“Where’d you go?” he grunted hoarsely. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here,” Sophie replied.
He opened his eyes, and for the barest of seconds appeared completely lucid, as he said, “Not you.’’ Then his eyes rolled back and his head started tossing from side to side again.
“Well, I’m all you’ve got,” Sophie muttered. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’ll be right back.”
And then, her heart pounding with fear and nerves, she ran out of the room.
* * *
If there was one thing Sophie had learned in her days as a housemaid, it was that most households were run in essentially the same way. It was for that reason that she had no trouble at all finding spare linens to replace Benedict’s sweat-soaked sheets. She also scavenged a pitcher full of cool water and a few small towels for dampening his brow.
Upon her return to his bedroom, she found him lying still again, but his breathing was shallow and rapid. Sophie reached out and touched his brow again. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to her that it was growing warmer.
Oh, dear. This was not good, and she was singularly unqualified to care for a feverish patient. Araminta, Rosamund, and Posy had never had a sick day in their lives, and the Cavenders had all been uncommonly healthy as well. The closest she’d ever come to nursing had been helping Mrs. Cavender’s mother, who’d been unable to walk. But she’d never taken care of someone with a fever.
She dunked a cloth in the pitcher of water, then wrung it out until it was no longer dripping from the corners. “This ought to make you feel a little better,” she whispered, placing it gingerly on his brow. Then she added, in a rather unconfident voice, “At least I hope it will.”
He didn’t flinch when she touched him with the cloth. Sophie took that as an excellent sign, and she prepared another cool towel. She had no idea where to put it, though. His chest somehow didn’t seem right, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow the bedsheet to drift any lower than his waist unless the poor man was at death’s door (and even then, she wasn’t certain what she could possibly do down there that would resurrect him.) So she finally just dabbed with it behind his ears, and a little on the sides of his neck.
“Does that feel better?” she asked, not expecting any sort of an answer but feeling nonetheless that she ought to continue with her one-sided conversation. “I really don’t know very much about caring for the ill, but it just seems to me like you’d want something cool on your brow. I know if I were sick, that’s how I’d feel.”
He shifted restlessly, mumbling something utterly incoherent.
“Really?” Sophie replied, trying to smile but failing miserably. “I’m glad you feel that way.”
He mumbled something else.
“No,” she said, dabbing the cool cloth on his ear, “I’d have to agree with what you said the first time.” He went still again.
“I’d be happy to reconsider,” she said worriedly. “Please don’t take offense.” He didn’t move.
Sophie sighed. One could only converse so long with an unconscious man before one started to feel extremely silly. She lifted up the cloth she’d placed on his forehead and touched his skin. It felt kind of clammy now. Gammy and still warm, which was a combination she wouldn’t have thought possible.
She decided to leave the cloth off for now, and she laid it over the top of the pitcher. There seemed little she could do for him at that very moment, so Sophie stretched her legs and walked slowly around his room, shamelessly examining everything that wasn’t nailed down, and quite a bit that was. The collection of miniatures was her first stop. There were nine on the writing desk; Sophie surmised that they were of Benedict’s parents and seven brothers and sisters. She started to put the siblings in order according to their ages, but then it occurred to her that the miniatures most likely hadn’t been painted all at the same time, so she could be looking at a likeness of his older brother at fifteen and younger brother at twenty.
She was struck by how alike they all were, with the same deep chestnut hair, wide mouths, and elegant bone structure. She looked closely to try to compare eye color but found it impossible in the dim candlelight, and besides, eye color often wasn’t easily discerned on a miniature, anyway.
Next to the miniatures was the bowl with Benedict’s rock collection. Sophie picked a few of them up in turn, rolling them lightly over her palm. “Why are these so special to you, I wonder?” she whispered, placing them carefully back in the bowl. They just looked like rocks to her, but she supposed that they might appear more interesting and unique to Benedict if they represented special memories for him.
She found a small wooden box that she absolutely could not open; it must have been one of those trick boxes she’d heard about that came from the Orient. And most intriguing, leaning against the side of the desk was a large sketchbook, filled with pencil drawings, mostly of landscapes but with a few portraits as well. Had Benedict drawn them? Sophie squinted at the bottom of each drawing. The small squiggles certainly looked like two Bs.
Sophie sucked in her breath, an unbidden smile lighting her face. She’d never dreamed that Benedict was an artist. There had never even been a peep about it in Whistledown, and it seemed like the sort of thing the gossip columnist would have figured out over the years.
Sophie drew the sketchbook closer to her candle and flipped through the pages. She wanted to sit with the book and spend ten minutes perusing each sketch, but it seemed too intrusive to examine his drawings in such detail. She was probably just trying to justify her nosiness, but somehow it didn’t seem as bad just to give them a glance.