Page 13 of A Virgin for the Rakish Duke (Romancing a Rake #3)
He looked around wildly. Hyde Park was no use at all, even if a doctor happened by. No, Harley Street was the answer. The first physician’s door he came to.
Jeremy swept Harriet off her feet and dashed for the Hyde Park Corner gate. He was dimly aware of an angry voice with a French accent calling after him. Also of Jane Sullivan, her raised voice, pitched full of question. But he didn't slow.
He raced through the gate at full sprint, not stopping until he was in the middle of Park Lane. A cab driver reined his horses in with an angry oath at Jeremy. He ignored the man, tore open the door to reveal a bespectacled man with an astonished face and white hair.
Jeremy placed Harriet on the seat.
“Are you a physician?” he demanded.
“A barrister,” the man replied blankly.
Jeremy seized his lapels and propelled him from the cab before yelling upwards.
“Harley Street! And a sovereign if you don't spare the horses!”
“'Ere, what about the other gentleman?” the driver called back.
“Five sovereigns, man!” Jeremy snapped immediately, “On the oath of the Duke of Penhaligon!”
That was enough to set the reins to lashing and the horses into rapid motion.
The cab raced around in a tight U-turn before tearing up Park Lane northwards.
Harriet had begun wheezing as though every breath was an effort.
Jeremy tore at the neck of her dress to loosen it, breaking away buttons in his haste.
It did nothing to lessen her travails. The cab wove around other conveyances and then hooked right onto Oxford Street at such a speed that it almost overturned.
Harriet's eyes were fluttering, as though consciousness were leaving her. Jeremy knew nothing about medicine, but instinct told him that would not be a good thing.
“Harriet, keep your eyes open, there's a good girl. I can't have you dying on me,” he said, urgently, his own words surging in him another tide of dread.
Her green eyes, bright and feverish, latched onto his mutely. He cupped her face in his hands.
“Try and breathe. Just once. In and then out. That's it. Now again, just once. One breath at a time.”
Harriet was trying, but from the sound of her wheezing, she wasn't getting much air.
“You—you know that you are important to me, Harriet.
The Winchesters like you very much as my fiancée.
I didn't tell you why this is so important, though. It is my family, you see. My ancestors. The Penhaligons have been among the architects of this country. Each Duke has made his mark, made his name. Except me. I feel the disapproval of all those ghosts. Their disdain. But the Winchester Opera House is my chance to make my mark. It will be spectacular, a wonder of the modern world. It will be spoken of across Europe. Crowned heads will walk its halls. El Dorado. The City of Gold. Please, stay with me, Harriet.”
He was talking feverishly, desperate to keep her attention, babbling without thought.
“You wanted to know the identity of the woman whose dress you wore the other night. Her name was Lady Florence Courcy, daughter of the Earl of Pembroke. We... I... pursued her for a time. We were...” he shook his head, fiercely, “are we there yet?” he bellowed.
“Bad traffic, Your Grace! We're a hundred yards away from Cavendish Square, but I can't get no closer!”
Jeremy scooped Harriet up once again and leaped from the cab.
Holding her awkwardly with one arm, he grabbed for his purse with the other and tossed it to the driver.
It contained a great deal more than five sovereigns, but at that moment, he didn't care.
Within seconds, he was sprinting again, weaving around carts, carriages, and cabs, towards Cavendish Square and Harley Street.
A servant opened the door of the first house he knocked at, which bore a brass plate proclaiming the presence of a doctor. Jeremy barged past, demanded to know where the doctor was, and was shown into a surgery where he found the man whose name had been on the plate, Doctor Graeme March .
“She is susceptible to the venom of a bee sting,” Jeremy declared, breathlessly, “it—it happened a few minutes ago, in Hyde Park. She cannot breathe!”
Doctor March wasted no time on unnecessary exclamations. He directed Jeremy into a surgery and to put Harriet onto a chaise longue propped at one end with cushions.
“You are lucky you came to my door, young man.
Most physicians would tell you she needs to be bled to be rid of the poison.
But I happen to believe it is not the venom that is the problem, but her body's reaction to it. Some mechanism of the body that we know not of. I will treat the swelling at once, and that should ease her breathing. But it will be down to her own body to save her.”
He spoke as he flew from drawer to cabinet, producing bottles and vials, packets and mortar and pestle. Jeremy watched him in bewilderment, silently thanking God for his decision to knock at the first door in the street.
“I am a Duke, money is no object,” he put in desperately at the spots of momentary silence.
Doctor March gave him a steely-eyed glare.
“Don't talk to me about money, Your Grace. There's a life at stake, and one that I know. Another providential coincidence. I don't suppose you'd be willing to leave her with me and go and inform her brother of her predicament, would you?”