“Well, let the footmen help you to bed, and perhaps we can get the local doctor to pay a call."
“Are you deaf madam? I…” the Duke shouted, swiveling towards her, but whatever he intended to say after that was cut off as his eyes suddenly rolled back into his head, and he collapsed on the ground.
For one moment, Rose thought he was dead. She dropped to her knees next to him and put her head on his chest, but she could still hear his heartbeat, and he was breathing.
“Jennings, call for the doctor,” she ordered. “And rally some more servants and a counterpane to carry him on. We need to get the Duke inside.” For a moment, nobody moved, and while Rose totally understood their reluctance to help such a repugnant man, he was still the Duke of Norfolk and their employer. "Now!" she shouted.
It took eight of them, Rose, Anna, and two kitchen maids included, to get Ernest out of the courtyard and inside. The doctor arrived just as they had managed to get him into a bedchamber and lay him on the bed. He shooed everyone from the room except Rose.
“Do we know what happened to him?" he asked.
“All I know from my sister is he was drunk and had a fall.”
The physician asked her to leave him to examine the Duke and send a footman to help turn him. He said he would come and find her afterward.
When he walked into the drawing room thirty minutes later, he said, “The Duke is very unwell. I believe he has lacerated or ruptured his liver. His abdomen and legs are swollen, and he has bruising over the organ. It is hard to know how bad it is without surgery, but the fact he managed to get back here may indicate it is not life-threatening. However, his alcohol consumption alone could make him vulnerable to a rupture.”
The doctor had witnessed the drunken scenes at the engagement soiree.
“I am aware you are not yet married, and I could take him to a hospital, but it would not be near here. In truth, it is really a case of waiting to see what happens. He will be in need of a nurse—I can organize that. Are you comfortable with him staying in the castle?”
Rose smiled. “I am hardly unchaperoned, and this is the Duke's property. I think he would be more comfortable here.”
She did not disclose his hatred of hospitals and doctors, but she imagined if Ernest lived, he would make that clear himself!
After the doctor had left, Rose walked slowly upstairs to Ernest's quarters and peered around his door. He was in bed. The doctor and footman had clearly stripped off his clothes and covered him up. He was raggedly breathing and appeared small and pale beneath the counterpane. Rose sat on a chair she drew up next to the bed. She knew that if Ernest hadn't had his accident, she'd be fighting him right now in her own bedchamber, just as she'd imagined.
The dream had scared her with its realness. She knew that was how she would feel if he was lunging for her. She had to pray that he lived because, unlike Mary, she believed to pray for his death was abhorrent. But to pray for his recovery to be exceptionally lengthy was perhaps acceptable, she reasoned.
Eventually, Jennings brought the nurse to Ernest’s bedchamber, and Rose could return to her own. As she was dressed for bed that night, she prayed she would not have any more dreams, not even of Will. She was exhausted and just wanted to sleep for days.
“Are you relieved, Your Grace?” Anna asked as she put the wedding dress back into the armoire. Her sentence could be interpreted in two ways but Rose knew what she meant.
"Yes, I am, Anna," she said.
“Me too," Anna smiled as she took her leave.
Anna did not wake Rose the next morning. The sun was already high in the sky and shining through a chink in the curtains when she opened her eyes.
"You needed to sleep, Your Grace.”
It was eleven when she descended the stairs to the entry hall. She resolved to pay Ernest a visit after she had broken her fast to see if his condition had improved. She went to the library first to look for a medical encyclopedia she knew was there, to educate herself so she could understand anything the doctor or nurse told her about liver problems.
The castle's library was a magnificent long room with a wooden vaulted ceiling and dark red curtains. Books ran from one end of the room to the other, and there were several window seats where shewould curl up on a rainy afternoon to read some of the books that piqued her interest. She went to the section where she knew the encyclopedia was and took it, nearly jumping out of her skin when a voice said over her shoulder, "Hello, Rose."
She spun on her heel and looked straight into Will's brown eyes.
“Will!”
“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” he smiled and looked at his watch, arching an eyebrow. “Your butler bade me wait here until you woke. That was two hours ago."
Rose’s heart had leaped in her chest at the sight of him. She had not expected him to come to the castle, and his presence here made her pulse race, along with her breathing. But as she looked at his nonchalant posture and his smiling face, she also felt a flood of anger that rushed up through her veins, so much so that she almost felt compelled to strike him.
“What are you doing here?” She demanded angrily, pinning her fists to her sides just in case.
“That is not much of a welcome.” He smiled and spread his own hands wide.
“But you are not welcome, Mr. Browning,” she said as she glared at him.