“When my sister took the fever, they put her in the sick house. She caught the croup. Didn’t last two days after that.” His shoulders drooped.
“Those places aren’t fit for animals.” Mrs. Polley scowled. “Best you’ve found my mistress here to take you in.”
Diantha chopped herbs without finesse and cracked eggs into a bowl and was lucky she did not cut off her fingers with the knife or spill their dinner onto the floor. She had no attention for anything but the gentleman. He also watched her, shadows beneath his eyes and hands in his pockets. But he seemed unusually restless.
They ate picnic style, without ceremony in the kitchen. Owen consumed half the platter of eggs, bread, and jam the moment Mrs. Polley set it on the table. Diantha made a plate for Mr. Yale and, remarkably, he ate. Then, with a “Thank you” to Mrs. Polley and a bow to her, he left.
Diantha gobbled up the remainder of her food and went after him. She found him in the parlor, facing the hearth where the peat simmered, hands thrust deeply into his pockets, his eyes closed. He opened them as she entered and turned to her.
“Forgive my hasty exit, if you will, Miss Lucas.”
“You are truly ill.” She went toward him and he withdrew from her a step. She halted, her stomach turning over.
“I am less than comfortable, it is true.” His jaw seemed very tight.
“Perhaps you have taken Mrs. Polley’s chill.”
“Now you are repeating yourself.”
“Well, I may be, because although I’d thought before that I had a lot of courage, I may not after all, for I cannot possibly allow you to be suffering some more serious, dreadful disease, because I do not wish to sit here helplessly in the wilds of Wales and watch you die.”
His brow lifted. “You have a fine flare for the dramatic, Miss Lucas. Usually dormant, admittedly. But when it animates it is truly impressive.”
She wrung her hands. “You are very frustrating to converse with sometimes. Tell me what is wrong with you.”
He looked toward the window. “Nothing that a few fingers of brandy would not put to rights. Ah, it has begun again to rain.”
“You look like you wish to say ‘fitting’ or something equally dispiriting.”
“Not at all. It is only that when one has spent a night outside in the rain without sleep, a night enjoyed within doors in a fire-heated room seems a vast luxury.” He smiled then, but barely, and his eyes held a peculiar look. The look of the predator again.
A shiver skipped up her spine. “You spent last night outside in the rain? After exhorting me to find a bedchamber in which to sleep?”
“I fully admit to being a hypocrite. Throw me in irons and bear me to the hangman’s noose, if you wish. I will be there soon in any case.” He said this last seemingly as an afterthought.
“Now who’s the nonsensical one? You are irrational. You should go to sleep.”
“Thank you, I will remain here. But you are welcome to go yourself.”
“It is only dusk.”
For a moment his eyes flashed bleakly, a shadow of desperation like that night in the hotel corridor in Knighton when he had touched her, that night that he did not remember because he had drunk too many spirits.
Then, abruptly, she understood. Or thought she did.
“But you won’t have a few fingers of brandy now,” she said slowly. “Or even one. Will you?”
His gaze shifted to her face but he said nothing.
“You have ceased drinking spirits, haven’t you? Altogether.”
“You—” He paused, and seemed to reconsider, then said only, “I have.”
“And it is making you ill.”
A moment’s silence, then: “Yes.”
Another silence stretched during which she was entirely unable to say the many things that rushed to her tongue. Her virtue and his honor were now tangled in a piteous mess.
“Because of what happened between us at the inn in Knighton,” she finally said.
“Because of that,” he replied.
Her unsteady hands found a chair and she lowered herself into it. “You should sit down.”
“I am comfortable standing.”
“You look about as comfortable as my sister Charity when my mother tried to marry her to Lord Savege. Before he married Serena, that is.”
A smile creased his delicious mouth. “I hadn’t heard that story.”
“They all keep it very quiet. It was one of the reasons my mother left, I think.” She could not look at him directly now. “She was disappointed in her high hopes for Charity.”
A pause. “And what of her hopes for you?”
“Oh, she had none to speak of for me. Charity is very beautiful and demure, of course.”
“Ah.”
He could not possibly understand, not this handsome gentleman, elegant and well mannered even when he was ill and in the impossible situation into which she had gotten him with her reckless quest and her brazen behavior.
“My father always said he would cease drinking spirits,” she said. “He did so once, but he didn’t last the sennight. I was very young, but I remember it because after several days when he wished to drink his whiskey again he told me to fetch him the bottle.”
“And did you?”
“I refused.” She shrugged. “I liked him better without the whiskey. He was more enjoyable to talk with. Not that day, of course. He was furious, and when my mother returned home she locked me in my bedchamber. Shortly after that my father became ill. My mother said he drank himself to an early grave.”
There was another very long silence then during which nothing stirred but muffled sounds from the kitchen and Ramses’ soft snores from the hearth rug.
“This is not the first time.”
Her breaths stilled. It seemed he would confide in her after all, this man who owned secrets she feared she could not hope to understand.
“How was it that time?” she asked. “Those times?”
“That time. Better than this. Considerably better.”
She took a big breath and stood up. “It goes against my feelings on the matter in general, but you should not do this. Not now, at least. If I promise not to—”
“No. Be still.”
“Be still?”
“Rather, as still as you are able.” It seemed that he wished to smile, but he looked remarkably poorly, for all his elegant cravat and coat and perfectly handsome face. His eyes were the worst, as though the hungry predator searched for something he could not find and the desperation was building even as they spoke.
“You look peculiar.” She moved a step toward him and this time he did not retreat. “You are thinking about taking me home again.” His mind must have gone where hers had. It would be so much easier for him if she simply weren’t his responsibility. Then he could do as he wished, go where he wished, drink whatever he chose without fear of her throwing herself at him. “I would be if I were you.”
“Then it is a good thing for you that you are not me.”
But she could not be satisfied with this, not when his gaze seemed now to consume her, each feature of her face at a time.
“Then what are you thinking about?”
His attention fixed on her mouth. “The . . .”
She could not breathe properly. “The . . . ?”
“I cannot stop thinking about”—his gaze rose to her eyes—“the cellar.”
She must be very stupid. “The cellar?”
