Page 78 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“Orla? Orla, what do you think?” Colm asked in plain distress.
Orla plunged the cloth in her grasp back into the basin of ice and water. She wrung it as dry as she could, then laid it down over Horace’s temple again. She kneeled on the side of the bed, in her effort to be as close to him as she could get.
“I think his fever has not broken, but at least the nightmares are softening. Look, he does not toss and turn as he did before.”
“No, Orla. No! You are not listening to me.”
“Aye, I am.” She sighed deeply. She kept her hand flat on Horace’s brow as she looked around at her uncle.
Colm, a man who was usually so calm and collected, no matter what his patients were going through, had lost all sense of peace and serenity now. After days of them being unable to rouse Horace from this state, he was frantic with panic. Even now, he marched back across the chamber, pulling at his hair until it was wild and loosening his collar. Colm always dressed well, even when tending to a dying man, but not anymore, it seemed.
He will not die. I will not let it happen! I will not give into fear as Uncle Colm has.
“I know what you are saying,” Orla whispered, “but I do not agree.”
“You don’t think his heart could be sick?” Colm rounded the bed post, looking at her. “If he has a weakened heart, then any of the medicines we have been giving him could have made him react badly.”
“His heart has always been strong. He’s always had a firm and strong pulse, from the very beginning of me attending to him.” Orla had checked Horace’s pulse multiple times since he had become bedridden. Often, if she was alone, she would lay her hand to his chest, unafraid to be so close to him after all they had shared together in this bed of his, but with Colm in the room, she could not do that. She placed her fingers on his neck instead.
Her stomach twinged and fear radiated through her. His skin was still fiery to the touch.
“It’s strong now,” Orla whispered. “No, I do not believe this is because of his heart.”
Colm cursed and marched back across the room again.
“Could he have had a head injury at any point we did not know about?” Colm suggested.
“No. He was sitting alone in his library for much of the day. You heard the staff. Adam saw him there himself. The next thing he knew, Horace was gone from the library, and they all presumed he’d come up here to rest. Well, he must have done.” Orla stepped off the bed and went to dampen the cloth once again.
She could have sworn she saw Horace’s head incline toward her, but then she thought it must have been in her imagination. She often did that at the moment, imagining he was trying to react to her, though he was plainly unconscious to the world around him.
“We could try laudanum again, in a small dosage this time.”
“No.” Orla gripped the basin of water so hard she was in danger of breaking it. “Uncle, laudanum renders patients in an intoxicated state as it is. It is not pain he is suffering now. Look at him–it’s a fever. A sickness of his body. Laudanum may only make him worse.”
Colm didn’t argue, though he looked desperate once again. He marched across the room, apparently dissatisfied with her pulse taking, and reached for Horace’s wrist. He checked it himself before nodding.
“Yes, yes, it is strong.”
“Aye, I told you as much.”
“Then there must be something else wrong with him. Something we don’t know about.”
“I think we established that.”
“Then come up with some ideas, Orla!” Colm cried in panic.
She turned to face him, anger flashing in her eyes.
“I have been up every night this week tending to him. I have as many ideas as you, Uncle, but I am not so keen to jump on them as you are when I know those ideas are wrong.” She blinked away her angry tears and knelt beside Horace again. “Once I know what is wrong with him, I will tell you, but I will not reach desperately for an idea and a cure which could make him worse.”
Colm groaned in frustration, walking away again.
“Miss Byrne?” a familiar voice called from the open doorway.
She jerked her head around, as did Colm. In their argument, neither one of them had noticed that Adam was watching them from the doorway.
He looked as exhausted as they did, with heavy shadows under his eyes and his hair a mess. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and in one hand, hung loosely at his side, were a stack of letters.
