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Violet tended to Darius for another day while his fever dissipated, and his sores healed. She presumed, to her relief, that the family had done as she asked, because no one appeared in Darius’s sick chamber.

She ate the remaining ginger biscuits and some of the bread and cheese.

She wished she had a thinned broth for Darius, but she didn’t.

Nor did she want to leave his bedside to make it.

His health was improving dramatically but still too precarious to leave him unattended.

She dampened some of the bread until it was easy to digest and fed that to him instead.

Darius slept for most of the day after they’d eaten, awakening only once when she’d cleaned his sores again. He grimaced and moaned beneath her as she worked.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “Think of someone you love. Or loathe. This George perhaps.”

His eyes flew open again at her words, and he used the strength he’d been steadily gaining all day to rip himself away from her. “I beg your pardon,” he said, and Violet squelched her smile.

“I wonder if you and Alistair have any idea how alike you are. But then, how would you?”

“You are fond of him. My brother.”

“I am.” I am. “He is not who others presume him to be.”

Darius snorted. “Most of us are not,” he said as Violet brought the last of the willow bark and laudanum tea over, fighting the sudden spinning of her own head while she did.

“Here,” she said. “Drink this. I’m sorry it’s cold.”

It was a heavier dose of willow bark and laudanum than she’d given him before, but she wanted him to sleep through the rest of her work to clean his wounds. And, if they were both lucky, through the night.

His sores were healing, the gray membrane in his mouth had receded, and his fever had broken. He was likely no longer contagious, and another symptom-free day would make that a certainty. Her job was nearly done, and anyone could continue his care if he was no longer contagious.

Which was just as well because she could feel the weakness coming on. Her face was flushed, and her fingers trembled as she fed him the last of the cold tea.

As soon as he was asleep, she made her way back to her own room and rooted around for a piece of paper in which to leave orders for Alistair and anyone else who thought to enter her confines:

Darius is well and should be able to receive visitors on the morrow.

I am not well. Do not to enter my room under any circumstances, except once to open the window.

Do not call for the bloodletting surgeon.

If I’ve not recovered in a few days, call on the midwife to provide care. (Jasper the footman’s sister.)

Should anyone be foolhardy enough to enter this room other than the midwife, they must band linen across their nose and mouth and stand near the window.

And wash your hands!

With lye!

This part she underlined twice.

Satisfied, she positioned the note at the entrance to her room, and then, to be safe, she penned a second and placed it on her bedside table.

She considered a third that might be slipped under Alistair’s door, or better yet the Marquess’s, but she didn’t know which bedchamber was which, and she felt her strength receding quickly.

She drank down her own tincture of laudanum and willow bark, without the benefit of having steeped it in tea, and shook her head at the bitter, revolting flavor. And then she quickly washed herself in the basin left out for her and took to bed.

Her eyelids drifted closed, but she didn’t sleep immediately. Her hands were raw and red from the lye, and her back and thigh muscles protested every movement she made. Her feet ached, her head hurt, and her stomach curdled with the disgusting willow bark and laudanum mixture she’d drunk.

She could feel the illness roaring toward her like a steam engine, but she was proud of what she’d done. Darius would survive; no others except herself in the house were infected. The diphtheria was unlikely to spread beyond her if they followed her instructions.

She felt the burden inside her shift; the one she’d been carrying around since the evening her brother died.

Alistair would have his brother; he’d not feel that terrible pain she’d felt when James passed, nor the guilt that had driven her these last three years.

She’d done now what she couldn’t do then.

She’d trained hard for this moment, and she’d succeeded.

“Rest,” she murmured softly to herself. “And perhaps the world will look brighter tomorrow.”

Her eyelids finally drooped closed. She couldn’t remember having ever been so tired in her life. She felt truly dead on her feet, an expression she’d heard a million times over but hadn’t registered its true meaning until now. She wasn’t even on her feet, and she still felt dead.

Alistair awoke to the sound of footsteps running down the hall. He, his family, and the staff had done as Violet asked and spent the last twenty-four hours in their rooms, each fortified with bread and cheese and drinking water.

The sparsity of rations was nothing to Alistair, but he imagined it was the hardest living the Marquess had ever experienced. Alistair had been shocked his father had agreed to the isolation at all.

Violet was right .

She’d known what his father would do, while he, who had presumably known the man all his life, had not.

He dressed quickly and flung open the door to find Jenkins outside it. “What is it?” he asked. “Darius?”

“No,” the maid shook her head and shoved the note at him. He read it quickly. Darius was recovering. It was Violet who was ill.

He rushed to his mother’s bedchamber and knocked furiously on the door.

“Mother!” he called. “Darius has woken.”

Jenkins, meanwhile, did the same on his father’s and did not seem at all surprised when both his parents emerged moments later from his father’s bedchamber.

“That is not isolation,” Alistair all but growled at them, to which his father only arched his eyebrow while a faint blush colored his mother’s cheeks.

“We’re married,” she said. “We isolate together. Now come and see your brother with me.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I need the footman. The one who supplied Miss Goodwin. Where is he?”

“Jasper, my lord,” Jenkins said.

“Jasper?” his mother asked. “Whatever for? What is going on?’

“Violet’s ill. She needs the footman’s sister.” Alistair tried and failed to keep his voice level. “Now!”