“Do you know something of medicine?” Sophie asked, her eyes filling with desperate hope.
“The doctor bled him,” Benedict answered. “It didn’t seem to help.”
“We’ve been giving him broth,” Sophie said, “and cooling him when he grows too hot.”
“And warming him when he grows too cold,” Eloise finished miserably.
“Nothing seems to work,” Sophie whispered. And then, in front of everyone, she simply crumpled. Collapsed against the side of the bed and sobbed.
“Sophie,” Benedict choked out. He dropped to his knees beside her and held her as she wept, and Phillip and Eloise both looked away as they realized that he was crying, too.
“Willow bark tea,” Phillip said to Eloise. “Has he had any?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“It’s something I learned at Cambridge. It used to be given for pain, before laudanum became so popular. One of my professors insisted that it also helped to reduce fever.”
“Did you give the tea to Marina?” Eloise asked.
Phillip looked at her in surprise, then remembered that she still thought Marina had died of lung fever, which, he supposed, was mostly true. “I tried,” he answered, “but I couldn’t get much down her throat. And besides, she was much sicker than Charles.” He swallowed, remembering. “In many ways.”
Eloise looked up into his face for a long moment, then turned briskly to Benedict and Sophie, who were quiet now, but still kneeling on the floor together, lost in their private moment.
Eloise, however, being Eloise, had little reverence for private moments at such a time, and so grabbed her brother’s shoulder and turned him around. “Do you have any willow bark tea?” she asked him.
Benedict just looked at her, blinking, and then finally said, “I don’t know.”
“Mrs. Crabtree might,” Sophie said, referring to one half of the old couple who had cared for My Cottage before Benedict had married, when it had been nothing more than an occasional place for him to lay his head. “She always has things like that. But she and Mr. Crabtree went to visit their daughter. They won’t be home for several days.”
“Can you get into their house?” Phillip asked. “I will recognize it if she has it. It won’t be a tea. Just the bark, which we’ll soak in hot water. It might help to bring down the fever.”
“Willow bark?” Sophie asked doubtfully. “You mean to cure my son with the bark of a tree?”
“It certainly can’t hurt him now,” Benedict said gruffly, striding toward the door. “Come along, Crane. We have a key to their cottage. I will take you there myself.” But as he reached the doorway, he turned to Phillip and asked, “Do you know what you are about?”
Phillip answered the only way he knew how. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
Benedict stared him in the face, and Phillip knew that the older man was taking his measure. It was one thing for Benedict to allow him to marry his sister. It was quite another to let him force strange potions down his son’s throat.
But Phillip understood. He had children, too.
“Very well,” Benedict said. “Let’s go.”
And as Phillip hurried out of the house, all he could do was pray that Benedict Bridgerton’s trust in him had not been misplaced.
In the end it was difficult to say whether it was the willow bark or Eloise’s whispered prayers or just dumb luck, but by the following morning Charles’s fever had broken, and although the boy was still weak and listless, he was indubitably on the mend. By noontime, it was clear that Eloise and Phillip were no longer needed and in fact were getting in the way, and so they climbed into their carriage and headed home, both eager to collapse into their large, sturdy bed and, for once, do nothing but sleep.
The first ten minutes of the ride home were spent in silence. Eloise, astonishingly, found herself too tired to speak. But even in her exhaustion, she was too restless, too tightly wound from the stress and worry of the previous night to sleep. And so she contented herself with staring out the window at the dampened countryside. It had stopped raining right about the time Charles’s fever broke, suggesting a divine intervention that might have pointed to Eloise’s prayers as the young boy’s savior, but as Eloise stole a glance at her husband, sitting beside her in the carriage with his eyes closed (although not, she was quite certain, asleep), she knew it was the willow bark.
She didn’t know how she knew, and she was quite cognizant of the fact that she could never prove it, but her nephew’s life had been saved by a cup of tea.
And to think how unlikely it was that Phillip had even been at her brother’s house that evening. It had been quite a singular chain of events. If she hadn’t gone in to see the twins, if she hadn’t gone to tell Phillip that she didn’t like their nurse, if they hadn’t quarreled . . .
Put that way, little Charles Bridgerton was quite the luckiest little boy in Britain.
“Thank you,” she said, not realizing that she’d intended to speak until the words left her lips.
“For what?” Phillip murmured sleepily, without opening his eyes.
“Charles,” she said simply.
Phillip did open his eyes at that, and he turned to her. “It might not have been my doing. We’ll never know if it was the willow bark.”
“I know,” she said firmly.
His lips curved into the barest of smiles. “You always do.”
And she thought to herself— Was this what she’d been waiting for her entire life? Not the passion, not the gasps of pleasure she felt when he joined her in bed, but this.
This sense of comfort, of easy companionship, of sitting next to someone in a carriage and knowing with every fiber of your being that it was where you belonged.
She placed her hand on his. “It was so awful,” she said, surprised that she had tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Benedict and Sophie.”
“Nor I,” Phillip said softly.
“If it had been one of our children . . .” she said, and she realized it was the first time she’d said that. Our children.
Phillip was silent for a long time. When he spoke, he was looking out the window. “The entire time I was watching Charles,” he said, his voice suspiciously hoarse, “all I kept thinking was, thank God it’s not Oliver or Amanda.” And then he turned back to her, his face pinched with guilt. “But it shouldn’t be anyone’s child.”
