Unlike many physicians, Papa had not been a devotee of the medicine. He found that patients became too dependent on opiates and he had believed them to be altering to mind and body. He’d used them only in the most extreme of circumstance and she had never seen him administer such a substantial dose to anyone.

She bit her lip, frowning down at the duchess. Whatever the duchess’s condition, it appeared to be chronic. She could very easily become dependent on the drug for relief for her recurring pain. In that event, she would not even be herself anymore. She would just be a shell of a person craving her next dose.

She stretched out a hand. “Wait. I do not think—”

“That will be all, Miss Langley,” the duke’s voice whipped across the air. “Your services are no longer needed here.” She flinched. He had never spoken to her in such a way. The man fairly sneered the word services. And his eyes . . .

He looked at her as though she were something to be scraped from the bottom of his boot. It was cutting . . . and an effective reminder of where she ranked here, in this place, among these people—of just how little value she held.

Just beyond the duke, the doctor slipped a hand beneath the duchess’s neck and lifted her head so that she could drink the medicine.

Her shoulders slumped. It was done then.

“Now,” the doctor proclaimed and he resumed rummaging through his bag. “Let’s fetch a bowl so that we may bleed her.” He cast a quick glance around, his gaze alighting on a maid lurking nearby. He nodded to her. “A bowl and some additional linens, please.”

“No! No bloodletting.” She lunged to grasp his arm. “She is too weak for that.”

The doctor looked down at her hand with wide eyes and a faintly curling upper lip. “Your Grace? Who is this . . . person and why is she touching me?”

Person was a kind substitution for what he really thought. She knew that at once from the way he looked her up and down.

“No one. She is no one.” The duke sent a pointed look to her hand. “Release Sir Anthony at once, Miss Langley, and leave this room.”

She is no one. His words reverberated like a tolling clang in her head. Here, in this place, she was no one. All she would ever be to these people was no one.

She slid her hand from the man’s arm, feeling a bit stunned at the duke’s rudeness.

“Your Grace,” a deep voice intoned. “Have a care.”

Nora twisted around to find the source. Her gaze landed on Sinclair. She had not noticed his arrival in the chamber, but, of course, he was here. He was the duke’s shadow, acclimated to his new role, never far away. Except his usual stoic demeanor was gone. He looked quietly furious.

“I beg your pardon?” Birchwood sputtered.