She might die here.
It was quite unfair, she thought as she grappled to regain control. She grabbed onto a rock, but her arms were so spent that she couldn’t keep her hold on it, and she was gone again.
Joseph had nearly watched his first wife drown. Perhaps it was a good thing that he would not be there to see the second.
As if she had conjured him from her memory, she saw him. It was only a flash, surely a figment of her imagination before water clogged her throat, and she went under again. She never got the chance to see if he had truly been there because she smashed her head against a rock underwater, and then there was nothing but blackness.
But she was glad that, even for a moment, she saw his face one last time.
Her throat burned.
Catriona’s hand twitched first, and then she reached up to touch her sore throat, groaning. Was she getting ill? Now wasn’t the time for that. She had enough happening emotionally, and the last thing she wanted was to deal with fighting a cold as well.
“Catriona.”
She turned away from the voice, so exhausted that she didn’t bother opening her eyes. She simply wanted to sleep. It felt as if she’d been trampled by horses, her body aching all over.
A hand touched her shoulder. “Catriona, open your eyes.”
The voice sounded familiar, eliciting a quickening of her heartbeat. Catriona nearly turned to face it, wanting to knowwho had the gall to try and wake her when she was clearly under the weather, but she simply grumbled, “Leave me to sleep.”
A chuckle sounded behind her. “While I would love for you to get more rest, it is time for you to wake up.”
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Memories flooded her at once, realization gripping her insides. She was in a bedchamber,herbedchamber. The one she had been returning to at Irvin Manor before?—
She sat upright with a gasp. “Dorothea!”
“She’s fine.”
Catriona looked to the left of her. Joseph sat by her bedside looking haggard, his hair an unruly mop atop his head. He looked equal parts relieved and exhausted. “You don’t know how happy I am to see that you’re all right. I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought I had lost you.”
Those words, spoken with such fear, unraveled everything in her. Catriona relaxed against the bed frame, tempted to reach out to him, tempted to touch his cheek and tell him that she was going nowhere. She kept her hand by her side.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I pulled you out of the water.”
“What?” She straightened at that. “How?”
“The only way I knew how to. By jumping in myself.”
“You could have gotten caught in the current!”
“So could you, but that didn’t stop you from getting in to get Dorothea to safety.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “How did you know I was in danger anyway?”
“I heard Dorothea’s screams and Nina’s barking. I think all of Mayfair heard. I arrived to find her standing helplessly at the side of the river, and she told me that you had gone in to save her, only to need saving yourself.”
“The current was rather strong,” she murmured in her defense.
Joseph smiled. The sight made her heart skip a beat, even though it was tinged with tiredness. “It was. You could have… if I had been a second too late, you would have…”
This time, she didn’t stop herself. She reached out to take his hand. “But I didn’t. And that’s the only thing we need to focus on.”
He curled his fingers over hers, nodding. Then he nodded again as if to convince himself. To her surprise, and inner delight, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
“Almost losing you tonight has put a lot of things in perspective,” he murmured.
