Ethan spied a small figure under a sheet in a corner cot—curled into a tight ball.Maddy? They wouldn't cover her face unless…So help him God, she couldn't have died, alone here, in that goddamned position.
But she could have; how many blows could she defend against?
As he ran, she grew indistinct until he swiped his sleeve over his face. He kept wiping his eyes, and they kept blurring. At the bed, he swallowed, then drew back the sheet.
He fell to his knees.'Ah, God, Maddy.' Her lips and face were white but for the shadows around her closed eyes.
She lay motionless.She can't be…
He buried his face against her neck.She's warm. He felt her wrist—and didn't breathe until he found her pulse.'Aingeal , wake up.' He pulled her to his chest, but her body was limp.
Blood was stark on the sheet and the back of her gown.
Maddy had been oddly sentient since she'd fallen sick. She'd been aware of everything that had happened to her, never finding oblivion in the fever that had wracked her for hour after hour.
She knew Bea had died, and the grief was overwhelming. Again and again, Maddy saw her friend's once beautiful visage frozen in a grimace of pain.
She knew Corrine had fought to keep the soldiers from taking Maddy when she'd grown ill. Recalling Corrine's screams and fierce struggles, Maddy feared Corrine had been injured or arrested.
And Maddy knew that no matter what had happened, she missed Ethan desperately.
As if her thoughts conjured him, she dreamed he was here for her now. After being lucid for so long, Maddy wondered that she now imagined he knelt beside her. In dreams, she felt him rub his unshaven face against her neck, felt startling wetness from his eyes. The backs of his fingers glanced over her forehead.
He felt so real, she squinted open her eyes, but even the dim light hurt. She was hallucinating anyway, because surely Ethan could not be in this dank cholera ward. 'Dream?' she whispered.
'No, Maddy'—his voice broke—'I'm here with you.'
Oh, God, itwas Ethan, though he looked altered. His face was haggard, his eyes burning with some emotion she'd never seen in him before.
He couldn't truly have followed her intothis place? Especially when she was already dying? He would have to know better. She gasped in air. 'You have…to leave—'
'No' without you. I'm takin' you from here tonight.'
'Go…please. They'llshoot you. You can't…come here again.'
'Understand me,' he said in a low, seething tone, 'I'm still your husband, and if I can die to save you from this, then that's my goddamned right!'
Definitely not a dream…Her rough-around-the-
edges Scot was behaving like a hero and still cursing like a sailor. 'But, Ethan, I'm dy—'
'You will no' die!' He reached for her, clutching her nape. 'You hold on!'
She whispered, 'I think…it's too late.'
He grasped her chin, forcing her to face him. He was pale and staring at her with a crazed expression. 'It's no'! Damn you, Maddy MacCarrick, we're goin' tae be together. Believe me.' His eyes were wet, his lashes spiking. 'Lass, I could no' love you this much for nothing.'
A tear slipped down her cheek, and he brushed it away. She felt the smallest tinge of hope.
'Hold on, for me.' Two arms slipped beneath her, gingerly lifting. But where did Ethan think he could take her? 'Just stay with me, Maddy girl.' She felt warmth enveloped in his scent as he wrapped his coat around her. In the cocoon of his arms, the constant screams finally dimmed, the cries dulled.
As Ethan carried her, hastening his long strides, Maddy heard one of the nuns cry, 'You cannot take a contagious patient past the perimeter!'
We made it to the perimeter?She squinted her eyes open again and found them at a doorway, so close to being outside in the night—
'You might kill her by moving her!' another said.
But if Ethan thought he could get her free, then Maddy wanted to leave this place. How fervently she wished not to die here—not to be burned on a pile of bodies.
'Step aside,' Ethan said. As if in a daze, she saw him draw a pistol and cock it. 'I'll kill anyone who gets in my way. And I'll do it gladly.'
Then…she was kissed by the coolness of the night air.
'We're goin' home, lass,' he murmured down to her. 'I'm takin' you home.'
As soon as Ethan carried her across the threshold of that hell, blackness beckoned and she promptly passed out.
Forty-five
As Ethan ran a damp cloth over Maddy's body, he could hear Fiona speaking in low tones with the doctors in the next room.
Two days had passed since Ethan had brought Madeleine here. Ethan had told Quin to make sure his house in Grosvenor was empty by the time he was due to return, but Fiona had refused to go, browbeating Quin into telling all. Then she'd set about assembling an army of physicians in London for a wife that Ethan had 'neglected to mention to her.'
Even after two days, and all those doctors working, Maddy was still so pale, as if all the blood had left her body. She tossed in restless sleep, her breathing labored. Tonight she burned with fever again.
'I'm going tae get her well,' Ethan had declared to the physicians, but he knew what they'd deemed Maddy's chances.
Yet they simply didn't knowher as he did. They only saw her size and felt her weak pulse. And after Ethan told them about her possible pregnancy and then of finding blood on the back of her nightgown in the infirmary, they'd informed him that she'd lost the baby and would be further weakened.
Fiona had said, 'Doona worry, son, she'll have more bairns once she gets—'
'Do you think I give a damn about that?' he'd snapped.
'But the look on your face when you realized…I just thought…'
His reaction hadn't been from learning that she'd lost the babe; it had been from knowing she'd lost it in that hellhole.
By herself.
Maddy's body had received his seed and had been ready to give them a babe. But his countless lies had driven her away, straight into danger, putting her in this grueling struggle for life.
When he'd first feared that they'd lost their bairn, his mind had whispered,It could be the curse once more….
Yet Ethan knew none of this was about the curse—no matter how easy it would be to assign blame to it. No,his actions had precipitated all this, and he fully accepted all the fault.
Hour after hour, Ethan watched over her, staring at each rise and fall of her chest, willing her to keep fighting…one more breath in…one more breath exhaled….
In between fevered dreams, for what felt like days, she'd heard Ethan speaking to her.
With his voice growing thick, he'd pleaded, 'Maddy lass, doona leave me.' Other times, he'd threatened her. 'You'll never be rid of me,' he'd snapped; then, as if he worked to calm his tone, he'd added, 'so you'd best…you'd best stay with me.'
And he'd railed at her, his voice booming so loud the bed had seemed to shake. 'You canna do this—take my goddamned heart and then leave me! You think I will no' follow?'
She knew he was constantly there, was aware of his movements and comprehended his words, but she couldn't seem to open her heavy eyelids or speak.
At night, he would wrap his body around hers, keeping her warm, whispering against her hair, 'You enjoy being contrary. Then prove them all wrong and get better.' He'd clutched her hip, then balled his fist there. 'Ah, lass, they canna understand how strong you are.'
Sometimes she heard other voices, doctors, she thought, and occasionally an older woman with a Scottish accent. The woman spoke now: 'Ethan, these physicians are doing their best.'
'It's no' good enough!' he roared in answer, then cursed the unseen doctors in some of the vilest language
