“Not quite yet.”
“Fires of Purgatory and all that, with you, my Beatrice, beckoning from Paradise.”
“But you are certainly delirious and will probably be dead soon if you don’t eat.”
“Rather be at present.” The words were barely a whisper.
Diantha’s heart beat so hard she could hear it in the silence. “No doubt.” She crossed to him, every nerve in her body ridiculously aware that she was alone in a gentleman’s bedchamber with him. “I have brought tea and Mrs. Polley’s biscuits.”
His eyes opened, reflecting the firelight’s golden heat. “Leave.”
“No.”
His hands darted out and his fingers bit into her shoulders. He dragged her close. The planes of his face as he looked down at her were harsh, his eyes glittering with fever and the ravenous intent of the predator.
“Please.” The sound came from so deep in his chest she barely understood the word.
She struggled for breath, squaring her shoulders in his hold. “Why did you make me hide the pistol when you were planning to starve yourself to death anyway?”
“You”—his voice grated—“are”—each word was forced—“a difficult girl.”
“I am not a girl, and I am trying to help. But you must allow me.”
For an instant something she recognized flickered in his eyes. Then, as though it cost him great effort, he released her. With deliberate steps he crossed the chamber and took up the teapot. It clinked against the cup, steam twining in the cold air.
“Take care. It will still be quite h—” Her warning died upon her tongue. He swallowed the scalding tea, then poured another cup and drank it as well.
“The biscuits too,” she said.
“Go.” He spoke with his back to her.
“No.”
“While I still allow you to.”
“I thought the remedies we purchased at the herbalist’s shop were intended to—”
“They require time to take effect.”
Her gaze darted to the brown bottle on the writing table. “You haven’t taken the laudanum yet, have you?”
His head bowed. “Makes a man insensible.”
“I should think insensibility and life preferable to sharp senses and death.”
“Six of one . . .” His fingertips pressed onto the surface of the dressing table, white with strain, and she realized he was holding himself up thus. She had the most powerful urge to go to him, wrap her arms about him and let him use her as a crutch.
“Wyn,” she whispered, “I think you should sit down before you topple over.”
“Not . . . in the . . . presence of a—”
“Don’t be silly. Oh!”
He wavered. She flew toward him and threw her arms around him as she’d imagined, dreamed, but not quickly enough and she was not strong enough. He went to his knees, and she with him.
“You are the foolish one,” she uttered against his shoulder, damp fabric against her cheek covering hard muscle. His body shook. He burned. “Quite a foolish man, Mr. Yale.”
His trembling hand clutched hers against his chest. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder, her fingers crushed within his grasp, her body wedged against his, and kissed him. Her lips brushed fine linen and his suffering became part of her.
“You will probably not remember this,” she whispered, and kissed his shoulder again. “That is a consolation.” She could not stop herself. Need she had never imagined beset her, need to be with him, to touch him and fill her senses with him.
And then she did stop, because it was not about what she needed now. He needed her. She did not have weeks for this delay, or even days now. But she would give him her days and weeks if necessary.
“You know,” she said, resting her cheek against his broad back, the quick, shallow beat of his heart beneath her hand, “you mustn’t die, or even continue in this state for much longer.”
“I will remember this, Diantha.” His words were not strong to the ear, but she felt them vibrate through his body, and hers. “I remember everything.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Not everything,” she whispered.
“Not everything.”
“There is a cow desperately needing to be milked. And I don’t know what to do about it. So you must get well quickly and solve that little problem so she won’t grow sick and die. You see? Now you have two lives for which you are responsible.”
She lifted his arm and it was remarkably heavy, but he must have aided her because she got her shoulder beneath his.
“Come now. We will take you to that chair. It is closer than the bed.”
“Slept on the ground before. Number of times.”
“You have?”
“Not so bad.”
“Still, I’ve an inkling you haven’t actually been sleeping at all since we came here. So if you’re not to sleep now, you may as well not sleep in a chair rather than on the floor.”
Somehow they got him to the chair. It was large, comfortably stuffed leather. He closed his eyes and in another moment seemed to sleep. She watched him, the slight rise of his chest with each shallow breath, the sunken hollows and stark bones of his beautiful cheeks, and felt a tickle of shame that even now staring at him made her warm where she should not be.
“You needn’t hover.”
She jumped, then twisted her fingers together. “I’m afraid you will slide out of that chair and injure yourself.”
“Shan’t break.” The words were a breath between clicking teeth. “Not made of glass.”
Rather, steel. Fired steel. Foundry hot. She glanced at the bed and her cheeks warmed now. It was maidenly idiocy for a woman nursing an ill man. But she’d never looked at a gentleman’s bed before.
There was no sign of a blanket through the bed curtains.
“Foolish man,” she muttered. She went to the bedchamber she shared with Mrs. Polley, collected blankets, and returned to him.
“Thought you’d gone.”
“To fetch this.” She draped the coverlet over him. It sagged at one side onto the floor. But shock no longer propelled her actions, and she was—belatedly—shy of touching him, even to tuck it around him. “Now you must eat.”
“But do feel free to go at any time,” he added in the unexceptionable tone he had used with her a hundred times, albeit a bit unsteady, and she suspected this nonchalance cost him.
“You are wonderfully droll, sir. But I shan’t be deterred so easily.” She poured another cup, took up several biscuits, and wrapped his hands around both. That operation left her entirely without breath, so she retreated to the writing desk and sat on the wooden chair there. “Now, eat. And drink. And I will read this book while I wait to be certain you don’t feed those to Ramses.” She took up the volume. “Blaise Pascal and the Curiously Unsubstantiated Axioms of Euclidean Geometry. Well, Mr. Yale, you have succeeded in astounding me anew. Unless of course this was Ramses’ choice.”
“Have we reverted to Mr. Yale and Miss Lucas, then?”
Her pulse tripped. His eyes were closed, the empty cup on his upturned palm resting on his knee.
“No.” She set down the book, uncorked the bottle of laudanum and went to him. She poured a spoonful of the syrup into the cup then put it once again against his palm.
His hand came around hers. “Diantha, thank you.”
“You can thank me,” she whispered, “after you don’t die.”
The slightest smile tilted up his mouth at one side, but his flesh still burned.
“Drink it.” She whispered to disguise the tremble in her throat.
His eyes were dark, seeking as they scanned her face, and vulnerable in a manner she could not have anticipated of this man. Then trusting. Trusting her.
He did as she bid. She drew away and set down the empty cup on the tea tray. She stared at the pretty porcelain painted with lavender flowers and tiny green vines and rimmed in silver. A lady’s porcelain. The lady in whose house they were now living like a troop of genteel Gypsies. Lost in the wilds of Wales and no one the wiser for it.