Free of the pain that had gripped him for days.
Free of the body he’d inhabited for three and a half decades — the body lying, weak and wracked with agony, in the big bed.
That body — his body — was chilled to the bone.
He could see, but not with his eyes. He could feel, but he wasn’t sure how or why. Which senses were telling him what he now knew, he could no longer discern.
The cold and the pain. . they’d driven him out.
Out of his body, out into the night.
Out beyond the veil.
He could feel a tug, a gentle tempting encouraging him to just let go and float away, away from the world, from the pain and the cold and the devastating agony.
All he had to do was decide, just make up his mind and let go, and his connection to the world would fade away and he would find blessed peace.
Blessed peace waited one last heartbeat away.
He — his body in the bed — drew a deeper, pain-wracked breath. . and he thought of making that decision.
His last decision.
What reason did he have to live?
What was left to hold him to this world?
Even as the thought formed, the answers flooded in.
His father.
His two, dear, evil ugly sisters.
Heather.
He paused at that last, wondering why she was still in his list. She hadn’t loved him, had told him to leave, to walk away. . why, then, did his connection to her remain?
That connection. . he could, in this odd state, almost feel it. Touch it, see it. Like a shining rope, stretched out yet strong, it glowed in his consciousness, vital and true, powerful, alive. . living.
Real.
He’d thought he was alone, lying cold, agony-wracked, and silenced in the big bed, but that shining rope. . led somewhere. It was fixed somehow. It anchored him to the world, to life.
Another whisper from beyond shivered through him, beckoning, calling.
But now he’d seen what lived inside him, been dazzled by its beauty, he had to know — needed to know — before he took that last irrevocable step and turned his back on the wonder, on the joy.
On the incomparable beauty of love.
He opened his senses — not touch or sight, but whatever in this state passed for those — and immediately knew where the shining rope ended.
Heather was sitting by his bedside, but she had crossed her arms on the covers and laid her head down. One slim hand was nestled in his lax palm. Her hair was spread fanlike, a golden veil flung across the covers, gilt strands a delicate net across her cheek.
She was sleeping.
His immediate thought was that she couldn’t be comfortable, that he should rise, lift her, and settle her in the bed. .
He paused, thought.
Remembered she’d rejected him.
Remembered that he’d still risked his life — brought himself to this, to the edge of life — in order to save her.
If he lived, he would again.
His love for her was an intrinsic part of him, the strongest, most brilliant, and best part of him. He would no more wrench it, or her, from his heart than he would trade his soul. . he would rather trade his soul than lose love, lose her.
Even if she wasn’t his in the worldly, customary sense.
In every sense that mattered to him, she would always be his to guard, to protect.
To love.
He looked at her, studied her from his new distance, through the strange distortion of the veil.
She’d said she didn’t care if he left. . so why was she there?
Why was she. . he broadened his senses and confirmed that it was only she. . by his bedside, keeping vigil through the lonely night?
He focused on her again, saw, sensed, the tracks of the tears she’d shed.
Knew beyond question that she’d shed them for him.
Knew she cared.
Other words echoed in the distance of his mind; he focused, pulled them forward, remembered. Out by the bull pen, when his life had been draining from him and he’d felt so cold, she’d told him she’d changed her mind — she’d said she intended to marry him. They’d talked of their future life, of all the things they would do, would achieve.
The memories came rushing back.
She loved him.
The wonder of that distracted him. While he savored that new aspect of his shining reality, he floated back up to where he’d earlier been.
Hovering between life and death.
Once again, more insistent this time, he felt the tug, the summons to go. To let go of life and leave the world he knew.
Leave Heather. Leave their love.
He looked again — detached, dispassionate — at his body on the bed. The injuries were serious. Beneath the miasma induced by the herbs and potions they’d fed him, his corporeal self was writhing in agony. If he returned to that body, he would face days of searing agony, weeks of debilitating pain.
He switched his strange senses to Heather. Saw her as she truly was in that moment, vulnerable, lost, and unprotected. And it was her love for him, her acceptance of it, that left her so exposed. So emotionally unshielded.
If he left. . who would hold her, shield her? Care for her, protect her?
Who would love her?
He couldn’t leave. No matter the agony of staying, no matter the price, he couldn’t walk away from her — not if there was any hope of staying, of remaining by her side.
The summons came again, more definite this time. He had to leave or stay — he had to make up his mind.
He didn’t have to search to know what to do. He simply opened his consciousness, and within it said one word. “No.”
And he was back in his body.
And the agony flayed him again.
“He’s burning up.” Heather looked up at Catriona. “What do we do?”
The worried look on Catriona’s face did nothing to quell the fear coursing through her. After him being chilled, his skin cold to the touch through the first night and the next day, this morning, when she’d woken and studied Breckenridge’s face, she’d seen a hint of color creeping into his cheeks. His hand had been warm in hers.
In her innocence and inexperience of serious injury, she’d thought that he was recovering. Talking quietly, telling him of all the things they would do once he got better, she’d waited eagerly for him to wake up.
Instead, a fever had built, and built, until now, in the late afternoon, it had reached the level of a raging conflagration, one that threatened to engulf and devour him from the inside out.
They’d gone from wiping his brow with iced water, to laying ice-water-dampened sheets over him, and constantly changing them, but nothing had worked to even stabilize his temperature.
