When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons #6)(33)

“I’ll be better tomorrow,” he said.

“Oh, right,” Francesca said, with all the sarcasm she could muster, which was, in truth, quite a bit.

“I will,” he insisted, restlessly shifting positions, every movement punctuated with a groan. “I’ll be fine for tomorrow.”

Something about the phrasing of his words struck Francesca as profoundly odd. “And what about the day after that?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

A harsh chuckle emerged from somewhere under the covers. “Why, then I’ll be sick as a dog again, of course.”

“Michael,” she said again, dread forcing her voice low, “what is wrong with you?”

“Haven’t you guessed?” He poked his head back out from under the sheet, and he looked so ill she wanted to cry. “I have malaria.”

“Oh, my God,” Francesca breathed, actually backing up a step. “Oh, my God.”

“First time I’ve ever heard you blaspheme,” he remarked. “Probably ought to be flattered it’s over me.”

She had no idea how he could be so flip at such a time. “Michael, I—” She reached out, then didn’t reach out, unsure of what to do.

“Don’t worry,” he said, huddling closer into himself as his body was wracked with another wave of shudders. “You can’t catch it from me.”

“I can’t?” She blinked. “I mean, of course I can’t.” And even if she could, that ought not have stopped her from nursing him. He was Michael. He was…well, it seemed difficult precisely to define what he was to her, but they had an unbreakable bond, they two, and it seemed that four years and thousands of miles had done little to diminish it.

“It’s the air,” he said in a tired voice. “You have to breathe the putrid air to catch it. It’s why they call it malaria. If you could get it from another person, we lot would have infected all of England by now.”

She nodded at his explanation. “Are you…are you…” She couldn’t ask it; she didn’t know how.

“No,” he said. “At least they don’t think so.”

She felt herself sag with relief, and she had to sit down. She couldn’t imagine a world without him. Even while he’d been gone, she’d always known he was there, sharing the same planet with her, walking the same earth. And even in those early days following John’s death, when she’d hated him for leaving her, even when she’d been so angry with him that she wanted to cry—she had taken some comfort in the knowledge that he was alive and well, and would return to her in an instant, if ever she asked it of him.

He was here. He was alive. And with John gone…Well, she didn’t know how anyone could expect her to lose them both.

He shivered again, violently.

“Do you need medicine?” she asked, snapping to attention. “Do you have medicine?”



“Took it already,” he chattered.

But she had to do some thing. She wasn’t self-hating enough to think that there had been anything she could have done to prevent John’s death—even in the worst of her grief she hadn’t gone down that road—but she had always hated that the whole thing had happened in her absence. It was, in truth, the one momentous thing John had ever done without her. And even if Michael was only sick, and not dying, she was not going to allow him to suffer alone.

“Let me get you another blanket,” she said. Without waiting for his reply, she rushed through the connecting door to her own suite and pulled the coverlet off her bed. It was rose pink and would most likely offend his masculine sensibilities once he reached a state of sensibility, but that, she decided, was his problem.

When she returned to his room, he was so still she thought he’d fallen asleep, but he managed to rouse himself enough to say thank you as she tucked the blanket over him.

“What else can I do?” she asked, pulling a wooden chair to the side of his bed and sitting down.

“Nothing.”

“There must be something,” she insisted. “Surely we’re not meant to merely wait this out.”

“We’re meant,” he said weakly, “to merely wait this out.”

“I can’t believe that’s true.”

He opened one eye. “Do you mean to challenge the entire medical establishment?”

She ground her teeth together and hunched over in her chair. “Are you certain you don’t need more medicine?”

He shook his head, then moaned at the exertion of it. “Not for another few hours.”

“Where is it?” she asked. If the only thing she could truly do was to locate the medication and be ready to dispense it, then by God, she would at least do that.



He moved his head slightly to the left. Francesca followed the motion toward a small table across the room, where a medicinal bottle sat atop a folded newspaper. She immediately rose and retrieved it, reading the label as she walked back to her chair. “Quinine,” she murmured. “I’ve heard of that.”

“Miracle medicine,” Michael said. “Or so they say.”

Francesca looked at him dubiously.

“Just look at me,” he said with a lopsided—and feeble—grin. “Proof positive.”