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Violet cracked open Darius’s jaw and dribbled the slightest bit of the tea down his throat and then softly worked his Adam’s apple to induce a swallow reflex.

“There you go,” she said as she worked slowly and methodically to get the entirety of the tea mixture into his body without choking him. “You’re doing fine. And you’ll appreciate the laudanum once it kicks in.”

She settled him back against the pillows and opened his jaw once more to peer into his mouth and throat, using the light from the window to examine him.

Please , she thought, desperately hoping not to see the thin, gray film that she did indeed see covering his tongue.

Bloody hell!

She steeled her nerves before pulling back the linen coverlet laid across his body. Then she used a pair of shears to gently cut away his dressing gown.

She had to stifle a gasp at what she saw.

His condition was worse than she’d imagined.

His legs, feet, and chest were covered with terrible, infected sores.

They were beginning to spread to his arms as well.

Only his face remained untouched, but it was just a matter of days before he developed lesions there too.

And the worse they became infected, the more his fever would rage, and his body would waste.

A terrible cycle that would more than likely end his life.

Damnit.

The man had diphtheria. Of a certainty. It was the same illness she’d seen in her patient back in New York. That man had died, but not before infecting one of the other nurses who had cared for him. She had died too.

Violet opened the door a sliver and called to the footman. “Bring me Alistair at once,” she said to the young man. “But don’t let him come in. No one comes in.”

Alistair appeared a few moments later and announced himself with a light rapping. Violet cracked open the door again.

“Alistair,” she whispered. “It is diphtheria. A different form.”

“I can’t understand you,” he said. “What is that on your face?”

“Alistair!” Violet raised her voice as much as she dared. Darius was asleep, and she didn’t wish to disturb him. She still had to clean his sores, and she wanted him soundly snoring for that bit of business. “It’s DIPHTHERIA. Do you understand?”

“But the surgeon said—”

“He was wrong. And there’s no time to argue.

You must go to your room and stay there for a full day.

If you don’t become ill, you may come out again.

The same with the footman and anyone else who’s been in to see Darius even for a little while.

Your mother and your father. Everyone. Do you understand? ”

“They won’t do it,” Alistair said. “The surgeon said it wasn’t diphtheria.”

“They’ll do it.”

Violet let her voice go soft. She knew how much damage her next words might do but she said them anyway. “If it means keeping you safe. You’re the next heir, Alistair. They’ll do it for you.”

She could feel the tension in his body and hear the sharp intake of his breath, even through the heavy wooden door. She imagined him closing his eyes against her words, as if that would rid his ears of them.

Alistair was the heir only if Darius died. He wouldn’t want it, for so many reasons. He cared for his brother. He cared for his life at sea. He had his dreams to follow and none of them involved being shackled to the many estates and responsibilities of the Marquessate. Nor to the ton.

“And you?” Alistair asked Violet. “Who will keep you safe?”

“I will. See that it’s done, Alistair. Please.”

He nodded, and it made her heart lift momentarily to see that he trusted her.

She closed the door and hoped she hadn’t lied to him.

She’d taken every precaution she could, opening the windows, washing her hands repeatedly, wearing the linen face covering.

She hoped it would be enough to keep herself from falling ill.

She turned to Darius’s sleeping form. “It’s time to clean your wounds,” she said to the sleeping man. “And I’m very sorry in advance. This is going to hurt like the devil.”

Darius groaned and muttered and twisted in his sleep as Violet worked, tending to each infected sore.

They were legion, covering nearly the entirety of his too-skeletal frame but for his face and neck.

She worked assiduously, throughout the afternoon and into evening, the entirety of her being focused on making sure each sore was cleaned of dirt and blood and pus as thoroughly as possible.

She then applied the St. John’s Wart salve liberally and covered every sore in a clean strip of linen. By the time she was finished, Darius resembled nothing so much as one of the Egyptian mummies she’d seen at the Great Exhibition Hall.

