Page 54 of Captivating the Countess
This time, Bell thought she and the marquess might bebonded, if the marital sense of the word counted.
As a physician,Rain knew women could be healers, nurses, and midwives. He was still reluctant to expose a countess to a patient or his father to a lady. But if Bell could attend a séance and be possessed by his grandmother, he had to accept that she wouldn’t quake at seeing a duke in his nightshirt.
Still, he felt the last thing from composed as he stripped back the bedcovers. The father he remembered had once been as broad and strong as Rain, but these days, he had shrunk to half that size. Rain could feel every rib as he poked and prodded, testing for sore places.
The duke placed his own hands over the upper part of his abdomen. “The chronic indigestion and the inability to digest solid food indicates the involvement of stomach or duodenum. I’ve read everything in the books. Very little seems to apply.”
Rain knew all that. He also knew his father had suffered a severe blow to that area from a carriage accident a few years ago and that he’d always been a picky eater because of the embarrassing results of chronic indigestion. But the emaciation was definitely caused by not eating enough to keep a bird alive these last years.
To Rain’s surprise, the countess covered the duke’s hands with her own. Was she helping his father enhance his own healing powers? Rain waited with interest.
“Nothing,” the duke admitted. “I haven’t the strength to generate heat even with Lady Craigmore’s aid.”
That was quite possibly because enhancers only seemed to work with close family, husbands—or lovers—as his cousin Gerard had finally admitted. The earl’s wife had experimented with other Malcolms and enhanced no one else but the earl and her sister.
Had Rain unconsciously taken Bell last night simply to enhance abilities he didn’t believe he possessed?
Supremely aware of Bell’s petite femininity, he was pretty certain that had not been his incentive at all.
“You must call me Bell as the rest of your indecorous family does.” She corrected the duke.
Rain hid a smile. Few dared speak to his father with such familiarity.
Not taking umbrage, the duke grunted agreement. “They learned that from their mother. My wife disliked propriety and thought titles a hypocrisy.”
Despite the low-key conversation, Rain couldn’t relax. He was unaccustomed to losing, and this was a battle of life and death. Hehadto win this battle. He had no desire to be duke until he was old and gray.
Once his father admitted Bell’s hands didn’t help, Rain stepped in. Generally, he focused on his patient and did not speak during an examination.
In the interest of unscientific curiosity, he covered Bell’s hands with his own and used hisvoice. “According to an article in a recent medical journal, in dissecting cadavers, Baron Rokitansky discovered a condition involving the superior mesenteric artery where it compressed the duodenum against the abdominal aorta.”
Rain used his best patient-doctor voice, a soothing murmur that seemed to calm his more excitable patients. He knew his recitation of the baron’s discoveries was enough to puthimto sleep. He had no reassuring platitudes to offer, so facts were all he had. The condition he described was inoperable under current knowledge, and the theory was developed from dead people. He couldn’t cut open a dying man in hopes he could rearrange arteries and organs.
As he spoke, Rain imagined the area he described, trying to fix in his mind his long-ago autopsies as a student. If the artery bent at a wrong angle, it might cut off circulation in the duodenum, thus backing up food and causing indigestion. He could almostseethe problem in his mind.
Bell’s hands were small and fragile between his and his father’s. Soft, tender, they heated his palms, providing an ease of tension he didn’t normally experience when examining a patient. He tried to concentrate on what it would take to straighten an artery, to ease the duodenum so it fluxed naturally... but her scent and touch distracted him.
His body recalled the excitement of her inexperienced kisses, the way her nipples felt beneath his fingers and her soft cries when he caressed her. He’d used none of his usual finesse when he’d taken her, but she had responded as naturally as if she’d been made for him.
He’d taken no precautions. She could be carrying his child even now.
His palm grew hotter as he thought about Bell lying beneath him, welcoming him, growing big with his child...
At the same time, he continued his discourse, moving their joined hands to a place where the energy flow indicated pain. The duke never complained, but then, he wouldn’t. Rain knew that his father suffered, which was why he didn’t eat. And here it was, the source. He’d not felt this odd knot of energy before.
He worked out the details of the location hidden by layers of muscle, deep within the tissues. If he could only slide his thumb inside and bypass the compression, connect the duodenum directly... He directed the energy as he spoke, creating pressure that shifted the flow.
“If we turn him on his side, reduce the pressure...” Rain continued talking as they worked. His father didn’t object. Perhaps he’d put him to sleep.
He tested the area again, feeling the pain lessen. Odd, to feel someone else’s pain, but it seemed to make sense. They were all connected, if he just thought about it.
“He’s sleeping, Rain,” Bell whispered. “Should we let him be?”
Jarred back to the reality, Rain blinked and shook off the spell he’d talked himself into. His father lay on his side, breathing easily, looking relaxed. Perhaps the duke’s own healing touch had momentarily relieved the pain.
Holding Bell’s hand firmly as a touchstone to reality, Rain turned to the anxious valet. “Continue the fattening diet—beef broth from fatty cuts for strength, potato soups with cheese cooked to a soupy consistency, creamy puddings with lots of sugar, anything he can keep down.”
The valet nodded anxiously but knew better than to ask if the duke was better. Rain doubted it, but the experience had been too weird to not feel as ifsomethinghad occurred. For one, he was almost certain his diagnosis was correct, as he hadn’t been before.
