausting.
As Molly departed without another acid remark, Imogen turned back to the closed door, on the other side of which was a man she’d dreamed about every night for the better part of a year.
Collin Talmage. Or, as she still referred to him in her private thoughts, Cole.
She raised her hand to tap softly on the door when it was wrenched open, nearly startling her to death.
“Dr. Longhurst.” Imogen gasped at the young doctor, who did likewise, as though she’d surprised him in equal measure. She’d heard Dr. Fowler say that Albert Longhurst was the most brilliant medical mind of the century, and she heartily believed it. Imogen pitied him, though, as it seemed that Dr. Longhurst often lived within that brilliant mind, and rarely glanced out to detect the rest of the world. A young, enthusiastic man, he spoke in quick, clipped sentences, eschewing rhetoric in the extreme. At times, he left out entire words altogether.
“Nurse Pritchard. You shouldn’t be here. It’s typhus.” A lock of hair the color of hot chocolate curled against his forehead and kept falling into eyes the color of oak leaves in the late summer. Imogen very much doubted that Dr. Longhurst remembered to go to the barber very often, though his disheveled appearance didn’t decrease his attractiveness.
“Because I’ve already survived typhus, Dr. Fowler assigned me as His Grace’s personal nurse.”
“Oh.” His eyes brightened, and he swiped at his hair as though only just noticing that he’d forgotten to groom this morning. “Very well, then. Do come in.” He drew the door open wider and stepped out of her path. “You know William? He’s also survived typhus, and will be helping you care for Lord Trenwyth.”
“Of course, hello.”
“Nurse Pritchard.” William, a young, sandy-haired lad, nodded to her. “I’ll step out now, but just tug on this bellpull ’ere if you need me, and I’ll be back faster than you can say ‘bob’s yer uncle.’”
“Thank you.” Imogen barely heard a word the cockney lad said, let alone noted his departure, so intent was she on the sleeping man almost as white as the sheets tucked around his prone form.
Cole.
The spare yet expensive room disappeared as she ventured closer, afraid to blink lest the shallow rise and fall of his chest cease. “How … how is he?” She didn’t even fight to keep the catch from her voice.
“Rather dim-witted, I’m afraid, but strong as an ox and willing to help.”
It took her a moment to process that Longhurst had misunderstood her meaning. “No, not William. I mean Trenwyth.”
“Ah.” He trailed her to the bedside. “I’ll admit the prognosis isn’t good. His fever refuses to break. Tried everything.” He sighed, as though Trenwyth’s fever were being purposely recalcitrant and tiresome to his patience. “Were the duke as strong as he should be, a man in his prime, I’d give him a better chance. But malnourished as he is, and with the rest of his injuries…” He let the sentence die, as it contained words unnecessary to utter.
Imogen stared down at Trenwyth’s face as he slept in a kind of fitful, feverish torpor. Beneath thin blankets, his limbs twitched restlessly and his eyes rolled behind their lids.
She devoured the sight of him, absorbing the features she knew, and acquainting herself with the alarming changes. The grooves in his forehead and branching from his eyes had deepened more than they should in a year. His pallor accentuated the hollows beneath his strong cheekbones, turning them gaunt to the point of skeletal. But she recognized his face, his dear, familiar, beautiful face, and thanked God that he’d made it home.
To her.
Information processed slowly through the depths of her emotion and she latched on to the last thing Dr. Longhurst had said.
“The rest of his injuries?” She echoed his words in a query.
Instead of informing her of his clinical assessment, Longhurst grasped the edge of the coverlet and threw it wide, allowing her to see for herself.
“Dear. God.” Her voice broke on the exclamation.
“God had nothing to do with what happened to this man.” Even Dr. Longhurst, a colleague she knew to be rational and sensible to the point of stoic, injected an extra note of emotion into his voice at the ghastly sight of Trenwyth’s body.
“W-why?” Imogen whispered.
More bruises covered Trenwyth’s long form than unmarked flesh. His hipbones jutted against the thin white linen of the undergarment draped to grant him a modicum of modesty. He was malnourished, emaciated, and had obviously been tortured. His skin, once a hue of gold to rival the sunlit barley fields in August, now reminded her of the pale wax she had to peel from the top of an unopened bottle of Ravencroft Scotch. Though his cuts and abrasions had already been stitched and wrapped, the angriest bruises suggested he’d spent a great deal of time bound by coarse rope, indenting at his neck, his ankles and wris—.