Suppressing a sigh, Ash raised himself on his elbows and reached for the glass.
“You are ever so pale,” Helena said, studying him. “Except for your red nose. I have another physic to fix that.”
Ash clenched the glass, held his breath, and drank.
She was right about the brandy, which made up about two-thirds of the concoction, sweetened with honey to take out the sting. Ash tasted more herbs under the mint, though he wasn’t certain what.
All in all, it was far more pleasant than what Aunt Florence or the physician had given him. More like a brandy punch, but Ash decided not to say that. The liquid soothed his throat—he decided to keep that to himself as well.
Helena plucked the empty glass from his hand and carried it to the writing table, before returning to shake out the bedcovers.
Ash jerked the blankets up again. “Have a care for your modesty, madam.”
Helena looked surprised. “My modesty? I am completely dressed. You are the one in your nightshirt. You are also flat on your back with illness—I doubt anyone would believe you’d leap up and ravish me on the spot.”
Ash went hotter than the fever had ever climbed. He was more awake now, and feeling stronger. If she continued to lean over him, smoothing the bedclothes, he might just drag her down to him and forget he was a gentleman.
He stopped himself because of his sickness—he truly did not want to pass it to her. Ash remembered how quickly Olivia had caught her fever, how she’d taken to her bed, still weak from bringing Lily into the world not a month before that.
“Please go,” Ash said, gritting his teeth. “These things happen rapidly—I was fine one moment, the next, quite ill.”
“You worry so, Ash. Perhaps that is why you are adamant about your schedules, fearing you’ll forget something if you don’t mark it down.”
More warmth flooded him as he realized she called him by the name his friends did: Ash. Not Your Grace or even Ashford. No one had ever used his given name, Augustine, not even his mother. Before he’d become duke, he’d had Lewis’s title, Marquess of Wilsdon, and had been called Wils.
“My schedule has gone to the devil with this illness.” Ash coughed again, but it didn’t hurt as much this time. “Pardon my language.”
“Well, the devil can enjoy it.” Helena busied herself at the table, and Ash heard another clink of glass and trickling liquid.
“There is nothing wrong with a timetable,” he argued. “I prefer it to chaos.”
Helena brought the refilled glass to the bed. “A little chaos now and then is not a bad thing. I admit I have a timetable as well, my dear Ash. During the Season, I must remember what invitations I have accepted and to what place I am going and when. But constant rigidness is not good for you. You’d never have taken sick if you were less unbending.”
Ash listened to the last in incredulity. “I am in this bed because I did not adhere to my schedule. I let my aunt talk me into hosting a ball, at which I grew frustrated and tramped about the garden in the freezing cold. This weakened my constitution so that when I went about without my coat the next day, I had no defenses. I’d have noticed it was cold in the garden and gone back inside if you hadn’t followed me …”
He trailed off. He knew good and well he’d not noticed the icy air because he’d taken Helena into his arms and kissed her.
Helena flushed. “I worried about you wandering in the dark …”
She too trailed off, her cheeks pretty with her rosy blush. Ash found himself reaching to stroke one.
Helena jumped. She mistook the reason he’d lifted his hand and pushed the glass into it. “This will ease your stuffed nose.”
She turned quickly away, agitation in every line.
Should Ash speak of the kiss? Or continue to pretend it hadn’t happened? That he hadn’t realized what a beautiful woman she was?
Helena, at the table, moved glasses and bottles purposefully, her movements graceful. The tapes on her cap caught in her golden curls.
Ash closed his eyes and sipped the next concoction. This one was not as sweet, but pleasantly mellow. Again, it soothed his throat, and its aroma drifted into his nose, clearing it a bit.
“What is in this?” he asked.
“Nothing exotic. Drink it all.”
Ash complied. He swallowed the final drops and thumped the glass to the bedside table. “I am not cured yet.”
Helena gave him an exasperated look over her shoulder. “Of course not, silly. You must take all my doses over the course of several days. Then you’ll be fine.”
She returned to the bed, more composed after this exchange, and set a plate of grapes next to the empty glass. “These will fill your stomach and lighten the humors.”
Ash ate a few grapes after she turned away, depositing the seeds on a clean dish she’d left for the purpose.
“I’ll not marry any of those ladies, Helena,” he said quietly. His voice sounded almost normal, without the scratch of the last two days.
Helena continued to fuss about the table. “We’ll talk of that when you’re well.”
“It is unfair to the young ladies. From the looks I caught, everyone at that ball believed I’d hosted it to search for my next duchess.”
Helena faced him, resting her hands on the table behind her. “Because everyone knows you need a wife. Including your children, which was why they went to such lengths to compose that letter to you.”
“Lewis’s doing.” Ash couldn’t help a surge of pride. “He is growing up faster than I realize.”
“That is why this time with them is so precious. Lewis will go to school soon, and find his own friends, his own interests. Gracious, my husband barely knew his father and mother, only seeing them from afar until he was quite grown up.”
Helena rarely spoke of her husband, a good-for-nothing fop. If Courtland hadn’t managed to break his neck, he’d have broken her heart with mistresses, gambling debts, and duels.
“He was never good enough for you,” Ash heard himself say.
She stilled. “Pardon?”
“I know I should not speak ill of the dead, but your husband was not a good match for you. You need someone who will listen when you rattle on, who will match you in wits and sense.” And passion, he added silently. He’d sensed much of it in her when he’d kissed her.
Helena moved her gaze to the window, sunlight catching in her dark eyes. “Many felt he was the perfect match for my wit—as in, between the two of us, we had little.”
Ash grew indignant. “They were wrong. You can certainly talk, but you aren’t a featherhead. You have much good sense, which you disguise by hedging around it. You hide your intelligence, though I cannot fathom why.”
“No one wants a clever lady,” Helena said. “Quite irritating, is a woman who claims to be intelligent.”
“Well, it does not irritate me.”
The smile she gave him lit fires in his heart. “How kind of you. But I’ve always said you were kind.”
Kind? The formidable Duke of Ashford, who demanded perfection of the entire world, was kind?
He wasn’t. He knew full well that Merrivale had suggested Ash retreat to Somerset because he was making everyone in the ministry spare with his meticulousness. His expectations were high, his disapproval swift.
“Very good of you to say so,” Ash said stiffly.
“You do not believe me, I see, but it is true. You adore your children and take every sort of care for them. Your servants are well treated and paid a good wage. You indulge your friend, Mr. Lovell, though he is as unlike you as another gentleman can be. And you’ve allowed me to come and nurse you without bodily showing me the door.”
“I couldn’t at the moment if I wanted to.” Ash cleared his throat. “I’m pathetically weak.”