His Californian Countess

And so was she.

She dropped the book in her lap and sighed. The healing book hadn’t contradicted the doctor, but it did add some suggestions. She quickly went to the door and asked the cabin boy stationed there to request several herbs she was supposed to make into a tea.

“Oh, my head,” Amber heard the earl mutter as she turned away from the door. He stabbed his hand into his hair as he tried to sit. “What in God’s name did I drink last night?”

She rushed to the bed and pushed him back down. “You are quite ill with scarlet fever.”

“Pixie. What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice very hoarse and a little slurred; she saw that it pained him to speak.

“I heard you earlier. You’d collapsed. I foolishly entered your cabin and sent for the doctor. He quarantined me in here with you. I’ve been named your nurse, your lordship,” she said, leaving out the embarrassing, yet pertinent, facts.

This time he managed to sit up. “Oh, please, do lay off the your lordship business. I’ve become rather fond of American lack of deference.” He looked down at himself, then back up at her. “It seems as though we should be on a first-name basis.” He glanced again at his lap. She had left him in only his underdrawers. The sheet slid to his waist, leaving his torso quite bare, and she couldn’t look away from the sight of his muscular chest.

Then he sank back to his pillows. “Devil take it! I cannot be ill. My daughter was, but I thought myself above it.”

“Do calm down,” she begged, noting his overly bright eyes and the very scarlet look of the rash covering his body. “You’ll get well. See if you don’t.”

“I won’t see anything at all if I don’t,” he grumbled crossly.

Her grandmother’s book had warned of nervous irritability and this was certainly a change from what she’d seen of him on deck. “I don’t know much about caring for the sick, but I promise to follow all the doctor’s instructions. And I have my grandmother’s healing book for guidance, as well.”

“Are you speaking of that drunken sot I met the day I booked passage?”

“He was quite sober today, I think.”

“Oh, lovely!” he groused and tried to sit up again. “My life is in the hands of a drunken doctor and the observations of a backwoods grandmother and her granddaughter who is barely out of the schoolroom.”

“Well!”

His over-bright eyes widened and he grimaced, then put a shaking hand to his forehead. “I am so sorry. I’m not usually so easily annoyed. Where have my manners gone?”

“You’re sick. But perhaps you’re hungry. I have some broth for you.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not in the least hungry. What I am is worried for my daughter.”

So he was married. That should make caring for him easier. She set to bathing his face and neck to lessen the fever. “What is your daughter’s name?” she asked, needing to learn as much as possible about him in case a letter had to be written to his kin.

“Meara,” he said quietly. “She’s only seven years old. I’ve raised her here with the help of my old nurse.”

“Do mothers in England not help raise their children?”

“She died a few months after Meara’s birth.”

“I am so sorry. I understand your worry for your child. But have you no family to care for her? Not that I think you will not survive,” she added quickly.

“I became the earl at a tender age. My uncle was my guardian and he made my life miserable. If I die, Meara would have him as her guardian and he will succeed me. What if I die of this?” He grasped her arm in a steely grip and gazed up at her with fever-bright eyes. “I can’t die!”

Before Amber could respond, he started to breathe oddly. Almost panting. After a minute or so between breaths he said, “Oh. God. Chamber pot. Hurry.”

She got the pot to him before he was violently sick, losing all the medicine she’d fought to get into him. She stood there, feeling inadequate and embarrassed for him.

When he was finished, he nearly pitched out of the narrow bed from weakness. Amber made a grab for both his shoulder and the pot. She pushed him to the pillow, then took the foul-smelling pot to the porthole and dumped it. The sea air smelled so refreshing she left it open.

When she looked back at him he was no longer awake, lying so still it frightened her till she saw his chest rise with a breath. Her worry over treating him as a patient, after the sensual dreams she’d had, vanished. She hesitantly laid her hand over his heart. And wished she hadn’t, for his heart didn’t beat at the same rate as hers. It fluttered in so quick a rhythm she could scarcely count the beats.

