His Californian Countess Read Online Free PDF

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    “Oh, my head,” Amber heard the earl mutter as she turned away from the door. He stabbed his hand into his hair as he tried to sit. “What in God’s name did I drink last night?”
    She rushed to the bed and pushed him back down. “You are quite ill with scarlet fever.”
    “Pixie. What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice very hoarse and a little slurred; she saw that it pained him to speak.
    “I heard you earlier. You’d collapsed. I foolishly entered your cabin and sent for the doctor. He quarantined me in here with you. I’ve been named your nurse, your lordship,” she said, leaving out the embarrassing, yet pertinent, facts.
    This time he managed to sit up. “Oh, please, do lay off the your lordship business. I’ve become rather fond of American lack of deference.” He looked down at himself, then back up at her. “It seems as though we should be on a first-name basis.” He glanced again at his lap. She had left him in only his underdrawers. The sheet slid to his waist, leaving his torso quite bare, and she couldn’t look away from the sight of his muscular chest.
    Then he sank back to his pillows. “Devil take it! I cannot be ill. My daughter was, but I thought myself above it.”
    “Do calm down,” she begged, noting his overly bright eyes and the very scarlet look of the rash covering his body. “You’ll get well. See if you don’t.”
    “I won’t see anything at all if I don’t,” he grumbled crossly.
    Her grandmother’s book had warned of nervous irritability and this was certainly a change from what she’d seen of him on deck. “I don’t know much about caring for the sick, but I promise to follow all the doctor’s instructions. And I have my grandmother’s healing book for guidance, as well.”
    “Are you speaking of that drunken sot I met the day I booked passage?”
    “He was quite sober today, I think.”
    “Oh, lovely!” he groused and tried to sit up again. “My life is in the hands of a drunken doctor and the observations of a backwoods grandmother and her granddaughter who is barely out of the schoolroom.”
    “Well!”
    His over-bright eyes widened and he grimaced, then put a shaking hand to his forehead. “I am so sorry. I’m not usually so easily annoyed. Where have my manners gone?”
    “You’re sick. But perhaps you’re hungry. I have some broth for you.”
    He shook his head. “No, I’m not in the least hungry. What I am is worried for my daughter.”
    So he was married. That should make caring for him easier. She set to bathing his face and neck to lessen the fever. “What is your daughter’s name?” she asked, needing to learn as much as possible about him in case a letter had to be written to his kin.
    “Meara,” he said quietly. “She’s only seven years old. I’ve raised her here with the help of my old nurse.”
    “Do mothers in England not help raise their children?”
    “She died a few months after Meara’s birth.”
    “I am so sorry. I understand your worry for your child. But have you no family to care for her? Not that I think you will not survive,” she added quickly.
    “I became the earl at a tender age. My uncle was my guardian and he made my life miserable. If I die, Meara would have him as her guardian and he will succeed me. What if I die of this?” He grasped her arm in a steely grip and gazed up at her with fever-bright eyes. “I can’t die!”
    Before Amber could respond, he started to breathe oddly. Almost panting. After a minute or so between breaths he said, “Oh. God. Chamber pot. Hurry.”
    She got the pot to him before he was violently sick, losing all the medicine she’d fought to get into him. She stood there, feeling inadequate and embarrassed for him.
    When he was finished, he nearly pitched out of the narrow bed from weakness. Amber made a grab for both his shoulder and the pot. She pushed him to the pillow, then took the foul-smelling pot to the porthole and dumped it. The sea air smelled so