Page 75 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“It doesn’t matter.” Esther shook her head. “Please, Orla. I do not wish to talk about it. In fact, I don’t want to talk at all.”
Orla abided by her wishes. It dampened her own excitement a little to see Esther and George so at odds with one another. She glanced between the pair of them frequently but without knowing what had driven them apart, and being unable to talk to Esther openly, her hands were tied.
In the end, Orla ate her food fast and left the kitchen as soon as she could. She made her way up to Horace’s bedchamber, determined to tell him her good news—that she indeed would be coming with him to London.
She knocked on the door, lightly, but there was no answer.
“My Lord?” she called through the door; in case anyone was nearby and could overhear her. Still, there was no answer. “Horace?” she whispered, tapping a little firmer on the door now.
All was silent.
She pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything coming from the room at all.
She knocked firmly.
“My Lord?” she demanded, raising her voice. “My Lord, please, let me inside.” She tried the handle, but the door was locked.
He never locks this door, in case one of us are needed to attend to him.
She threw her weight against the door, but still, it would not move. Lowering her head down, she tried to peer through the lock. Inside the room, she could see the glimmer of candlelight. Horace’s boots were discarded by the foot of his bed, but she could see nothing more.
“My Lord!” she practically shouted the words now, rattling the door.
“What’s going on, Miss Byrne?” One of the footmen rounded the door. “What…” He looked at the door and the way she was rattling the handle.
“Something’s wrong,” she said hurriedly. “He’s not answering, and he’s locked the door. He never locks the door!”
Panic was enthralling her body now, making her completely jittery.
“Step aside,” the footman urged. He took hold of the door handle and drove his shoulder against the wood. It rattled much more in the frame now, but it wouldn’t budge. The footman stepped back then ran at the door. He burst through, the wood fracturing around the lock.
As he fell into the space, Orla climbed in behind him, pulling herself over the wreckage of splintered wood and into the chamber.
A rasping sound came from the bed and her eyes shot toward the noise.
Horace was on the bed. His pallor was deathly pale, sweat beading across his forehead so much that his hair was as wet as if he had been dumped in a bathtub. His chest rose and fellunevenly, and his eyes were firmly closed. Out cold, his body had been taken over by a bad fever indeed.
“Fetch me Esther and any maid that can be spared,” Orla pleaded. “Now!”
Chapter 22
All Horace could feel was heat. It was overwhelming him, burning him from the inside out. Was it not a burning sensation down his esophagus too? Or was it burning in his gut now? Something was wrong, very wrong indeed.
He existed purely in darkness, trying to claw at any images he could picture or recall in that abyss of blackness.
He could remember the library. Yes, he had been in the library.
He was sitting at the desk looking over the papers and the contract to sell his half of the business. He had been sitting there quite at ease, his normal self, some good energy in him. He’d even opened the window to feel a breath of fresh air bristling into the room. At one point, he’d turned to admire the daffodils and tulip green shoots that were poking their heads through the earth, ready to greet the spring.
Yet how had that changed?
There was dizziness, sudden and strong, burning too. Then he’d struck the floor, his head hitting the wood.
“No…” Horace said the word aloud. He fought to say something more, to argue with the memory.
It wasn’t possible. He was doing so well, improving every day. How could he possibly regress now, enough to collapse in his own library?
There had been hands under his arms. He was dragged from the library, his boots scraping against the rug. Whoever was pulling him wasn’t strong enough to lift him cleanly from his feet. He was dragged all the way across the room, his eyes half lidded, so what he could see of the hearthrug was shrouded in semi-darkness and dizziness.
