Page 35 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

She breathed steadily. Letting the words echo into silence. ‘But I can’t,’ she whispered.

A raindrop fell onto her shoulder. She looked up. Another dropped on her chin. She opened her lips as the rain fell harder, and let the raindrops fall into her mouth and dampen her face, mingling with her tears.

She kept her face turned up to the sky and her hands on the coarse stone wall, as the rain fell in earnest. She prayed it would wash away her pain.

Henry’s elbows rested on his thighs. He was sitting on an upturned bucket near his brother’s narrow bed. While his mother was sitting in the only chair, close enough that she might hold William’s hand. William lay unmoving and silent. The only sound in the room was his breathing.

Henry reached out and held his youngest brother’s hand. William was burning up. He had lain in a stupor ever since Henry and his mother had arrived, exhausted by his battle with the fever. He had not even opened his eyes. He shivered, even though his skin bore the heat of a poker in a red-hot fire.

This, was not right.

Henry’s chest hurt from the lump of pain in his throat that longed to scream out his anger and frustration. It was torture sitting here and watching his little brother suffer when there was nothing he might do.

The doctor told them on their arrival three hours ago that William was no longer well enough to be moved.

He had said the fever could yet increase and so it was better to let William remain at the school to ride the fever out.

But fever was not always a journey that was passed through, sometimes it claimed its rider.

Henry shook his head – William could not die.

The words of denial breathed through Henry over and over as he saw a hundred images of William in his thoughts, of him playing, laughing, smiling at Henry as Henry told him a story of his own antics.

William was thirteen. They were not close because of the gap in their ages, but William looked up to Henry as all his younger brothers did.

Responsibility hung like a heavy weight from Henry’s shoulders. He had been battling with a need to become responsible, but here there was no battle nor choice; it gripped him about the neck, and its grip was tightening, closing off his throat so he could not breathe.

William had been playing a reckless prank.

He was climbing up to one of his masters’ rooms to fulfil some dare and fallen.

Apparently, the school master thought him well but two days after the fall, after he had been shut into a room in isolation for punishment, they discovered him collapsed with a fever.

There were cuts on the soles of William’s feet where the doctor bled him to release the bad humours in his blood – whatever that meant.

Henry looked at his mother. ‘Mama, shall I have someone find you a meal? You look pale, you must be hungry.’

‘No, I could not stomach food, Henry.’ She looked towards William. ‘I just wish you would open your eyes, William. Speak to me and I shall be happy.’

Henry prayed for that too. A part of him wanted to shake William, and yell at him, wake up!

His brother’s cheeks held red roses, where the fever had bloomed so high, and his skin glistened with sweat, even as he shivered.

Henry squeezed William’s hand, silently reminding him he was there, and telling him not to be afraid. The sense of responsibility for his brother, and his mother, clinging.

Only days ago, he had made the most painful decision of his life, to let Susan go.

He had praised himself for doing so, for being so damned responsible and caring that he would crack his own heart.

The whole thing, the whole sense of his growth from a careless youth to a caring man who knew how to love, paled to a watery bland shade in this room.

This was responsibility, he had to bring William through this, but how?

It was half past the hour of ten when the doctor next came to the room. It was dark outside. Henry had lit candles a couple of hours before.

He stood up, moving out of the way, so the physician might feel William’s forehead.

‘He is no better. ’

The man was stating the bloody obvious. Henry’s teeth gritted against sharing those words, as he stared down at William.

How could William be both pale and flushed? But he was. He was an odd colour. He did not look well at all – and he had still not opened his eyes.

The doctor looked at Henry. ‘I would suggest you send for the Earl of Barrington.’

A frown clasped at Henry’s brow. No…

The man would only propose sending for Henry’s father if he thought there was little hope.

No. No!

The doctor reached for William’s wrist. ‘His pulse is very weak.’

No! The denial screamed through Henry as he looked at his mother, who stared at William. She was white.

He went to her and lay his hands on her shoulders, offering comfort. She leaned back against him slightly, her head resting against his stomach.

Emotion and the weight of responsibility coiled tighter around him like a twisting, spiralling python.

‘I’ll write a note now,’ Henry said in a low voice that ran over gravel in his throat, ‘and I’ll send my groom back to fetch Papa.’

His mother held one of his hands and looked up at him. ‘Thank you, I am glad you are here.’

He smiled, but he could not answer. The snake, with its weight of emotion, had wrapped about his neck.

She squeezed his hand a little, then let go of him and looked back at William.

When Henry left the room every muscle in his body stiffened with the desire to fight this .

No. He refused the doctor’s judgement. Nothing ill would befall William. It would not. It could not.

He found the Matron who administered the hall William slept in. ‘Have you a quill, ink and paper? I need to send word home to my father.’

‘William is not improving?’

The words bit into Henry’s chest. He did not answer, he refused to face the reality of the situation. Yet it was right that his father came. His father should be here.

He scribbled the note with a shaky hand. It was brief.

Papa, William is too ill to be moved. Please come immediately.

Henry sealed it quickly and walked downstairs to find his groom.

When he handed the letter over he gripped the groom’s shoulder.

‘This is extremely urgent, do not delay at all. Deliver it to my father as quickly as you can. He will be at home, in the town house. Hurry, please, and have him come back with you at once.’

The man bowed briefly then hurried away.

Henry turned back towards the school building. The pain in his throat which longed to shout or cry had become agony.