“Do you remember what he did?” Honoria whispered.
Lady Winstead nodded. “Everything,” she said softly.
Honoria waited for more. And then she wished she hadn’t.
Her mother finally looked up. “We’re going to have to tie him down.”
Chapter Ten
It took less than ten minutes to turn Marcus’s bedroom into a makeshift operating theater. Mrs. Wetherby returned with hot water and a supply of clean cloths. Two footmen were instructed to tie Marcus tightly to the bed, which they did, despite the horror that showed clearly on their faces.
Her mother asked for scissors. The sharpest, smallest pair they had. “I need to cut away the dead skin,” she told Honoria, tiny lines of determination forming at the corners of her mouth. “I watched the doctor do it with your father.”
“But did you do it?” Honoria asked.
Her mother looked her in the eye, then turned away. “No.”
“Oh.” Honoria swallowed. There didn’t seem to be anything else that could possibly serve as a reply.
“It’s not difficult as long as one can control one’s nerves,” her mother said. “One doesn’t need to be terribly precise.”
Honoria looked at Marcus, then back at her mother, mouth agape. “Not precise? What do you mean? It’s his leg!”
“I realize that,” her mother replied. “But I promise you, it won’t hurt him if I cut away too much.”
“Not hurt—”
“Well, of course it will hurt.” Lady Winstead looked down at Marcus with an expression of regret. “That’s why we had to tie him down. But it will do no permanent damage. It’s better to cut away too much than too little. It is absolutely essential that we eliminate all of the infection.”
Honoria nodded. It made sense. It was gruesome, but it made sense.
“I’m going to get started now,” her mother told her. “There is much I can do even without the scissors.”
“Of course.” Honoria watched as Lady Winstead sat at Marcus’s side and dipped a cloth in the steaming water. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Honoria asked, feeling rather ineffectual at the foot of the bed.
“Sit on the other side,” her mother answered. “Near his head. Talk to him. He might find comfort in it.”
Honoria wasn’t so sure that Marcus found comfort in anything she did, but she knew she would find comfort in it. Anything would be better than standing around like an idiot, doing absolutely nothing.
“Hello, Marcus,” she said, pulling the chair close to the bed.
She didn’t expect him to answer, and indeed, he did not.
“You’re quite sick, you know,” she continued, trying to keep her voice bright and happy, even if her words were not. She swallowed, then continued in the brightest voice she could manage, “But it turns out that my mother is a bit of an expert at this sort of thing. Isn’t that remarkable?” She looked over at her mother with a swelling sense of pride. “I must confess, I had no idea she knew such things.” She leaned down and murmured in his ear, “I rather thought she was the sort who would faint at the sight of blood.”
“I heard that,” her mother said.
Honoria gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry. But—”
“There is no need to apologize.” Her mother glanced over at her with a wry smile before resuming her work. When she spoke, however, she did not look up. “I have not always been as . . .”
There was a hint of a pause, just enough for Honoria to realize that her mother was not quite sure what to say.
“As resolute as you may have needed me to be,” Lady Winstead finally finished.
Honoria sat very still, sucking in her upper lip as she let her mother’s words settle upon her. It was an apology, just as much as if her mother had actually said the words I’m sorry.
But it was also a request. Her mother did not want to discuss it any further. It had been difficult enough just to say what she did. And so Honoria accepted the apology in exactly the manner her mother hoped she would. She turned back to Marcus and said—
“Anyway, I don’t think anyone thought to look at your leg. The cough, you know. The doctor thought that was the cause of the fever.”
Marcus let out a little cry of pain. Honoria glanced quickly down toward her mother, who was now working with the scissors Mrs. Wetherby had brought. She’d opened them fully and was pointing one end toward Marcus’s leg like a scalpel. With one fluid motion, her mother made a long cut, right down the middle of the wound.