Helen Dickson - When Marrying a Duke...

The following day Marietta’s father became very ill, the worry of it driving all thoughts of returning Lady Trevellyan’s fan from her mind. She had been in the breakfast room when Yang Ling came to tell her. Marietta sprang to her feet, her face blanching in sudden terror.

‘It’s your father, Miss Marietta. He’s had some sort of attack. The doctor has been sent for.’

Her father was in bed propped up against the pillows, the mosquito net having been turned back. Fighting for breath, he turned his eyes to his daughter as she stumbled across the bedroom.

‘Father—what—what has happened?’

She sank to her knees beside the bed and took hold of one of his hands, which rested on the snow-white sheet, and into her head came the fragmented thought that this was the first time she had seen her father ill in bed. Despite her worries concerning his health of late, he had always been about his business. The thought that he might die terrified her and she clung to him as a child clings to its mother in a childish nightmare.

‘What is it, Father? Tell me? Oh dear, where is the doctor?’

‘Calm down, Marietta. It’s only a bit of a turn.’ His voice was a thread, but his blue-tinted lips turned up in a small smile.

‘I know, I know, but we can’t be too careful.’

The doctor came—old Dr White, who attended her father on a regular basis. He was a tall, angular man, dressed from head to toe in black except for a stiff white collar trapped beneath his jawbone. He took his patient’s wrist and placed his ear to his chest and whispered to Marietta that he didn’t like the sound of it, but to keep him warm and feed him nourishing broth and custard.

‘Give him this draught to help him sleep and I’ll call again tomorrow.’ It was laudanum. ‘If you should need me, Miss Westwood, send one of the servants and I will come at once.’

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