Eloise squeezed his hand. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with such feelings. You’re not a saint, you know. You’re just a father. A very good one, I think.”
He looked at her with an odd expression, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said gravely, “I’m not. But I hope to be.”
She cocked her head. “Phillip?”
“You were right,” he said, his mouth tightening into a grim line. “About their nurse. I didn’t want anything to be wrong, and so I paid no attention, but you were right. She was beating them.”
“What?”
“With a book,” he continued, his voice almost dispassionate, as if he’d already used up all of his emotions. “I walked in and she was beating Amanda with a book. She had already finished with Oliver.”
“Oh, no,” Eloise said, as tears—of sorrow and anger—filled her eyes. “I never dreamed. I didn’t like her, of course. And she’d rapped them on the knuckles, but . . . I’ve been rapped on the knuckles. Everyone has been rapped on the knuckles.” She slumped in her seat, guilt weighing her shoulders down. “I should have realized. I should have seen.”
Phillip snorted. “You’ve barely been in residence a fortnight. I’ve been living with that bloody woman for months. If I didn’t see, why should you have done?”
Eloise had nothing to say to this, nothing at least that would not make her already guilt-ridden husband feel worse. “I assume you dismissed her,” she finally said.
He nodded. “I told the children you would help to find a replacement.”
“Of course,” she said quickly.
“And I—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and looked out the window before continuing. “I—”
“What is it, Phillip?” she asked softly.
He didn’t turn back to her when he said, “I’m going to be a better father. I’ve pushed them away for too long. I was so afraid of becoming my father, of being like him, that I—”
“Phillip,” Eloise murmured, laying her hand on his, “you’re not like your father. You could never be.”
“No,” he said, his voice hollow, “but I thought I could. I got a whip once. I went to the stables and I grabbed the whip.” His head fell into his hands. “I was so angry. So bloody angry.”
“But you didn’t use it,” she whispered, knowing that her words were true. They had to be.
He shook his head. “But I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t,” she said again, keeping her voice as firm as she was able.
“I was so angry,” he said again, and she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her, so lost was he in his own memory. But then he turned to her, and his eyes pierced hers. “Do you understand what it is to be terrified by your own anger?”
She shook her head.
“I’m not a small man, Eloise,” he said. “I could hurt someone.”
“So could I,” she replied. And then, at his dry look, she added, “Well, maybe not you, but I’m certainly big enough to hurt a child.”
“You would never do that,” he grunted, turning away.
“Neither would you,” she repeated.
He was silent.
And then, suddenly, she understood. “Phillip,” she said softly, “you said you were angry, but . . . with whom were you angry?”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “They glued their governess’s hair to the sheets, Eloise.”
“I know,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m quite certain I would have wanted to throttle them both, had I been present. But that’s not what I asked.” She waited for him to make some sort of response. When he did not, she added, “Were you angry with them because of the glue, or were you angry with yourself, because you didn’t know how to make them mind?”
He didn’t say anything but they both knew the answer.
Eloise reached out and touched his hand. “You’re nothing like your father, Phillip,” she repeated. “Nothing.”
“I know that now,” Phillip said softly. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to tear that bloody Nurse Edwards from limb to limb.”
“I can imagine,” Eloise said, snorting as she settled back in her seat.
Phillip felt his lips twitch. He had no idea why, but there was something almost funny in his wife’s tone, something comforting, even. Somehow they had found humor in a situation where there ought not to be any. And it felt good.
“She deserved nothing less,” Eloise added with a shrug. And then she turned and looked at him. “But you didn’t touch her, did you?”
He shook his head. “No. And if I managed to keep my temper with her, then I’m damn well not ever going to lose it with my children.”
“Of course not,” Eloise said, as if it had never been an issue. She patted his hand, then glanced out the window, clearly unconcerned.
Such faith in him, Phillip realized. Such faith in his inner goodness, in the quality of his soul, when he’d been wracked by doubt for so many years.
And then he felt he had to be honest, had to come clean, and before he knew what he was about, he blurted out, “I thought you’d left me.”
“Last night?” She turned to him in shock. “Whyever would you think that?”
He shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Oh, I don’t know. It might be because you left for your brother’s house and never came back.”
She hmmphed at that. “It’s clear now why I was detained, and besides, I would never leave you. You should know that.”
He quirked a brow. “Should I?”
“Of course you should,” she said, looking rather cross with him. “I made a vow in that church, and I assure you I do not take such things lightly. Besides, I made a commitment to Oliver and Amanda to be their mother, and I would never turn my back on that.”
Phillip regarded her steadily, then murmured, “No. No, you wouldn’t. Silly of me not to have thought of that.”
She sat back and crossed her arms. “Well, you should have done. You know me better than that.” And then, when he did not say anything more, she added, “Those poor children. They have already lost one mother through no fault of their own. I’m certainly not going to run off and make them go through all that again.”
She turned to him with a supremely irritated expression. “I cannot believe you even thought that of me.”
Phillip was beginning to wonder the same thing himself. He’d only known Eloise—Dear God, could it possibly have been only two weeks? It felt, in many ways, like a lifetime. Because he did feel he knew her, inside and out. She’d always have her secrets, of course, as all people did, and he was quite certain he’d never understand her, since he couldn’t imagine ever understanding anyone female.