Linley’s father appeared in the stairwell, breathless. “What is it?”
“It’s Linley,” he said. “She’s talking nonsense.”
Sir Bedford followed Patrick into Linley’s room, where she sat rigid-backed in bed. Sweat drenched brown hair stuck to her face. A slow drip of blood ran down her left nostril.
“I told you not to tell!” she screamed, mopping at the bright red blood with the palm of her hand, and then smearing it across the front of her nightgown. “Look what they’ve done!” The more blood she saw, the more frantic she became. “They pulled out my brain like the Egyptians! Papa, what have they done with my brain?”
“The fever,” her father whispered to Patrick as they watched Linley dig through the bedclothes for her missing brain. “I’m afraid it’s worse than I thought.”
“Is there anything you can do? Anything I can do?”
Sir Bedford shook his head. “We will just have to keep her calm. Hopefully it will run its course in another day or two.”
The gentlemen stepped out into the hall where Archie, Reginald, and Schoville stood. They had heard the screaming and ran upstairs as fast as they could. Now they looked at Linley’s father for answers.
“It is a nervous fever,” he told them. “Delirium.”
Archie rubbed the muscles on the back of his neck, wincing every time he heard Linley call out. “She needs a doctor.”
“Where will we find a doctor?” Sir Bedford asked. “We are a hundred miles from civilization, at least. And she needs an English doctor. I’ll wager there isn’t one of those within a week’s walk from here.”
They all hung their heads. A proper English physician was an impossibility.
“Maybe the monks can help her,” Patrick said. “Will you let me ask them?”
Sir Bedford nodded. “If she does not improve in two days time, you can ask.”
“Two days?”
“We will wait to see if the fever runs its course. Most do, you understand.”
Patrick did not understand. He did not understand at all! Linley was sick. She needed help, and if it were up to him, he would take whatever help he could from whomever was willing to give it.
Suddenly, the commotion in the other room ceased. It grew silent. Unsettlingly silent. The men rushed into her room, finding Linley slumped over her cot. She was asleep.
“Someone should be with her at all times,” Patrick told them. “We could do it in turns, like we did with the tiger watch.” He glanced from face to face. “Two of us sit up with her at night, the others during the day.”
Linley’s father nodded. “I agree.”
Reginald pulled back the bed covers while Archie helped maneuver Linley back into bed. “Archie and I can take the first watches,” he said. “Bedford and Schoville can take the next.”
“But that leaves me out,” Patrick reminded them.
“Exactly.” Reginald tucked the covers up around Linley’s chin. “I don’t think you should be left alone with her for six hours at a time.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I think you’re somehow to blame for all of this.”
After seeing Linley safe and warm in bed, Archie stood up and looked Patrick in the eyes. “I agree with Reginald,” he said. “Linley is incapacitated. You could try to force yourself on her.”
“For Christ sakes, I am not a rapist!” It took all of Patrick’s self control not to brawl with Reginald and Archie right there in Linley’s bedroom.
“Enough! Enough!” Sir Bedford said. “Archie, Lord Kyre will take your watch.”
“What? No!” Archie said. “Why?”
“Because you are acting very selfishly right now. I should think you would be able to put aside your differences for Linley’s sake.” Sir Bedford ushered them all out of the room. “The first watch begins at noon. I will take that one. Lord Kyre, your turn starts at six. Schoville will relieve you at midnight, and then Reginald will take up watch the following morning.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Patrick sat by Linley’s bedside. He watched her, even though she had not stirred in over an hour. She had not awakened since she lost consciousness earlier that afternoon. He counted her slow, rhythmic breathing. Linley’s chest rose beneath the covers, and then fell. Rose and fell. Rose and fell.
He told himself breathing was a good sign. The best sign. Thank God Linley was breathing because the rest of her looked dead. She was chalk white and her skin slick with sweat. Sometimes a droplet of blood bubbled in one of her nostrils, and he dabbed it with a wet cloth.
Patrick rested his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his hands. Seeing her like this tortured him. It reminded him of the way Johnnie had looked when they fished him from the river. He did not want to remember his brother that way, and he did not want to remember Linley that way, either.
Dead.
Her father assured all of them that it was just a fever. A nervous fever, but one Linley could recover from. Patrick prayed it was, and that he was just having another one of those overly cautious spells she liked to tease him about.
Please God, let her wake up and tease him.
But she did not awaken. Linley lay stretched out on her cot just as Reginald and Archie had left her. She still breathed, slow and steady. Patrick watched her chest rise and fall to be certain. He hoped she was not having any nightmares about people taking her brain. To see her in such a panic over something so absurd frightened him.
The whole ordeal frightened him, and Patrick could not help but play the scenario back in his mind, starting with the night they made love. He prayed Reginald was not right, and somehow this was not all his fault. If something happened to her because of him, Patrick would never forgive himself.
***
“Don’t come too close,” Linley said, her shoulders propped up on the little pillow that rested against her bedroom wall. “I wouldn’t want you to catch whatever I have.”
