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ill.”
    “Gaol fever!” the maid yelled. She threw her hands in the air and fled, almost knocking the bucket of water out of a wide-eyed boy’s hands. Rex grabbed for the bucket as the boy stared at Miss Carville’s half-naked body. Rex hastily pulled down the remnants of her skirt to cover her legs.
    “You, out!” he bellowed at the boy. “Fetch more water, and some soup if you can find it, or biscuits and tea.” Then he once more ordered the butler to send the footman for Murchison, a woman—any woman—and his cousin Daniel, in that order.
    “I . . . I know of a woman nearby. My, ah, sister.”
    “Get her, man!”
    In mere seconds—and mere doors away, obviously the one Dodd claimed was being redecorated—a female staggered into the room. She did not look like Dodd, but the patchouli she must have bathed in did smell like him. Dodd suddenly had his shoes on, Rex noted, but the female did not have her gown fastened. Her face paint was smeared and her lips were swollen. She had a bottle of wine—from the Royce wine cellars, Rex guessed—in her hand while the other hand held the gaping front of her gown over fleshy, flabby breasts.
    “You’ve brought your whore into my mother’s house?” Rex shouted at the butler, who was edging toward the doorway. Even Rex, as far from polite society’s ways as he could get, knew that was an outrage. “And here, to tend to a lady?”
    “Lady, my arse,” the female said. “She’s nobbut a light skirt from what they say, and a cold-blooded murderer to boot. Who’s to say she’s better’n old Nell?”
    “I say it, damn it! Get out, before I throw you out. And you”—he turned toward Dodd—“if you want to keep your post past tomorrow, you’ll make certain your doxy is gone without lifting any of the countess’s silver, and then you will find a respectable woman to come help. Try next door if you need to. And when the footman gets back from finding my cousin and my valet, post a message to Lady Royce, saying that her goddaughter has arrived.”
    He did not speak his thoughts, that the countess should have been in London while her godchild was in peril, not leaving him to comfort a delicate female, not abandoning yet another innocent to his or her fate.
    If Miss Carville was innocent. He still did not know.
    “Tell Lady Royce to come home now.”
    “I cannot give orders to my mistress!”
    “She sent for me. Now send for her. Miss Carville is her responsibility.”
    Dodd bowed, shoved Nell ahead of him, and ran to do Rex’s bidding. “Yes sir, my lord. Right away, Captain, ah, your lordship.” Good positions were hard to find. Besides, Viscount Rexford looked like he’d have Dodd’s head if his demands were not met, no matter how unreasonable. The butler had heard the war reports as well as the rumors. Everyone had. No one, it seemed, disobeyed his lordship, not ever. Or else. Murder and mayhem flashed from those ice-blue eyes, for certain. Dodd vowed to get the housekeeper back if he had to drag her himself. Yes, and Lady Royce, too.
    Once the room was empty of servants, Rex stared at the unmoving form on the bed. “You are Lady Royce’s mess,” he declared, more for his own sake than the febrile woman’s. “Not mine.”
    But the countess could not come fast enough, and Rex could not walk away or lie to himself, which made it his mess after all.
    He repeated Murchison’s French blasphemies, then a few of the cavalry’s finest curses. The woman was still lying atop the covers, in rags and in need. Damn. He could not leave her like that. He could not wait for a maidservant, either. Murchison was an hour away, at least. Who knew how long before the doctor would arrive? The female was shivering, despite beads of sweat on her forehead. He lit the coals in the room’s fireplace.
    Oh, lord. He gave up the curses and prayed harder than when he’d found himself facing that party of advance French scouts.
    Hell, they were the enemy; Miss Carville was a