Titus had never been without servants, and could not imagine how helpless and alone she must have felt.
“I noticed the first spiderweb on the third day. There in the corner, across from my bed, way up high. To destroy it, I would need to climb a stool or stab at it with a broom. But of course I could do nothing of the sort. I was too weak to lift my hands, and could barely accept weak tea from a cup when the doctor and his nurse came to check on us.”
At least there was a kind doctor. Like Titus, that might be the only reason she was still alive.
Her voice was shaky. “I didn’t want to be there. Not because of the spider, though I hated the creatures even then. My parents were in another room and I desperately wanted to be with them. They were too weak and ill for visitors, said the doctor. And I was too weak and ill to make visits. But that didn’t stop me from wanting. I had nothing else to do, but lay there, minute after minute, hour after hour, one worried eye on the web across from me, yearning for the comfort of my parents.”
His stomach twisted. He would never forget what it felt like to yearn for the comfort of his family. It was a wound that never healed.
She took a deep breath. “The next morning, there was a second web. Closer to my head this time. I tried to beg the nurse to destroy it, but she either couldn’t hear me or did not understand the request. I’m not even certain actual sounds escaped my fever-parched lips. But I watched in panic as the webs grew ever larger.”
Like the web of scars on the left half of his face. They brought him horror even today. He longed to brush them away. In his case, he deserved every mark. Miss Dodd, on the other hand, was blameless. She did not deserve any part of her tragedy.
Her face was still pale. “That afternoon, I woke up to the worst pain of my life. My toes had worked free from my blanket, and a spider had bitten me. My body reacts poorly to spider bites. Within minutes, my foot had swollen to twice its usual size. It was reddish purple and excruciatingly painful.”
Pain on top of pain was something he understood all the way to his bones… and a misery he would not wish on anyone.
“The spider was still there, on my toe. I screamed. Or tried to. My swollen, hyper-sensitive skin could feel each of its spindly little legs tickling the pulsing bruise. I tried to kick it off and could not. I was terrified the foot would need to be amputated. Terrified the spider would bite the other leg as well, crawling up my body, biting and biting, until I was nothing more than a massive, swollen bruise.”
It sounded like torture. No wonder she feared spiders. Their bites risked her life.
“Finally, the doctor and nurse returned to my bedchamber. Despite the alarming colors and elephantine condition of my swollen foot, their eyes were on mine, rather than my extremity. Whilst I was thrashing impotently against a monster smaller than a pea… My parents were in the next room, taking their final breaths. Dying without me, while my only care was for myself.”
“That’s not it at all,” he said in horror. “You couldn’t have known that was what was happening. Anyone would have been preoccupied with a bite reaction like that.”
“It didn’t feel that way,” she said quietly. “They shared a sickroom, but I was isolated elsewhere, drowning in my loneliness, with all my focus on myself. It felt like I failed them. Abandoned them. I vowed that if I survived the bite and the fever, I would never be isolated or self-absorbed again. I’d keep my loved ones close. Be there for them, in life and in death.”
Memories of his own family’s last moments flooded Titus’s mind. Memories he had tried so hard to keep buried.
Yet the parallels did not escape him. He was the only survivor of that long-ago accident that had left him physically scarred. Whereas she was the only survivor of a terrible fever and physically perfect. One wouldn’t know anything unpleasant had ever happened to her by looking at her. One might even think she’d escaped unscathed.
“All I wanted was to say goodbye,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the final syllable.
His heart went out to her. Her pain was evident. She was right. Just because the worst hours of her life weren’t imprinted on her face for everyone to see did not mean that there were no wounds beneath the surface.
At least in her case, the deaths had not been her fault.
Chapter 12
When light and the noise of the street spilt through a break in the hedgerow ahead, Titus led the way toward the exit from the labyrinth with a mixture of dread and relief. He held no love for the dangerously crowded road just outside the gardens, but Miss Dodd had been pale and jumpy ever since her encounter with the spiderweb, and he did not want her to continue to suffer.
“We’ll be back at the hotel soon,” he promised.
She flashed him a relieved smile, then frowned at the river of pedestrians streaming past the entrance of the labyrinth toward a different section of the botanical gardens. “Where is everyone going?”
Titus lifted his shoulders in a shrug. He neither knew nor cared what nonsense the merrymakers were up to. He hated crowds and would never take a bride, which made Marrywell’s matchmaking activities of no interest to him whatsoever.
Miss Dodd stopped in her tracks. “What time is it?”
He tugged the gold chain of his pocket watch up from his waistcoat and tilted the face toward her.
“We’re late,” she gasped.
“Late for what?”
“The tart-and-pie competition!”
Devil take it, Titus had forgotten all about the cursed tart-and-pie competition. “You still wish to attend?”