Patrick marveled at the change in her. When Bedford proclaimed what a turnaround she’d made in the space of a few hours, he had not believed it. Now, reporting to her room for his nightly watch, he saw for himself it was true.
She smiled up at him from beneath her blankets. Linley still looked pale and weak, but at least she was awake and of a sound mind.
Patrick sat the oil lamp on the wooden chair beside her cot and took a seat on the floor. It was as close as he could get to her without crawling into the bed.
“Papa said I took a turn for the worse yesterday,” Linley said, reaching down to wrap her hand around his. “He said I gave you all quite a scare.”
“That doesn’t matter now.” Patrick pressed a kiss onto each of her knuckles. “Now you are better.”
“I don’t feel better. To be quite honest, I feel worse. And it’s not just the fever, Patrick. I am afraid this is something much, much worse.” Linley chewed at her cracked, chapped lips. “I am afraid I’m dying.”
“Rot!” He almost laughed at her, but she looked so serious, he stopped himself.
“If I die, I want Papa to burn my body. Or, better yet, carry it up to the top of the mountain and give me a sky burial. It’s so beautiful up there, and I wouldn’t really mind being fed to vultures.”
“I will not have you fed to birds,” Patrick said. “If anything, you will be buried in my family crypt at Wolford Abbey. And that will not be for a very long time.”
Linley smiled. It was a sad, tired smile, but a smile all the same. “Tell me about this home you love so much,” she begged him with a squeeze of her hand. “Tell me about where I’ll be buried.”
Christ, where to start? “The roof leaks, and the pipes bang. The bricks along the south wall are crumbling, but it is my home and I do love it.” He closed his eyes and pictured himself standing atop one of the park’s freshly mowed hillocks. At the bottom of the ridge, the house sat nestled between the hills, a dark brown blot against miles and miles of green. An afternoon breeze carried the scent of apple blossoms
from the orchards, and he turned his face into it, feeling it play over his skin, ruffling his hair.
Patrick shifted then, imagining the library on a late autumn evening. The orange glow of the fireplace warming his chilled hands as he thumbed through the yellowed pages of an old book. “The library is a full two stories high,” he said. “Over ten thousand books.”
Linley wanted to know if he’d read them all, but couldn’t bring herself to interrupt him.
“In the center of the room is my favorite place in the whole house,” Patrick continued. “A hideous old chesterfield. I think the leather is permanently dented to the shape of my backside,” He thought about the chew marks around the bottom corner of the sofa where, as a boy, his spaniel puppy cut its teeth against the old brass tacks.
“Tell me about the church,” Linley demanded. “About the family crypt.”
Patrick frowned. Why on earth would she want to know about that when she could hear all about the house, and the farms, the tenants, and… “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Tell me anything.”
“Not much is left of the original abbey,” he explained. “I think some of the stone on the ground floor, perhaps. My family bought it after the Reformation and went to work making it into a home. But there is a lovely chapel on the estate. And of course, the cemetery.”
“Where I shall be buried.”
“With me lying beside you. In about a hundred years.”
Linley smiled, but shook her head. “Patrick—”
“I won’t hear anymore of that death nonsense,” he said, cutting her off. “You’ll outlive us all.”
“But what will your children or your grandchildren think? Surely they’ll want to know what gave me the right to be buried with the family.”
Patrick tossed the thought around in his head. She had a point. What would they think? At last, he shrugged. “Here lies the lover of the 4th Marquess of Kyre. I’ll have it put on your grave marker. Then there will be no question of it.”
She balked, and then covered her face with her hands, laughing. “That’s absurd! It’s…it’s…obscene!”
He figured there would be no love lost between the future Wolfords on that account, seeing as how he would forever be known as the one who bankrupted the entire family. His children and his grandchildren, and even his great-grandchildren would already hate him. So what was one more scandal? ‘In for a penny in for a pound’, his father always said.
Linley studied him. He could not possibly be serious. But he looked serious. Very serious, indeed. “You don’t mean to actually do that,” she said. “Do you?”
“Of course not. It is your right to be buried wherever you want.”
He said it so flippantly, as if he didn’t care a fig what happened to her mortal remains. Suddenly, a plot in the Wolford Abbey cemetery seemed a much better option than having one’s bones pecked by vultures.
“Couldn’t I perhaps get a little spot in a corner somewhere?” she asked him. “Not the family crypt, mind you, but just a piece of grass with a simple headstone?”
“Of course, darling.”
“That way it wouldn’t be as if your were flaunting me.” Linley explained, picking at her rough blanket with her fingernails. “No one would have to know why I was there…but you would know, and I would know, and that would be what counted.”
“Whatever you say.”
She looked up from her task. “Oh, Patrick. Could you really go through with it, knowing the shame it would cause your family? Your wife’s corpse on your left, and your lover’s on your right. You, snug in the middle! They wouldn’t be able to bear it.”
“Why are you suddenly adding a wife and family to the equation?” Patrick frowned. “Is that what you want? To see me married and out of your hair? Here I am, offering you a place by my side for all eternity, and all you can think of is how improper it would be. I say, when did you become so concerned with propriety?” he asked her. “Certainly not the other night when you threw yourself at me.”
