By God, she’d end up in an insane asylum. They’d cut off all her hair and make her run around naked, and turn the hose on her!
“Patrick, don’t let them turn the hose on me.” Linley reached out and clutched his arm with an amazing amount of force.
He looked around the room, and then back down at her hand, white-knuckled around his wrist. “What?”
“My brain sickness! Don’t tell anyone about my brain or they will go in and scratch it out.”
Patrick stared at her.
“It will be our secret,” she said. “We like secrets, remember? Like the one we keep from my father, only this one is the most important one. Because if they find out my secret, they’ll take me away.”
“What is your secret, Linley?”
She blinked up at him. “Well, if you don’t know, then I can’t tell you. It is a secret.”
Patrick wrenched his arm free and bolted out of the room. “Bedford!” He didn’t care if the monks were praying, he screamed as loud as he could down the corridor. “Bedford!”
Linley’s father appeared in the stairwell, breathless. “What is it?”
“It’s Linley,” he said. “She’s talking nonsense.”
Sir Bedford followed Patrick into Linley’s room, where she sat rigid-backed in bed. Sweat drenched brown hair stuck to her face. A slow drip of blood ran down her left nostril.
“I told you not to tell!” she screamed, mopping at the bright red blood with the palm of her hand, and then smearing it across the front of her nightgown. “Look what they’ve done!” The more blood she saw, the more frantic she became. “They pulled out my brain like the Egyptians! Papa, what have they done with my brain?”
“The fever,” her father whispered to Patrick as they watched Linley dig through the bedclothes for her missing brain. “I’m afraid it’s worse than I thought.”
“Is there anything you can do? Anything I can do?”
Sir Bedford shook his head. “We will just have to keep her calm. Hopefully, it will run its course in another day or two.”
The gentlemen stepped out into the hall where Archie, Reginald, and Schoville stood. They had heard the screaming and ran upstairs as fast as they could. Now they looked at Linley’s father for answers.
“It is a nervous fever,” he told them. “Delirium.”
Archie rubbed the muscles on the back of his neck, wincing every time he heard Linley call out. “She needs a doctor.”
“Where will we find a doctor?” Sir Bedford asked. “We are a hundred miles from civilization, at least. And she needs an English doctor. I’ll wager there isn’t one of those within a week’s walk from here.”
They all hung their heads. A proper English physician was an impossibility.
“Maybe the monks can help her,” Patrick said. “Will you let me ask them?”
Sir Bedford nodded. “If she does not improve in two days time, you can ask.”
“Two days?”
“We will wait to see if the fever runs its course. Most do, you understand.”
Patrick did not understand. He did not understand at all! Linley was sick. She needed help, and if it were up to him, he would take whatever help he could from whoever was willing to give it.
Suddenly, the commotion in the other room ceased. It grew silent. Unsettlingly silent. The men rushed into her room, finding Linley slumped over her cot. She was asleep.
“Someone should be with her at all times,” Patrick told them. “We could do it in turns like we did with the tiger watch.” He glanced from face to face. “Two of us sit up with her at night, the others during the day.”
Linley’s father nodded. “I agree.”
Reginald pulled back the bed covers while Archie helped maneuver Linley back into bed. “Archie and I can take the first watches,” he said. “Bedford and Schoville can take the next.”
“But that leaves me out,” Patrick reminded them.
“Exactly.” Reginald tucked the covers up around Linley’s chin. “I don’t think you should be left alone with her for six hours at a time.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I think you’re somehow to blame for all of this.”
After seeing Linley safe and warm in bed, Archie stood up and looked Patrick in the eyes. “I agree with Reginald,” he said. “Linley is incapacitated. You could try to force yourself on her.”
“For Christ sakes, I am not a rapist!” It took all of Patrick’s self-control not to brawl with Reginald and Archie right there in Linley’s bedroom.
“Enough! Enough!” Sir Bedford said. “Archie, Lord Kyre will take your watch.”
“What? No!” Archie said. “Why?”
“Because you are acting very selfishly right now. I should think you would be able to put aside your differences for Linley’s sake.” Sir Bedford ushered them all out of the room. “The first watch begins at noon. I will take that one. Lord Kyre, your turn starts at six. Schoville will relieve you at midnight, and then Reginald will take up watch the following morning.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX