Violet nodded, but from her expression, Francesca could see that she would have liked to have said more. It had been like this for years-Violet wanted to resume her role of mother hen to her young widowed daughter, but she held back, attempting to respect her independence.

She didn’t always manage to resist interfering, but she tried, and Francesca was grateful for the effort.

“Do you want me to accompany you?” Hyacinth asked, her eyes lighting up.

“No!” Francesca said, surprise making her tone a bit more vehement than she’d intended it. “Why on earth would you want to?”

Hyacinth shrugged. “Curiosity. I’d like to meet the Merry Rake.”

“You’ve met him,” Eloise pointed out.

“Yes, but that was ages ago,” Hyacinth said with a dramatic sigh, “before I understood what a rake was.”

“You don’t understand that now,” Violet said sharply.

“Oh, but I-”

“You do not” Violet repeated, “understand what a rake is.”

“Very well.” Hyacinth turned to her mother with a sickly sweet smile. “I don’t know what a rake is. I also don’t know how to dress myself or wash my own teeth.”

“I did see Polly helping her on with her evening gown last night,” Eloise murmured from the sofa.

“No one can get into an evening gown on her own,” Hyacinth shot back.

“I’m leaving,” Francesca announced, even though she was quite certain no one was listening to her.

“What are you doing?” Hyacinth demanded.

Francesca stopped short until she realized that Hyacinth wasn’t speaking to her.

“Just examining your teeth,” Eloise said sweetly.

“Girls!” Violet exclaimed, although Francesca couldn’t imagine that Eloise took too kindly to the generalization, being seven and twenty as she was.

And indeed she didn’t, but Francesca took Eloise’s irritation and subsequent rejoinder as an opportunity to slip out of the room and ask a footman to call up the carriage for her.

The streets were not very crowded; it was early yet, and the ton would not be heading out for parties and balls for at least another hour or two. The carriage moved swiftly through Mayfair, and in under a quarter of an hour Francesca was climbing the front steps of Kilmartin House in St. James’s. As usual, a footman opened the door before she could even lift the knocker, and she hurried inside.

“Is Kilmartin here?” she asked, realizing with a small jolt of surprise that it was the first time she had referred to Michael as such. It was strange, she realized, and good, really, how naturally it had come to her lips. It was probably past time that they all grew used to the change. He was the earl now, and he’d never be plain Mr. Stirling again.

“I believe so,” the footman replied. “He came in early this afternoon, and I was not made aware of his departure.”

Francesca frowned, then gave a nod of dismissal before heading up the steps. If Michael was indeed at home, he must be upstairs; if he were down in his office, the footman would have noticed his presence.

She reached the second floor, then strode down the hall toward the earl’s suite, her booted feet silent on the plush Aubusson carpet. “Michael?” she called out softly, as she approached his room. “Michael?”

There was no response, so she moved closer to his door, which she noticed was not quite all the way closed. “Michael?” she called again, only slightly louder. It wouldn’t do to bellow his name through the house. Besides, if he was sleeping, she didn’t wish to wake him. He was probably still tired from his long journey and had been too proud to indicate as such when Violet had invited him to supper.

Still nothing, so she pushed the door open a few additional inches. “Michael?”

She heard something. A rustle, maybe. Maybe a groan.

“Michael?”

“Frannie?”

It was definitely his voice, but it wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard from his lips.

“Michael?” She rushed in to find him huddled in his bed, looking quite as sick as she’d ever seen another human being. John, of course, had never been sick. He’d merely gone to bed one evening and woken up dead.

So to speak.

“Michael!” she gasped. “What is wrong with you?”

“Oh, nothing much,” he croaked. “Head cold, I imagine.”

Francesca looked down at him with dubious eyes. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, his skin was flushed and mottled, and the level of heat radiating from the bed quite took her breath away.

Not to mention that he smelled sick. It was that awful, sweaty, slightly putrid smell, the sort that, if it had a color, would surely be vomitous green. Francesca reached out and touched his forehead, recoiling instantly at the heat of it.

“This is not a head cold,” she said sharply.

His lips stretched into a hideous approximation of a smile. “A really bad head cold?”

“Michael Stuart Stirling!”