If Linley had the strength, she would have slapped him. “Don’t you dare!”
“What then? Hmm?” he said. “Would you rather I say it was all my fault? That I should have known better? Admit that I regret it?”
“Well, do you?”
Patrick snorted. “Do you?”
“Of course not.” She turned away as if she could not bear to look at him, and sank lower beneath the covers, pulling the blanket up close around her face.
He ground the heels of his hands into his eyelids. “I don’t regret it.”
She made no attempt to respond.
Patrick put his hand on her shoulder. “Linley, I don’t regret it.” When she still did not answer, he gave her a little shake.
She jerked away from his touch. “I’m so glad, Patrick. I would hate for you to have to live with a blemish on your spotless conscience.”
He balked. “I’ve done quite a bit in my life that I rather wish I hadn’t, but making love to you is not one of them. Truth be told, lying in your arms was the only time I felt I was doing something right.
***
Some days Linley seemed to get better. Other days she seemed even worse. There was no end to her nausea, but sometimes her fever broke. She insisted to everyone that she was dying, and berated Patrick for arguing with her on her deathbed.
Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin still refused to believe his daughter was in danger.
Patrick begged him to ask the monks for help, but each day the old man told him to wait.
“If she does not get better,” he would say, dismissing Patrick altogether.
Although his money was welcome, clearly he was not. Patrick gave up trying. He spent his mornings in meditation, afternoons with the lama, and his evenings in Linley’s room. Sometimes she would be awake to talk. Other times, Patrick sat for six hours in silence.
That was when he prayed.
One afternoon, he sat with the lama, as usual. They talked of many things, but Patrick really wanted to bring up the issue of Linley. Of course, the lama knew she was ill. Even though the monks could have nothing to do with her, they all noticed her absence. A white woman was, after all, a very rare sight.
“You are troubled,” the lama said. “Your mind not clear.”
“No...” He hesitated to go any further. But he wanted to talk about Linley, and now this was his chance. “My friend is very ill. I worry for her.”
The lama nodded. He said nothing for a long time. He simply nodded at Patrick.
This forced him to elaborate. “She has a high fever. I wondered if there was anything you could do to help her.”
“Sometimes illness necessary,” the lama explained. “Without suffering, how will we know what truly important in life?
“But she could die.”
“Yes. I understand.”
Patrick bristled. “What happened to having compassion? What about not harming any living thing? How am I supposed to believe anything you say when you sit there and show no concern for someone who may be dying?”
The lama grinned at Patrick. “It is good that you question. Question everything. Question yourself.” He wagged a skinny brown finger at his pupil. “Even question Buddha.”
“In my religion, we do not question God. We are taught to have faith and to trust in his will.”
“If your God willed your friend die, would you still believe?”
Patrick thought back to his mother, his brother, and his father. Were their deaths God’s will? Was it in his plan for Patrick to suffer loss after loss? One tragedy after another? To have the only people who mattered snatched away just when he needed them the most?
No. He could not lose Linley.
He would not.
***
Later that evening, Patrick took over watch duty from Linley’s father. He pushed the curtain aside to step into the room, but realized it was already rather crowded. Sir Bedford, Archie, Reginald, and Schoville stood at Linley’s bedside whis
pering among themselves.
Patrick cleared his throat. “Have I missed something?”
The four men stepped away from each other like naughty schoolchildren, pretending they had not been talking about Lord Kyre behind his back.
Immediately, Patrick knew something was amiss. “How is our Linley today?” he asked them, trying to seem as oblivious as possible to their plotting.
But he did not have to ask. He could see for himself that she was worse. Her body barely made a dent in the mattress she was so thin. Her eyes and cheeks lay sunken into her face, making her look more like a corpse than a girl. Linley was naturally such a thin person—how much more weight could she lose?
“Bedford,” Patrick said. “I think she needs a doctor.”
“Of course she needs a doctor!”
Patrick held his finger to his lips. There was no need to raise one’s voice, especially not in front of Linley, whether she could hear them or not.
Sir Bedford lowered his voiced to an acceptable range. “Of course she needs a doctor.”
“I asked the lama—”
Linley’s father ground his teeth at the words.
“I asked the lama,” Patrick continued. “And he believes there is a missionary camp somewhere southeast of here. It may be a few days walk, but at least there is a chance we could find help.”
“Do you honestly believe she will last long enough for someone to bring back a doctor?” Sir Bedford asked. “That could take weeks.”
Patrick looked at Linley, who lay quiet as the grave in her narrow bed. Her death bed. “I realize we do not have that much time. I thought we would take her to the doctor.”
“You propose we take a dying girl on a weeklong journey through the Indian wilderness on the off chance we might find a missionary camp?”
He nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Linley’s father snorted. “Preposterous.”
“Why?”
“Because a journey like that is dangerous even for a grown man in perfect health. You do remember the hell we came through to get here, do you not? That was before the rains set in. I would imagine the level of danger has increased tenfold.”
A Love That Never Tires (Linley & Patrick Book 1) Page 28