Her Family Cast Her Out for Being Barren — A Widowed Duke with Five Heirs Chose Her.

Chapter 5

The crying came from Oliver’s room.

Eleanora almost turned away. Almost remembered Mrs. Harlow’s warning looks. Almost heard Julian’s cold voice, the Dowager’s cutting words, the weight of a house that had made it clear she was not welcome. But the sound was small and frightened, the kind of crying that did not care about any of that.

She pushed the door open gently.

Oliver was curled at the foot of his bed, knees drawn to his chest, cheeks flushed an unhealthy red. When he saw her, he flinched, then seemed to remember he was too tired to be afraid.

“My head hurts,” he whispered. “And I am cold. But I am hot too. That does not make sense.”

Eleanora crossed the room and pressed her hand to his forehead before she had even decided to. Burning. “How long have you felt like this?”

“Since this morning. I did not tell anyone.” His eyes were glassy, too bright. “Nobody comes when I call anymore.”

Something in her chest cracked clean through. “I am here now.”

She rang for Mrs. Harlow, who took one look at Oliver and went pale beneath her starch. “I will send for the physician, Your Grace. But he is two hours away at this time of night. The roads —”

“Then we do not wait for him.” Eleanora was already moving. “I need cool water. Vinegar, if you have it. Clean linen. Now, please.”

Mrs. Harlow hesitated. Old loyalty warring with old suspicion. Then she went.

Marcus arrived as Eleanora was ringing out the first cloth. He stood in the doorway, jaw tight, the particular stillness of a man who had stood in this exact spot before and lost. “It is a fever,” she said without looking up. “High. But his pulse is steady. I have seen this before. My own governess took ill the same way every winter. It breaks if we keep him cool and keep fluids in him. I need you to trust me for the next several hours.”

He did not answer. But he did not leave either. He sat in the corner chair and watched, hands clenched between his knees, while Eleanora worked.

The night went long and ugly. Oliver’s fever climbed before it broke. He shivered, then burned, then mumbled half-words that were not sentences. His small body trembled under the blankets, and every time his eyes fluttered open, there was confusion there, and fear. Eleanora did not stop. Cool cloth to his forehead. Water to his lips. Her voice low and steady even when her hands were not.

“You are not going anywhere,” she told him more than once. The same words she had once needed someone to say to her. “I am not leaving this room.”

Near three in the morning, Oliver’s breathing finally evened. The flush in his cheeks dimmed to something almost normal. The death-grip of his fingers on the bedsheet loosened. Eleanora sat back on her heels, exhausted, and found Marcus watching her with an expression she could not name. Something between disbelief and a grief he had not expected to feel that night.

“He has passed the worst of it,” she said.

“You do not know that.”

“I do. I have sat through enough fevers to know the difference.”

He said nothing else. But he did not go to bed either. He stayed in that chair until dawn. And so did she. Neither of them spoke of why.

Oliver woke at first light, weak but clear-eyed, and looked up to find Eleanora still there, her hair loose, her dress creased, her eyes red from lack of sleep. “You stayed,” he said. Wondering. Like it was a fact he needed to test out loud.

“I said I would.”

He reached for her hand. Small fingers closed around hers with a grip stronger than his size suggested. “Mama.”

The word landed in the room like something breaking open. Eleanora’s breath caught. Across the room, Marcus went very still.

“You do not have to call me that,” she managed.

“I know.” Oliver did not let go of her hand. “I want to.”