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“Then Ophelia will ring, and the whole house will come at a run, as it has done every hour since my fall.” A thread of the old dryness, worn thin but holding. “Mama. Please. I should like a quiet half hour more than I should like the London physician, and it costs nothing.”

Lady Archer hovered. Her mouth was already filling with the next objection. Mama rose and had her by the arm before the sentence could leave her.

“Come, Delilah. He is right, and the soup will not keep, and you will be no use to him, fainting.”

Over the gray head, briefly, her mother’s eyes met Ophelia’s. The question had lived in them for a fortnight. How do you bear it so calmly, child? Ophelia gave back the answer she always gave, which was nothing at all. Mama had a great deal to bear already. Ophelia had no intention of adding her troubles to that burden.

It took several more minutes and two more assurances to get Lady Archer to the door, trailing instructions about the barley water. Then the latch clicked. The weeping went away down the corridor toward the stairs, thinning as it went.

Edward’s eyes were closed. For one dropped heartbeat she thought he had stopped. He had not. A slow breath was drawn.

“Faugh,” he said, without opening them. “If my mother had pressed my hand tenderly once more, I believe I should have died of it on the spot, and think how she would have wept then.”

“You are a wicked, ungrateful invalid.”

“I am.”

He opened his eyes, and there was actual pleasure in them, the first she had seen all day.

“Do you know what you are, Ophelia? You are the only person left in this house who does not grieve at me.”

Edward soughed heavily, pulling at the bed sheet beneath his hand in weak frustration.

“My mother weeps. Your mother sighs. Stroud has taken to setting down the tray as if it were a wreath. Every soul who comes through that door holds my funeral at me twice daily, and then there is you, sitting there straight as a Sunday, counting my breaths and thinking I do not know it.”

Her chin came up before she could stop it. “I do not.”

“You count everything. You counted the drops when the surgeon measured the laudanum. I find it a great comfort.” He moved against the pillows, wincing at whatever the leg said to him, and tipped his head at her reticule where it hung from the chair. “Come. Deal, before they think of a reason to come back up.”

She should have made him rest. That was what a devoted betrothed would do. Smooth his blanket. Dim the candle. Murmur about sleep. Instead she drew out her father’s pack, soft at the corners from years of use, and began stripping the low cards for piquet. Edward watched her hands with open contentment. This, she thought, was why she had said yes to him in the spring. Not love. She had never pretended it was love, nor had he. But he was the only man in England besides her father who had ever looked at Miss Ophelia Clarke, the English rose they had all agreed she was, and been pleased to find a gamester hiding underneath.

She dealt onto the counterpane. His hands trembled too badly now to hold a fan of twelve, so she propped his cards in a fold of the sheet, angled away from her.

“On your honor,” he said.

“On my honor.”

“The honor of a card-sharp.”

“The honor of a card-sharp’s daughter,” she corrected, “which is a different and superior article,” and he laughed, which cost him. The laugh broke up into a cough that went on too long. She sat with her spine straight and did not count. Did not count. Did not count.

They played one hand. She let him win the point. He knew she had let him. He called her a shameless cheat in a voice like wet paper, and for a few minutes the room was almost an ordinary room.

Then he laid his cards face-down on the sheet, which meant the game was over and the other game had begun.

“No rider today,” he said. It was not a question.

“The roads are all mud. Mr. Pole said four days to London when he went, and a day at Doctors’ Commons if the Archbishop’s clerks are quick, and four days home.” She kept her voice level. A recitation of the odds. Nothing more. “He has been gone eight. It could be any hour. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Any hour,” Edward repeated. He was looking at the canopy overhead, doing his own arithmetic. She watched him do it and knew the figures on both sides of his ledger, because they were the same as hers. Nine days for a piece of parchment. The fever did not publish its schedule.

“So the only task before you,” she said, “is to be alive to make use of it. Which means the broth, which you have not touched, and sleep, which you refuse, and letting the laudanum do its work.”

“The laudanum makes me stupid, and I cannot afford to be stupid yet.”

“You can afford it better than you can afford another night like Tuesday. Edward, your only occupation now is your health. Everything else can be set aside.”

“Ophelia.” He turned his head and looked at her. Nothing in his face but reason. A reasonable look, laid down as if it were an unimportant card, which was the cruelest thing he could have brought to the table. “We both know I am not leaving this bed.”