He reached both arms around her hitching chest and yanked her to him. Fingertips still grazing Heatherbrook’s sunken cheeks, her body convulsed against Gavin’s.
“Hhh. Hhh. Help. Hhh. Hhh. Help me.” With a series of shallow, staccato gasps, Miss Pemberton’s head jerked from side to side, clipping Gavin’s chin. His jaw snapped closed with enough force to bring tears to his eyes, but he only gripped her tighter.
Her limbs twitched and flailed as she struggled for breath. The graceless jerking of her body reminded Gavin of the one and only time his father had taken him fishing. The fish—so beautiful and full of life before they’d hooked its lip and flung it from the water to the shore—had reacted in just such a way, gasping and convulsing on the dirt by Gavin’s feet until the last of its life leeched from its bulging eyes.
He’d had nightmares for months.
Gavin flipped Miss Pemberton around until she faced him. Her fingers slipped from the corpse’s face. He gripped her by the shoulders, ripping one of her sleeves in the process. She’d recover from that shock later. First, she had to breathe. A bluish cast tinged the whiteness of her skin. Phantom bruises cast a faint shadow about her neck. Terror widened her eyes, and no doubt his as well.
“Miss Pemberton! Miss Pemberton!” Not knowing what else to do, he shook her. She sagged in his arms as lifeless as a doll. Gooseflesh raced along his skin. “Breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe.Please. You’re scaring the devil out of me.” Again, he shook her. Again, her limbs flopped, offering no resistance and no response. “Breathe, damn it!”
He sucked in great lungfuls of air and pressed his open mouth to hers, forcing the breaths into her body. He was certain that was wrong, that shared breathing was only for victims of drowning, but he knew no other way to help her. For the first time in eleven years, Gavin prayed.
And as before, God ignored him.
Miss Pemberton’s head twitched to one side. A drop of blood trickled from her unbreathing nose. She fell against Gavin’s chest with a thud.
“Damnit.” He tossed frantic glances around the empty chamber. “Please, please, don’t die on me, too.”
Gavin scooped up her limp body and stared in horror at the gray pallor of her face. He stumbled over to the window seat. He fell onto the cushion and hauled her into his lap, his arms still locked around her motionless chest in a desperate embrace.
Her skirts fanned out across his legs. Her head lolled against his shoulder.
He pressed his ear to her lips, much as he had done that cold autumn night so many years ago, when his mother had been thrown from the pitching carriage before it tumbled off the embankment to the unforgiving river below. He’d reached his mother too late. He hadn’t been able to reach his father at all.
Unlike the ghosts who haunted his nightmares, Miss Pemberton was not yet a corpse. Her breaths were faint, shallow, uneven. But at least she breathed.
“Miss Pemberton,” Gavin whispered, his nose brushing against hers. “Miss Pemberton, wake up.”
She did not.
He held her, hoping to warm her with his body, to share his very breath.
Her eyes flew open. They both stifled screams. Gavin jerked his head back with an odd, choking sort of laugh. She stared at him with panicked eyes.
“L—Lioncroft?” she managed, her voice raw and unsteady. Her pupils dilated, then contracted. Her breath came stronger. “I mean…Mr. Lioncroft,” she corrected weakly, color returning to her pale cheeks.
“Mister, hell. After that, call me Gavin.” He pulled her to him in a sudden, crushing hug. “Thank you, thank you,thankyou for not dying. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
His cravat muffled her reply, but he thought he heard her say, “Thank you for not allowing my death.”
As if he’d had any control over whatever the hell had just happened.
Once he convinced his arms to loosen their grip on the trembling woman in his lap, Gavin leaned back against the window and fixed Miss Pemberton with his most dangerous glare.
“What,” he demanded, “wasthat?”
Wariness reentered her eyes. “Nothing. Nothing.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I don’t mean to. It’s…complicated. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me everything.” He fought the urge to shake her again. “For God’s sake, woman, I thought you were going to die.”
Rather than smile or call him melodramatic, she shivered in his arms.
“Me, too,” she whispered.
