A long, angry gash split the side of his calf, oozing blood and something else she didn’t even want to consider. The leg was terribly swollen and discolored, the skin near the wound red and glistening with a horrible sheen. It looked awful, like something rotting, and with horror Honoria wondered if he was rotting.

She dropped the blanket and lurched back, barely able to keep down the contents of her stomach.

“Oh, my God,” she said again, unable to say anything else, barely able to think anything else. This had to be the cause of the fever. It had nothing to do with the chill and his cough.

Her mind spun. He had an infected wound. It must have been when he’d cut off his boot. But he hadn’t said that he’d been cut. Why hadn’t he mentioned that? He should have told someone. He should have told her.

A light knock sounded at the door, and Mrs. Wetherby poked her head in. “Is everything all right? I heard a tremendous crashing.”

“No,” Honoria answered, her voice shrill and panicked. She tried to quell the rising terror within her. She needed to be rational. She was no help to anyone like this. “His leg. Did you know about his leg?”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Wetherby asked, coming quickly to her side.

“His leg. It’s terribly infected. I’m sure it’s the cause of the fever. It has to be.”

“The doctor said it was the cough. He—oh!” Mrs. Wetherby flinched when Honoria lifted the blanket to show her Marcus’s leg. “Oh, my dear heavens.” She took a step back, covering her hand with her mouth. She looked as if she might be sick. “I had no idea. None of us did. How could we not have seen it?”

Honoria was wondering the very same thing, but this wasn’t the time to point fingers. Marcus needed them to work together to help him, not to argue over who was to blame. “We need to summon the doctor,” she said to Mrs. Wetherby. “It needs to be cleaned, I would imagine.”

The housekeeper gave a quick nod. “I’ll send for him.”

“How long will it take for him to get here?”

“It depends on whether he is out seeing other patients. If he’s at home, the footman can be back with him in less than two hours.”

“Two hours!” Honoria bit her lip in a belated attempt to muffle her shriek. She’d never seen anything like this, but she’d heard stories. This was the kind of infection that killed a man. Quickly. “We can’t wait two hours. He needs medical attention now.”

Mrs. Wetherby turned to her with frightened eyes. “Do you know how to clean a wound?”

“Of course not. Do you?”

“Nothing like that,” Mrs. Wetherby answered, eyeing Marcus’s leg with a queasy expression.