Every joint tensed into quivering spasms. His stomach heaved like a stormy sea. Waves of hot and cold washed over him. He lashed his arms around his chest, but nothing eased the agonizing cramps. This attack was one of the crippling ones.
On his own, he’d bear the pain until it passed. But he couldn’t distress the chit by vomiting all over her.
He’d have to accept opium’s poisonous boon.
“Can you stop the coach?” he managed to force through chattering teeth.
Mercifully, she didn’t question his change of mind. She banged hard on the roof. The carriage lurched to a halt. The abrupt movement set off jangling cymbals in his head, dimmed his sight.
The door wrenched open. Voices were a buzz in his ears. Tulliver passed in a tin basin.
“It’s a bad one this time, lad,” he said impassively, as Gideon’s shaking hands curled around the dish.
Gideon’s gut tangled into knots. He was seconds from losing control. He managed to snarl, “Take the girl.”
His world turned to violent black as he began to retch. He was lost on a hideous sea, lit by brief crimson flashes where pain flared into agony.
He had no idea how long it was before awareness returned. Opening bleary eyes, he realized someone else’s hands held the basin steady.
His mouth tasted foul. A hundred mallets battered his skull. Just the simple act of breathing threatened to split his chest in two.
Efficient hands removed the disgusting bowl. The same hands, soft and gentle, pressed a damp cloth to his burning forehead. He closed his eyes and groaned at the bliss of that coolness on his burning skin.
His belly was still rebellious. He concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
“Akash?” he rasped across a raw throat. Although he knew the hands didn’t belong to his friend.
“He’s back in Portsmouth.”
The girl. Miss Watson. Sarah.
With difficulty, Gideon cracked his eyes open. His blinding headache built with every second. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to sit upright.
His clothes were rank and dripping with sweat. Acrid shame for his animal filth assailed him. “I told Tulliver to take you outside.”
Her smile was dry as the deserts of Rajasthan. She knelt on the bench at his side. Her surprisingly competent hands supported his head. He was so sick and weak, her touch didn’t make his skin crawl with familiar revulsion. He had a vague thought that helping him couldn’t be easy with her sprained wrist, but the notion drifted off like a will-o’-the-wisp.
“Tulliver had his hands full.” Her voice softened into compassion. “Are you feeling better?”
“He’ll have the devil’s own headache. He always does after one of his takings,” Tulliver said calmly.
Gideon hadn’t seen anything beyond the girl. Now he looked past her to where Tulliver waited, holding the bowl.
“He has these attacks often?” The girl’s clear gaze rested on him with curiosity and concern.
Even in this state, his pride revolted at her pity. “I’m not an ailing puppy, Miss Watson. I can speak for myself.”
Her lips turned down at his childish response. Which he regretted as soon as it emerged. Helping him couldn’t have been pleasant. She deserved gratitude, not pique.
The pounding in his head made rational, connected thought increasingly difficult. He closed his eyes and stifled renewed nausea.
“I’ll get the laudanum, lad.” Tulliver’s voice came from a long way off, masked by the painful throb of Gideon’s blood.
“The sickness has passed,” he forced out.
“The laudanum makes you sleep. You know sleep is all that brings you through. Do you want to stop at an inn? A bed might be better than rattling around in this rig.”
A bed. Cool sheets. Quiet. A cessation of movement. All beckoned like the promise of heaven.
He hesitated. He had to reach Penrhyn. Something urgent.
He opened his eyes and saw the girl’s worried face above him in the gloomy carriage interior. Of course. If they stopped, she might run.
They had to keep going. He’d have to accept the despised laudanum. And endure the harrowing visions.
“No…inn.” He shook his head. Even so much movement made his stomach revolt. “Get the laudanum, Tulliver.”
“Aye, guvnor.”
As the coach rattled on through the day and into the night, Sir Gideon slept like the dead.
At first his unconsciousness perturbed Charis. His illness had been so violent, she’d feared for his life.
