Page 37 of Elixir of a Duchess' Passion
“I suffer with consumption,” he admitted, the words threatening to stick in his throat. Just seeing how his cousin’s eyes widened and how the last of the colour drained from his face made Elijah feel unsteady on his feet.
This was the very situation he had been avoiding all these months. The look on his cousin’s face was one he had been hoping to avoid on the faces of all his family members. His mother’s astonished and grief-stricken expression had been bad enough, but to have all his extended family know also, didn’t bear thinking about. They would likely flit to the house in Oxfordshire as soon as they all heard the news, for one reason or another, whether because they cared for him or knew what they would be getting when his time finally came.
He did not like the thought of his good relationship with his brothers shifting, but he knew it would. Especially when his eldest brother, the next in line, learned what his new life would become after so many years believing he would just be the brother of an earl once their father passed. The earldom was not a burden he was sure his brother would want or even manage. He had hoped to avoid finding out.
“How … how long have you … have you known?” Harold asked, his words coming out in barely more than a whisper as though he was frightened to learn the answer.
Elijah flinched. He ought to have known this would be the next question from Harold’s lips. It was only logical.
Elijah thought back to when he had first got his diagnosis. Then he considered lying. What good would the truth do now? It wouldn’t change anything. It would only put a clock on things and make his cousin even more unbearable regarding his need to care for him. He would wake every morning to find Harold at his bedside, ready to force more foul-tasting drugs down his throat; he was certain of it.
And yet the look upon Harold’s face left him unable to lie. He had been lying and pretending for long enough, even to himself. It was finally time to admit the truth. Nobody could help him now, not even Lady Belmont.
“I learned of my illness about four months ago,” Elijah admitted, gritting his teeth again. “Give or take a week.”
That last part was a lie. He remembered exactly when he had learned, and it was exactly four months ago to the day.
“The doctor then suggested that I might have six months, maybe eight,” Elijah admitted, throat constricting.
He thought of how he had fallen from his horse the day before due to how much pain he had been in and how quickly that pain had struck him, catching him off guard. And not for the first time, he thought that first doctor had been wrong.
His time was growing steadily nearer. He could feel it as though the dark angel of death was hiding behind him in the shadows, just waiting to pounce upon him at any moment.
“That cannot be!” Harold protested, shaking his head. He crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at Elijah with obvious determination and denial. “You cannot possibly have been hiding such a thing as consumption for four months! I have seen it take men in less than two.”
“Are you a doctor?” Elijah snapped back at his cousin. “I was not aware of your medical degree.”
Though the words clearly stumped his cousin, Elijah couldn’t help scoffing at them himself. After all, not a single doctor’s degree had helped him so far. If they were so all-powerful, then how was he growing closer and closer to his end with no cure in sight?
Looking as though his determination was renewed, Harold came around the bed to stand before Elijah. He gripped hold of his shoulders and looked him dead in the eye as he demanded, “There must be something we can do, something we have not yet tried.”
Elijah’s stomach twisted painfully, not just with illness but with the thought of his cousin trying to get even more involved in his health. He had been hoping to avoid such things.
“This is my battle and my battle alone, Harold,” Elijah protested, shaking his head. Though even as he did, he closed his eyes, unable to stop from picturing the face of one beautiful, alluring, and magnificent woman, Lady Belmont.
Of all the people who had already attempted to help him, only her presence and her tonics and elixirs seemed to have made an impact, or at least one that did not leave him bed-bound or unable even to lift his eyelids.
“We could …” Harold began, but Elijah had heard quite enough. He couldn’t imagine his cousin would offer any insight that a multitude of doctors had not already suggested.
Lifting his hands to his cousin’s shoulders, he squeezed gently and reassuringly and looked deep into his eyes. “I have made peace with my situation. It is time for my family to do the same.”
Chapter 20
Though Melissa had expected Lady Beaufort’s arrival at her door after their conversation during the last ball, she wasn’t entirely prepared when the morning came. Especially after the night before, when she had been so flustered by Lord Spurnrose’s actions and even more so by the letters she had found.
But Lady Beaufort was a good woman who did not deserve to be turned away just because Melissa was not entirely feeling herself. And so she had her butler see the lady into the drawing room, suspecting she already knew the reason the older woman wished to seek her advice in the first place.
“Lady Beaufort, it is so good to see you,” Melissa said warmly as the elder woman was shown into the drawing room.
“And I you, Lady Belmont,” Lady Beaufort responded, gazing around the pastel pink painted room and asking, “Have you decorated? The room looks lovely.”
“Not for a good year or so,” Melissa replied, gesturing to the seat opposite her, standing before her own armchair. “Please, have a seat. I shall have some tea brought up.”
Melissa glanced at her butler as she spoke, and the man, taking the hint, quickly bowed and left the room to collect the tea that was really just an excuse for the ladies to have a little privacy. Melissa knew well that many of her patients did not like to speak while a man was present, even a servant, and Lady Beaufort’s comment about the decor likely hinted at such things.
“Very gracious of you, Lady Belmont.” Lady Beaufort smiled, crossing the room with a swishing of her gown. Even for an older woman, she dressed opulently, and as a widow herself, she made no secret of showing her wealth in the fine jewels around her neck and wrists and hanging from her ears.
In fact, she made Melissa feel quite plain in her duck egg blue gown. At least she had had the good sense to remove her apron before entering the drawing room to receive her though she still had charcoal stains upon her fingers from the sketching she had been doing only minutes earlier. No amount of scrubbing would get rid of it immediately.
