Page 5 of The Phantom Duke
Then, she was driving away from Sunspire into the night. It took two hours to reach the Willow Street orphanage, south of the Thames and beyond the fringes of Kennington.
She rapped at the tall entrance door, waiting impatiently for the night nurse to open it. She recognized the woman on duty, Rosie Martins, as soon as the door was opened.
“I’m sorry, Lady Maria, but you can’t come in,” she said, London strong in her accent.
“Whyever not, Rosie?” Maria demanded.
“It ain’t safe, your ladyship. Fever’s here. It’s run through the children like a wildfire in summer. Doctor Drayford has said there’s to be no one in or out.”
“How is Gilbert?” Maria asked urgently, feeling guilty for focusing on one child over all the others, but unable to help it.
Mary shook her head. “Bad, my lady. Doctor Drayford don’t give him much time left.”
Sudden desperation gripped Maria. Her world was unraveling, pulled apart a thread at a time by her father’s drunken malice. “Then, you must let me see him! Please, Rosie!” she implored.
Gilbert was her life, someone she could care for and love unconditionally. Someone who would return that love just as unconditionally. To lose him was unacceptable.
“Rosie, I will break in if I have to. I am deadly serious,” she said when Rosie hesitated, looking over her shoulder at someone behind the door.
Maria heard heavy footsteps. Then, the door was pulled wide, and Doctor Alexander Drayford stood there. He was dark-haired and saturnine with a permanently weary expression on his face; his features seemed to hang from his bones.
“It is at your own risk,” he said. “I do not know if this is typhoid, cholera, or influenza. I take no responsibility if you break quarantine.”
“Agreed,” Maria said, stepping into the doorway and forcing the other two to step back or be trampled.
She strode through the antiseptically clean corridors to the dormitory. The room was dark, and the children asleep, those who weren’t coughing. Gilbert was one of the latter. Maria’s heart broke at the sight of his flushed, sweating face. She sat by his bed, taking up a cloth that had been left in a bowl of water beside it, using it to mop his brow.
“There, there. Why are you awake, young man?” she whispered, smiling. “You should be dreaming of lovely days and nice things to eat, eh?”
“I’m hot,” Gilbert spluttered.
“I know, sweetness, but you won’t be for much longer. Doctor Drayford and I are going to make you all better. And Rosie, of course. And all the other ladies.”
She put a hand to his forehead and smiled through the flinch she felt inside at the heat. Maria smiled, keeping her hand on his hand until she felt his head sink back into the damp pillow.
“There, there, little man. You must be ever so sleepy. Will you have some nice dreams and tell me all about them?” Maria whispered.
He nodded, his eyelids beginning to droop.
“Will you stay?” he whispered.
Maria thought about lying in order to comfort him.
No. I will never lie to him. The world he is stepping into is full of liars. I will not be one of them.
“I cannot stay, but I will be back…”
She stopped, realizing that she was about to break her own commandment. She knew she would be back in the morning. Probably the next day, too. But the future was uncertain. She could guarantee nothing because she did not know how far her father’s anger would take her. How long it would last.
“I will be back, and we will have breakfast together,” she said emphatically, determined that this, at least, would be true.
She couldn’t say when, but she was resolute that it would happen. It seemed enough. The little boy’s eyes slid shut, though he was still wracked by occasional coughs and splutters. She hummed a wordless tune to help him off to sleep and stayed by his side until Doctor Drayford came to her.
“If you wish to help, there is something you can do,” he said. “We need supplies urgently. Quinine in particular. If we do not get these supplies, many of these children will certainly die. Gilbert will be among the first.”
CHAPTER 3
“Turn down that lamp!” Damien ordered.