He stretched awkwardly over a bench that was too short for his height. She studied his face, pale, drawn, handsome still. The muscles around his eyes were tight, and his mouth was white with strain. The certainty built that while he might lie motionless as a stone effigy, his dreams brought no peace.
She turned away and stared unseeingly out into the darkness. Who were these men she’d cast her lot with? Tulliver, who faced trouble with such stoic competence. Akash, clever, enigmatic like a strange foreign idol.
Sir Gideon…
She commanded her wayward heart not to flutter at the thought of her rescuer. It was like telling the sun not to rise. Every moment she spent with him only drew the net of fascination tighter.
He was famous, a celebrity. The crowd in Portsmouth had pressed about him, bristling with excitement. They’d hailed him as the Hero of somewhere called Rangapindhi. Was he home after some daring patriotic action overseas?
Her stepbrothers had kept her isolated for months. She hadn’t seen a newspaper or received any letters. Recent events in the wider world were a complete mystery.
If Sir Gideon was newly returned from India, it suggested a few explanations to things that puzzled her. His tan. Akash. Even his illness. Perhaps some tropical disease attacked him.
His horrific sufferings had cut her to the quick. Gideon Trevithick, her only bulwark against her stepbrothers, was unquestionably ill. But the nature of his sickness was an enigma. What ailment turned a man so quickly from invincible avenging angel to shivering wreck?
At dawn, Sir Gideon stirred from his deathlike sleep. The movement was slight but enough to disturb Charis’s restless doze. She opened bleary eyes, excruciatingly aware of her own aches and exhaustion. The carriage’s endless jolting had punctuated her erratic dreams. She’d checked him periodically through the night, but his sickness hadn’t returned.
Without looking at her, he groaned and swung his feet to the floor as he sat up. He rubbed his hands across his face in a weary gesture. Granting him a moment’s privacy, she opened the blinds and looked out the window onto a wild and unpopulated world. There was a charged intimacy in sharing this tiny space after she’d seen him at his extremity. It made her nervy, shy, unsure.
The view didn’t help to restore her courage. They’d abandoned civilization miles past. The lonely, windswept scene was depressing, frightening to a woman with only strangers to rely upon. Staunchly, she reminded herself that her stepbrothers would have difficulty tracking her through this wasteland.
She wondered how much farther Sir Gideon meant to go. Since they’d left Portsmouth, the only punctuation to eternal travel was stopping to change horses. Hurried, efficient movement, a flare of torches, Tulliver rebinding her arm if the bandage had loosened, a hot drink shoved into her hands. Then away they went again. The beef broth from the last stop, a poor place in the middle of desolate moorland, had left a nasty taste in her mouth. Luckily, she had a cast-iron stomach.
She turned back to her companion, and an involuntary gasp escaped. “You look awful.”
He gave a surprised grunt of laughter and scraped his hand across the stubble darkening his angular jaw. “Thank you.”
She blushed. “I’m sorry. I had no right…”
“No harm done. I’m sure your observation, if not polite, was accurate.” He sounded like the man who had found her in the stable. Ironic. Distant. In command of himself.
Except now she knew his composure was a
veneer.
He might sound like master of all he surveyed. But he didn’t look much better than he had last night when he’d shivered in her arms. Dark circles surrounded sunken, dull eyes. His tan held a sickly hue in the pale sunlight penetrating the windows. He badly needed a shave, and his hair was a tousled mess.
His eyes sharpened on her. With every moment, he looked more alert. “How is your arm, Miss Watson?”
She didn’t immediately recognize her false identity. Dear Lord, let him not notice her hesitation. She needed to remember the danger she faced if he discovered who she was. Difficult when the last day had only built the affinity she’d so quickly felt for him.
Carefully she flexed her fingers. Hardly a twinge. “Much better, thank you.” She studied him as he sprawled against the worn leather upholstery. His long legs extended across the well between the two seats. The shabby carriage wasn’t built for a man of his height. “How are you?”
He stretched and winced, then leaned his head back. “It was just a passing inconvenience.”