“Good God, you sound like my mother.”

She didn’t particularly feel like his mother, especially not after what had happened in the park, and it was almost a bit of a relief to see him so feeble and unattractive. It took the edge off whatever it was she’d been feeling earlier that afternoon.

“Michael, what is wrong with you?”

He shrugged, then buried himself deeper under the covers, his entire body shaking from the exertion of it.

“Michael!” She reached out and grabbed his shoulder. None too gently, either. “Don’t you dare try your usual tricks on me. I know exactly how you operate. You always pretend that nothing matters, that water rolls off your back-”

“It does roll off my back,” he mumbled. “Yours as well. Simple science, really.”

“Michael!” She would have smacked him if he weren’t so ill. “You will not attempt to minimize this, do you understand me? I insist that you tell me right now what is wrong with you!”

“I’ll be better tomorrow,” he said.

“Oh, right,” Francesca said, with all the sarcasm she could muster, which was, in truth, quite a bit.

“I will,” he insisted, restlessly shifting positions, every movement punctuated with a groan. “I’ll be fine for tomorrow.”

Something about the phrasing of his words struck Francesca as profoundly odd. “And what about the day after that?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

A harsh chuckle emerged from somewhere under the covers. “Why, then I’ll be sick as a dog again, of course.”

“Michael,” she said again, dread forcing her voice low, “what is wrong with you?”

“Haven’t you guessed?” He poked his head back out from under the sheet, and he looked so ill she wanted to cry. “I have malaria.”

“Oh, my God,” Francesca breathed, actually backing up a step. “Oh, my God.”

“First time I’ve ever heard you blaspheme,” he remarked. “Probably ought to be flattered it’s over me.”

She had no idea how he could be so flip at such a time.

“Michael, I-” She reached out, then didn’t reach out, unsure of what to do.

“Don’t worry,” he said, huddling closer into himself as his body was wracked with another wave of shudders. “You can’t catch it from me.”

“I can’t?” She blinked. “I mean, of course I can’t.” And even if she could, that ought not have stopped her from nursing him. He was Michael. He was… well, it seemed difficult precisely to define what he was to her, but they had an unbreakable bond, they two, and it seemed that four years and thousands of miles had done little to diminish it.

“It’s the air,” he said in a tired voice. “You have to breathe the putrid air to catch it. It’s why they call it malaria. If you could get it from another person, we lot would have infected all of England by now.”

She nodded at his explanation. “Are you… are you…” She couldn’t ask it; she didn’t know how.

“No,” he said. “At least they don’t think so.”

She felt herself sag with relief, and she had to sit down. She couldn’t imagine a world without him. Even while he’d been gone, she’d always known he was there, sharing the same planet with her, walking the same earth. And even in those early days following John’s death, when she’d hated him for leaving her, even when she’d been so angry with him that she wanted to cry-she had taken some comfort in the knowledge that he was alive and well, and would return to her in an instant, if ever she asked it of him.

He was here. He was alive. And with John gone… Well, she didn’t know how anyone could expect her to lose them both.

He shivered again, violently.

“Do you need medicine?” she asked, snapping to attention. “Do you have medicine?”

‘Took it already,“ he chattered.

But she had to do something. She wasn’t self-hating enough to think that there had been anything she could have done to prevent John’s death-even in the worst of her grief she hadn’t gone down that road-but she had always hated that the whole thing had happened in her absence. It was, in truth, the one momentous thing John had ever done without her. And even if Michael was only sick, and not dying, she was not going to allow him to suffer alone.

“Let me get you another blanket,” she said. Without waiting for his reply, she rushed through the connecting door to her own suite and pulled the coverlet off her bed. It was rose pink and would most likely offend his masculine sensibilities once he reached a state of sensibility, but that, she decided,was his problem.

When she returned to his room, he was so still she thought he’d fallen asleep, but he managed to rouse himself enough to say thank you as she tucked the blanket over him.

“What else can I do?” she asked, pulling a wooden chair to the side of his bed and sitting down.

“Nothing.”

“There must be something,” she insisted. “Surely we’re not meant to merely wait this out.”

“We’re meant,” he said weakly, “to merely wait this out.”