She returned to the library after he slept and worked past midnight. Around two in the morning, she found it buried deep in the oldest journal, in dense Latin she translated twice to be certain.
An apothecary in 1693 had described a case nearly identical to Arthur's: a deep, infected wound that conventional treatment had worsened. The compound he described was specific: extracts from certain mold growths combined with particular herbs, prepared in a particular sequence, applied as a poultice over several days.
She read it three times. Then she sat back, pressed her hands flat on the table, and felt with absolute clarity that this was the answer.
Three nights later, while she changed the cool cloth on his feverish brow, Arthur caught her hand—not roughly, but gently, as if he were not entirely sure he was doing it. The candlelight was low. His fever had broken slightly, leaving him lucid in the fragile way of people cooling after a long burn.
He looked up at her, and the careful distance he usually kept around himself was entirely gone.
"You should not be kind to me," he said quietly. "It is not a safe thing to do. I am not going to get better, Daphne. I have accepted that. But you are young. You have a great deal of life still. I will not have you waste it staying close to someone who is going to—"
"Don't," she said. "Don't say it."
He looked at her. She was too close—the kind of close that people who were not in love could not quite justify, and the space between them was very small and very warm. For one long second, she thought...
He turned his face away deliberately, with the care of a man making a decision that cost him something. "Go to sleep, Daphne," he said very quietly.
She stood up slowly. She picked up her candle.
She was going to find him a cure. That was all there was to it.
Four
She had been working on the compound for nine days when the carriages came.
The morning was bright and cold, one of those November days when frost stayed on the grass until noon. She was in the still room off the kitchen, which she had taken over for her work. The compound required precision: mold extract sourced from an apothecary in Bath, herbs gathered from the kitchen garden, the preparation done in the exact sequence the journal described, left to mature over several days. She checked her notes against the text every time she moved to the next step.
She was measuring when she heard the horses.
Through the entrance hall window, she saw two carriages rolling up the gravel drive. She recognized the crest on the first one: her father's. The wide, red shape descending from the second was Earl Cranbrook. Behind them, a third man with a physician's bag: Dr. Felton, a royal physician appointed, she learned, at someone's request.
They assembled in the grand hall. The earl stood in its center with the air of a man who believed every room belonged to him by right.
"We are here on a matter of law," he said, without greeting. "It has come to our attention that the Duke of Blackwood is physically and mentally unfit to have entered into a valid contract of marriage. The lady was coerced under conditions of duress."
"I was not coerced," Daphne said.
"And we are prepared to seek a court order dissolving the marriage on grounds of the Duke's incapacity."
There was a sound on the staircase. Arthur came down slowly, dressed formally, his face composed. He had insisted on being present when Daphne told him what was happening. She had said he should rest; he had said, "This is my house." And she had not argued, because he was right.
He stood at the foot of the stairs, and the authority in his bearing was so complete that the earl stopped talking.
"You have a court order?" Arthur said calmly.
"We have the process to obtain one," her father said. "Dr. Felton will examine you, and if he confirms the physical deterioration—"
"I know what you are doing," Arthur said. He looked at the earl with steady dark eyes. "You want the ducal assets assessed as belonging to an incapacitated man's estate, which requires the marriage dissolved first."
Cranbrook's red face went darker.
Daphne stepped forward. She had been doing calculations since she heard the carriages, standing perfectly still while the unwanted visitors were shown inside. The calculations were not in her favor, and that was simply information she intended to work with.
"By what measure will Dr. Felton assess my husband?" she asked pleasantly.
"The Duke's physical state," said Dr. Felton carefully.
"And if he is not visibly deteriorating?" she said. She watched the earl look at Arthur, standing still and controlled at the foot of the stairs. She watched him calculate.
"The infection is long-standing," the earl said. "The Duke's condition is documented by physicians who have been applying treatments that prolong rather than resolve deep infection."
Daphne said, "I have been reading the apothecary literature thoroughly, my lord. I have also been preparing a treatment compound based on research from 1693, which I am in the process of completing." She looked at Dr. Felton. "Are you familiar with Dr. Holden's work on deep tissue infection? Third volume, 1693?"
The doctor stared at her. "No," he said.