His expression indicated movement was painful. After lying still for so long, he’d be stiff as a board. The continual rolling and jolting of the vehicle must be agonizing. She ignored his unconvincing lie and dropped to her knees on the rocking floor.
“Let me take your boots off and rub your legs. I nursed my father in his last illness. This helped him when he’d had a bad night.”
She’d forgotten no decent young lady offered to touch a gentleman who wasn’t a close relative. She remembered only when he tensed, and his dark eyes flashed with horror. “Miss Watson, please return to your seat. I assure you my slight troubles don’t warrant your concern.”
Clumsily, her cheeks flaming with mortification, she scrambled back onto her seat. “I’m…I’m not usually so rag-mannered.”
Yesterday he’d suffered her touch. He’d turned his face into her hand as she’d wiped his brow. But yesterday he’d been victim to his mysterious illness.
“It was a generous offer,” he said kindly.
She hated his kindness. Because clearly it wasn’t based on anything personal, like regard or respect. She hated owing her safety to that disinterested kindness.
Hiding a wince as the movement tested her sore arm, she fumbled to open a flask of water Tulliver had given her last night. “Are you thirsty?”
“Dry as sand.” He accepted the flask without touching her fingers.
Charis berated herself for noticing. And minding. Did she want to fend off a Lothario? She should commend Sir Gideon as a man of honor.
Sourly, she recognized her hypocrisy.
Fascinated, she watched the movement of his powerful throat as he tipped his head to drink. Nor did she miss the tightness around his eyes as he returned the flask and subsided against the upholstery.
“Does your head hurt?” she asked before she reminded herself he wouldn’t appreciate her solicitude.
A fleeting smile curved his lips. “Like the very devil.” He sighed heavily. “All of this must frighten you. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t frighten easily,” she said flatly.
He didn’t argue although he must know she’d been terrified in Winchester. More of his cursed kindness. She wouldn’t resent it nearly so much if he didn’t use it as defense against her curiosity.
“Your face seems better this morning,” he said.
“Oh.” She’d forgotten what a horror she must look. She raised a tentative hand to her sore jaw. It didn’t feel as distended. Speaking was certainly easier. Whatever heathen potions Akash had slathered on her, they’d worked. “Yes.”
Sir Gideon’s regard was steady as it rested upon her. Steady and implacable. “Will you trust me with the truth now? You have no aunt in Portsmouth. You’re on the run from someone. Someone who threatens your very life if the state I found you in is any indication.”
She stiffened under his probing gaze. Briefly she considered persisting with her lies. But as she looked into his face, she knew denial was useless. She sucked in a breath that contained a heady mixture of relief and uncertainty. “How long have you known?”
“From the beginning.”
He sat up carefully and stared at her. If his face had held an ounce of anger or censure, she’d have kept silent. But he looked interested, calm, capable. He looked like a man she could trust with her life.
She shifted uncomfortably, her conscience flinching at the lies she’d told. “I don’t see why you want to help. I’ve caused nothing but trouble. You should consign me to perdition.”
Another of those faint smiles. “True.”
“Well?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been alone against the world in my time. I’d hate you to come to grief because you had no champion.”
Again, she thought of a medieval knight. A lonely, gallant figure on an impossible quest. “What happened to you?”
He laughed softly. “Oh, no, my lady. This is my interrogation. Who hurt you?”
Lingering caution insisted she conceal the precise details of her plight. She’d seen how greed changed men. She couldn’t risk that happening to Sir Gideon if she told him who she really was. But his gallantry toward her meant she owed him more than the shabby falsehoods she’d produced so far.
“My brothers. They’re trying to force me to marry a wastrel. I cannot…will not stomach the match.” Her hands fisted in her skirts. It seemed odd, uncomfortable to trust a man even a little after all she’d been through. “When they realized my opposition was more than a girlish whim, they resorted to stronger persuasion.” Close to the truth. Close enough to salve her stinging conscience, anyway.