“My apologies,” she whispered to him while she worked. “But your fever won’t quit until these infections do, so I’ve no choice in the matter. I know it hurts.”

Her work so absorbed her that she failed to notice her own exhaustion and the ache in her legs from the long journey on horseback. Nor the growl in her belly or the tremble in her fingers from her own lack of sleep and food.

She stopped only briefly to swallow a sip of tea and some ginger biscuits left outside the door by the housemaid, along with extra water, hard cheese, and bread. It was all the sustenance she’d have if the household had done as she’d asked and isolated themselves in their rooms.

She changed the cool, wet linens on Darius’s forehead, and then made him another mixture of the fever-reducing tea. She cleaned his wounds and changed the bandages covering his legs again until she was out of fresh linens.

All the while, she watched the sun move across the sky, noting the dwindling of the hours. She wondered if the vicar had arrived yet—had he knocked on the door to no answer or had they turned him away?

She wondered how Alistair was holding up.

She wondered who George was.

And she wondered what it meant that the Marquess’s voice had gone so soft when he last spoke of his son.

Finally, when Darius was sleeping soundly and the sun was low in the sky, she sat in the chair by his bedside and slept for a few hours herself.

Violet awoke to the soft glow of morning breaking the horizon line. She’d been with Darius for a full day and night. She yawned and stretched, her muscles cramped and aching. And then she shot to her feet. Darius was awake and staring at her.

“I presume,” he said, with a single eyebrow raised in exactly the same manner as his father and brother, “that we are somehow acquainted? I did wake with you in my bedchamber, after all.”

She was again astonished at how similar they looked. The same eyes from their mother, the same smile and raised eyebrow from their father.

“I’m Violet Goodwin,” she said and then added, “your nurse,” because she didn’t want Darius forming any untoward notions about what she was doing in his bedchamber. “And an acquaintance of your brother. We met at the Somerville dinner.”

“You’ll forgive me for not bowing,” he said, as if they were standing in a ballroom and not in his sickroom.

“Of course. You are looking a great deal better, my lord.”

He glanced down at his bandaged body that really did resemble a mummy. “It’s a wonder how one could tell.”

Violet suppressed her smile and moved to his bedside. She lay a strip of linen across his forehead and her hand atop it. The fever had broken.

“I’ll have a look inside your mouth now,” she said. “If you’ll please open your jaw.”

Darius stared at her for a long, incredulous moment. “I’ll do no such thing, Miss Goodwin.”

Violet found herself wishing he was unconscious again. Looking after patients who had sought out her care was one thing. Looking after a Marquess’s heir who did not seem interested in her ministrations was something else entirely.

“You’ll do it now,” she added in her most governess-like voice. “My lord.”

He frowned at her but opened his jaw for examination as requested. She peered inside and let out a sigh of relief. The gray membrane of diphtheria was receding.

“I am quite improved, I take it,” Darius said when Violet closed his mouth and smiled.

“You are. Although I’ll need to check your sores next, to be certain.”

“Not on your life. And I mean it, Miss Goodwin.”

“I need to change your dressings, my lord. Keeping them clean will keep the fever at bay.”

“No.”

Violet stared at him. “How do you think the bandages got there in the first place?”

He just raised that silly eyebrow at her. Too much like Alistair for her comfort.

It’s a family tic, she thought.

An infuriating family tic.

“Tell me, Miss Goodwin,” he said. “How is it that you’re acquainted with my brother?”

“We’re friends.”

“Are you? I wasn’t aware my brother had any friends of your persuasion.”

“And what persuasion is that?”

“Female,” Darius said shortly. “Now, if you’ll call my family, I’d like to speak with them.”

“They’re in isolation,” Violet said.

“Not any longer they’re not.”

“I’m afraid they are, my lord. As are you and I. At least until you can rise from that bed and negate my order.”

She smiled at him again, with more coolness this time. “Now, let’s see to those bandages.”