Marquesses at the Masquerade(111)

Lucy put her hand against Amanda’s forehead. “No sign of fever. Your eyes lack the characteristic shine of one battling influenza.” She aimed a glower at the marquess. “Amanda has very likely caught a spring cold or taken some blooming flower into dislike. Come upstairs, and we’ll cosset you with willow bark tea, lemon drops, and card games.”

“I’ve sent for the physician,” the marquess said, joining Lucy and her charges on the stair.

“I don’t want to see a doctor,” Amanda retorted. “I have a cold. You heard Miss Fletcher, Papa.”

“A cold or a hay fever,” Lucy said. “Neither one should inconvenience you for more than a few days. Sylvie, you will write a story to amuse your sister during her convalescence. Your lordship will inform the physician that his services are not needed, and I will see the patient settled in her bed.”

Lucy put an arm around Amanda’s shoulders—the girl was growing so tall—and spared his lordship a quelling glance.

Steady on, sir. We’ve dealt with this before.

Sylvie had come down with chicken pox a month after Lucy joined the household, and Amanda had had colds in both spring and fall. Illnesses happened, and with good care and luck, most children recovered. The blow to a parent’s confidence likely did permanent injury.

Lord Tyne paused at the top of the steps. “I don’t see the harm in having Dr. Garner drop around—”

“Today is the Sabbath,” Lucy said. “Leave the poor man one day of peace. Amanda has a sniffle, possibly a cold. She has no serious injury, no signs of infection, no fever. She will be well in no time.”

Lucy continued with Amanda into the girl’s bedroom, leaving Tyne and Sylvie holding hands at the end of the corridor. The picture they made, father and daughter, equally worried, equally brave, made Lucy’s heart ache, but what they needed was her calm and good sense.

So, calm and sensible she would be.

“Are you truly ill, Amanda?” Lucy asked when the door was closed. The first time Amanda’s courses had befallen her, she’d been practicing duets at the home of a cousin. Because Lucy had instructed the girl regarding contingencies, Amanda had known to plead a megrim and always have cloths in her reticule. She’d been returned posthaste to Lucy’s care.

Lord Tyne had paced outside his daughter’s bedroom for nearly an hour before Lucy had been able to explain the situation to him. His reaction had been relief rather than embarrassment. He’d observed that the late marchioness had been known to use the poppy on occasion to ease the same indisposition.

That conversation had given Lucy the first hint that his lordship not only worried for his children, he also loved them—desperately.

“I’m sick,” Amanda said. “A cold, as you say. My head aches, my throat itches, and I sneezed three times in a row.”

“Is that what had your papa summoning the physician?”

“Yes, but how can one not sneeze?”

“Into bed with you. Prepare to be spoiled and pampered out of your sneezes. We’ll get you a pile of old handkerchiefs, because they are the softest, and some peppermint tea to help clear your head.”

Amanda yawned. “Do I have to take the willow bark tea too?”

“That will ease your headache and any soreness of your limbs,” Lucy said, starting on the hooks at the back of Amanda’s dress. “Change into your nightgown, and I’ll be back to redo your braids more loosely.”

“Papa is worried.” Amanda sounded more forlorn than anxious. “Will you stay with me? He’ll fret, and then Sylvie will have nightmares, and it will all be my fault, because I sneezed.”

Lucy hugged the girl. “Nobody can help sneezing, and of course I will stay with you.” She kept the embrace brief, because Amanda had also inherited a certain dignity from her father.

Amanda hugged her back. “You won’t leave us, will you?”

Oh, dear. Lucy stepped away. “I beg your pardon?”

“That man who called on you yesterday, the friend from your girlhood. Mr. Drummond told Cook that your caller is a widower living in an exotic land, and he might be trying to entice you away from us. I shouldn’t like that, and Sylvie—”

“Will have nightmares,” Lucy said. “All children have nightmares, Amanda, but nobody has offered me a post in a far-off land, so we needn’t discuss this.”

“Good.”

Lucy fetched the book of Norse fairy tales and read to Amanda until the child dozed off. The evening was spent in the same manner, with a break to marvel over Sylvie’s tale of Her Grace of Dumpwhistle’s public altercation with Mr. Hamchop-who-doesn’t-like-anybody. Several times, Lucy heard Amanda’s bedroom door opening and closing. She didn’t have to look up to know Lord Tyne was peeking in on his daughter—and fretting.

Lucy fell asleep in the chair beside Amanda’s bed, the book of fairy tales in her lap. When Monday morning came, Lucy was in her own bed, with only a vague notion of how she’d arrived there.

She’d been carried in a pair of strong arms, laid gently on the mattress. Her slippers had been eased off, then she’d been covered with not one but two quilts. The fairy tales were on her bedside table, and her slippers were by the side of the bed.

She recalled a soft kiss to her forehead, and she recalled—with embarrassing clarity—returning that kiss with a desperately heartfelt embrace that she’d never wanted to end.