C ymbeline did not care if her husband was infectious. Everyone around her seemed to be alarmed and worried that perhaps she might get ill, but she did not care.
As the doctor stared at the large Briarwood family congregating downstairs in the Duke of Baxter’s home, he looked as if he was facing a firing squad.
Her grandmother, the dowager duchess, smiled gently at him. As gently as anyone could when someone in the family was dying. “Doctor,” she said, “please do not worry about how we take it. You must tell us how exactly things stand.”
The physician nodded, his silvery hair shining in the morning light. “He is gravely ill,” the doctor said, “but I am not surprised. His Grace has been avoiding his precarious health for some time.”
Cymbeline tensed. “What do you mean?” she demanded.
“He was ill not long ago,” the physician said. “I warned him that if he did not rest and take care of himself, he would be risking a much larger illness. As a matter of fact, I think this one is a secondary illness to the one that he had about a month ago.”
“A month ago,” she gasped. “He was so ill a month ago?”
They had known each other but a month, truly just a few weeks, and it seemed a shock to realize that something so catastrophic could have happened to him just before they met. And he’d never once let on… Except for that note.
The doctor gave a nod. “Yes, he was ill with a fever and a cough, and I advised him to go down to the country to walk, to rest, to take in good air. But, of course, being the Duke of Baxter, he insisted that he could not go.”
“Which is my fault,” Callum’s mother said from the corner of the room.
Cymbeline’s grandmother crossed to the Dowager Duchess of Baxter and took her hand in hers.
“No, no, my dear. Your son is a particularly stubborn fellow. Not a single one of us Briarwoods could convince him, and the doctor could not either. There is no blame to be laid here. We must now simply decide how best to save him.”
Save him. Those words cut through Cymbeline like a knife. She felt the room whirl about her. “Doctor, how grave is this?”
The doctor looked at her. Without hesitating, he said, “I was not in jest when we spoke in his chamber. I do not know if His Grace will survive the night…or the next few days. The illness is severe, the fever is extreme, but more importantly, the cough is dire. His lungs are working against him and filling with fluid. We must combat that. At first, I was afraid that he was showing signs of consumption last month, but I don’t think that’s it.
I think this is pneumonia. I think that he has been going about, pushing himself far too hard since his last illness, and his body was not ready for it. He never let himself actually recover.”
“He never did, not even when he was a boy,” his mother said, tears filling her eyes.
“His father would not tolerate illness, you see. Whenever his father fell ill, well, he would ignore it. He worked through all sickness and he taught Callum to do the same. His father assured him that a little illness could never truly do him harm. But it’s not true. ”
And suddenly the Dowager Duchess of Baxter began to cry, as she realized she could lose her son as she had lost her husband, through the same sort of stubborn belief.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “What have I done? How could I let my boy be raised thinking that?”
Cymbeline’s grandmother cradled Callum’s mother in her arms. “Now, now, my dear, we must not be afraid. He shall make it. He is made of stern stuff.”
“Indeed,” Cymbeline declared, even as her own heart was dark with dread, for she had seen how her husband looked.
But she would not give in. She could not.
She had to fight for her husband. She had to have another chance.
And she had to make up for what she had done too.
How she had let him work himself nigh to death.
“We cannot allow Callum to think that we will let him slip from us.”
Unable to stop herself, she drew herself up and gritted, “I am going to go now, and I’m going to tell him that if he dies, I will never forgive him.”
“Well said, my dear,” her mother declared.
And her father, the one who had feared this the most, crossed to her and met her gaze. “You can do it, Cymbeline. And so can he. We will all be here willing him to live. Do not believe this is the end. Not yet.”
“Not yet,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears at her father’s words. He could have been full of anger or full of arrogance, reminding her of his warning.
But instead, he took her into his arms. “We love you. Come what may, we love you.”
“I love you too, Papa,” she whispered and before she could fall apart, she steeled her heart, turned, and charged up the stairs.
Even as tears threatened to break free, she rushed into Callum’s bedchamber, strode to the bed, climbed up on it, and grabbed him. “Wake up,” she demanded.
Callum’s eyes flickered. “Stop,” he groaned. “L-leave me.”
“Never,” she ground out. “Never.” She gripped his arms, arms that had once wrapped her up in their strength.
“Now, you listen to me, Callum Royce, Duke of Baxter. You better not die, for if you do, I will haunt your grave every day, and I will rail at you. Do you understand? I will not do whatever your mother and you did when your father died.”
His eyes darted under their lids, as if he did indeed hear her, even as he was drifting away.
Her heart wailed with fear, but she pushed herself to be harsher, to yank him back.
“Somehow, you turned your father into some sort of mythical hero, and you thought that’s how you should live.
But you’re not a mythical hero. You’re real.
And you’re mine. I will not pretend you were some sort of saint.
I shall come to your grave every day and castigate you for leaving me.
” She shook his big body as furious tears slipped down her cheeks. “Do you understand?”
But he said nothing, and she dropped to his chest, despair crashing over her. “Oh, Callum. I have made the worst mistake of my life.”
He sucked in a shuddering breath and at last managed, “Marrying me?”
“No, Callum, marrying you was the greatest thing I have ever done.” She pressed her face to his shoulder, willing him to feel her love.
“The worst thing I ever did was trick myself into believing that you treating yourself so poorly was you being who you are. What a lie. It is true,” she lamented, “that you are passionate and strong, and that you believe in the work that you do. That is who you are. But the rest of this? The way you abuse yourself? The way you do not sleep? The way you push yourself? And even the way you have passionately loved me at the expense of yourself? Well, I will not stand for it anymore. Do you understand? Do you understand?” she demanded.
But he said nothing, and his eyes flickered shut.
And she feared that it was all far too late and that she had let him down.
She had let the man she loved more than anything in this world down because she had let her false belief that the passions they shared, the way they had burned themselves out these last weeks, had been noble.
There was nothing noble about the way that he had scorched himself for her, for society. Not if he died, not if he was gone.
What a ridiculous girl she had been to believe that they had time. How foolish to convince herself that they had any sort of time.
One never knew.
She’d thought that she would be perfectly alright to take him for the little time she might have with him, but she never could have guessed it would be this short time. She grabbed Callum’s hand. She lifted it to her lips. “Don’t leave me, Callum. You must not leave me.”
She whispered it over and over again, as if she could convince him to stay and perhaps convince death to go.