His skin beneath her hand was dry and burning to the touch. His neck, shoulders and most of his torso were bright red with the rash. And her only weapons in the battle were a cool cloth, the powders Dr. Bennet had given her and the herbal teas she’d concocted.

She worked at it hour upon hour. Sometimes she wiped him down and, occasionally, when her arms and legs grew too tired to work, she covered his torso, limbs and forehead with wet cloths. That respite gave her the strength to begin all over again.

Twice more through the night she spooned the powders mixed with water into his mouth. She constantly tried to get him to drink the tea. He was often like a little bird, taking what was offered, but with his eyes shut. Other times he shook his head, refusing anything nourishing.

He developed a rattling cough about the noon hour the next day. She looked in her book, but neither there nor in the doctor’s instructions was a cough mentioned. Exhausted, with little sleep since the first night aboard, Amber sat next to his bed, put her head back and slept.

In her dreams Lord Adair visited. Manly, healthy and hungry—for her. Now that she knew his name she moaned it aloud as he kissed her. “Jamie.”

Chapter Three

Jamie woke, his skin on fire. His bed pitched and tilted, making his head swim. “Stop!” he yelled and was immediately sorry. He took a gasping breath past a throat that must have been sliced to ribbons by some fiend with a knife. Then someone raked fire across his chest. But the fire was cold. He shivered. Cold should feel good, but it made his skin burn all the more.

“I’m so sorry,” a sweet voice crooned. “I’m trying to keep your fever down. Maybe if I just laid the cloth on your chest. Would that feel better? I’m sorry I didn’t know this hurt you so.”

The voice. He knew that voice. He forced his eyes open. “Pixie? Is it you?”

“My name is Amber. I do believe thinking of me as Helena is less annoying than this fixation you have with pixies. Why do you persist in this?”

What a foolish question, he thought. “You look … like a pixie,” he gasped. “Tiny.”

“I’m quite capable.” His pixie grew somehow, then seemed to float over him, frowning down at him. Her frown wasn’t the least threatening, though. It was quite the most adorable frown he’d ever seen. He smiled at that. Although he felt like death, she lightened his spirits. “Ever met … a pixie?” he challenged. “Wily … creatures. Eire’s full of … the little people.”

“But we’re in America. Well, not exactly there just now, as we’re on the high seas, but this is an American ship. It’s even called the Young America.”

He struggled to grasp that. “On a ship? Why am I … on a ship?”

“You were searching for Helena Conwell and mistook me for her,” his pixie explained.

He was looking for Helena? Oh, yes. He had to make sure she was safe. And he’d left Meara in New York recuperating. He swallowed. Oh, God. He was sick. He wasn’t supposed to get sick. Not like this. What if he died and left Meara to the mercy of Uncle Oswald? She wasn’t safe.

Tears blinded him and he closed his eyes to hide the depth of his emotions. “Meara,” he said, wanting to explain why his lovely nursemaid had to make sure he lived, but the name came out sounding as if he were crying. He kept his eyes closed, feeling the tears he couldn’t stop run into his hair. Embarrassed and desperate, he decided to hide in the sleep that called to him. He’d hidden the real him for years and done a good job of it. He could do it again.

The next time he woke it was night and a lantern lit the room. He lay, watching the lantern swing to the same rhythm as the rocking of the room. Why would a room move? he asked himself. Earthquake? He’d felt minor tremors in California, but those never made the room rock this way. He closed his eyes, dizziness swamping him, and groaned.

“Jamie?”

It was the pixie calling softly to him. She laid a cool cloth over his forehead. He opened his eyes again. Bathed in the light from overhead, he saw her. “You’ve returned,” he said, then winced at how painful his throat was.

“I didn’t leave. You fell asleep. You must try to stay with me this time. Could you eat some fresh broth?”

He shook his head. He hated to disappoint her, but he couldn’t imagine eating anything with the room swaying as it was.