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"Oh, no, you don’t," she muttered, ready to come back with all she had But before she could scoot around the bed to the water pitcher, he thrust one leg out fro her in her belly

She stu her arms forward in a desperate atteain Without thinking, she grabbed the first object hich her hand connected

Marcus screamed

Honoria’s heart slao of what she now realized was his leg Without anything to hold her up, she fell back to the floor, landing hard on her right elbow

"O!" she cried, letting out her own shriek of pain as electric spasertips But so her elbow to her side The noise Marcus hadwhen she reached the side of the bed, and he was breathing hard, too – the kind of short, shallow breaths people made to ward off pain

"What happened?" Honoria whispered This wasn’t the fever This was so

That hen she realized her hand was sticky

Still clutching her elbow, she turned her free hand over, twisting until her palm faced up

Blood

"Oh,in her stomach, she stepped toward him She didn’t want to startle him; he’d already knocked her doice But the bloodIt wasn’t her blood

He’d pulled his leg back under the covers, so she carefully lifted the blanket, pushing it back until his leg was bare to the knee

"Oh, ash split the side of his calf, oozing blood and so was terribly swollen and discolored, the skin near the wound red and glistening with a horrible sheen It looked awful, like so, 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 sto 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 soht knock sounded at the door, and Mrs Wetherby poked her head in "Is everything all right? I heard a tre"