Sir Gideon’s face remained expressionless as he listened. What did he make of this tale that belonged in a gothic novel? Did he even believe her? At least he showed no skepticism.
“Why are your brothers so eager for you to marry this man?”
His lack of histrionics calmed her. Her hands slowly uncurled until they lay flat upon her lap. Her voice emerged almost normally. “They owe him money. My inheritance becomes my husband’s if I marry or mine if I turn twenty-one unwed.”
“When do you turn twenty-one?”
“The first of March.”
“That’s only three weeks away.”
“You perceive my brothers’ need for urgency,” she said dryly.
“Self-serving maggots,” he bit out with sudden savagery.
She’d misjudged his calmness. Looking closer, she realized he was furiously angry. His voice was quiet, his manner unthreatening. But she had a sudden vivid memory of the man who overcame every adversary in the Portsmouth brawl. Foreboding tinged with satisfaction shivered through her. She wouldn’t like to be Felix or Hubert if Sir Gideon got his hands on them.
“I’m so sorry for telling lies,” she whispered, guilt twisting her stomach into knots. She twined her hands together and gazed down, unwilling to meet his searching eyes. Eyes clever enough to discern she still wasn’t completely honest.
“You were in danger. You had no reason to trust me.”
“Except you saved my life,” she said almost soundlessly.
Except you’re fine and handsome and brave. And I’ve held you while you were sick and unaware. And watched you sleep through a long dark night. You make my heart beat like a drum, and I can hardly breathe when I look into your eyes.
She glanced up in time to catch the annoyance that crossed his face. “It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing to me.” She raised her chin and stared unflinchingly at him.
“Miss Watson, I don’t want your gratitude,” he snapped.
She hid the pang of hurt his response provoked. And refrained from insisting that she’d be grateful to him until the day she died.
An awkward pause fell.
When eventually he resumed his questions, his expression didn’t lighten. “Presumably someone other than your brothers has custody of your fortune while you’re a minor. Why didn’t you appeal to them?”
“My trustees claim they’re powerless to intervene.” Her voice was husky with chagrin she couldn’t help feeling when Gideon refused her thanks. “My brothers convinced them I’m wild and flighty and need a man’s guidance.”
She’d spent many a night cursing the spineless solicitors at Spencer, Spencer and Crosshill. Old Mr. Crosshill had been her father’s friend, but he’d been dead four years. His egregious nephew had advised her to accept her stepbrothers’ plans with suitable female obedience.
“No relative offered you shelter?”
“None with the power to stand up to my brothers.” Charis’s voice flattened into grimness. “Believe me, Sir Gideon, I’ve assessed all options. Only one remains. Will you put me down at the next substantial town we come to?”
“What do you intend?”
To survive the next three weeks without surrendering either to privation or my stepbrothers.
“I only have to avoid my brothers until the first of March.” Heat climbed in her cheeks. Her pride abhorred what she was about to ask. But she must conquer pride for survival’s sake. “If you lend me a few shillings, I’ll repay you when I come into my inheritance. I couldn’t find any money to take with me. Which must seem hen-witted, but…”
“Miss Watson.”
“I’m not solvent right…”
“Miss Watson.” His voice was sharper.
She relapsed into silence, embarrassed at her nervous babbling. Tears of humiliation rose to her eyes. She didn’t want to set out alone. More than that, she didn’t want to leave Sir Gideon, which was just too pathetic to admit. How had he so quickly become the most important person in her life? It seemed absurd. Unreal. Dangerous.
He appeared displeased. Again. “Confound you, I’m not going to slip you some blunt and put you down defenseless and alone in a strange place. If any town between here and Penrhyn was big enough to offer a hiding place. Haven’t you looked out the window, girl? We’re well into the wilds of Cornwall.”
She gulped back the lump in her throat while fugitive hope stirred in her heart. “Oh.”
He looked in better health, more like the man she’d met than last night’s invalid. He looked clever and purposeful and invincible. He looked like he would keep her safe forever.
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