His mouth journeyed back to her palm, lips traveling over the tracery of lines there. “What will he do when he discovers us gone?”
“He will be furious.” Tilly’s hand moved, stroking his jaw, her eyes burning with so much tenderness he ached. “But he will be too late to stop us.”
Tilly’s plan was better than his had been—confronting Longleigh when he returned to Coddington Hall. It had been foremost in his mind that he needed to strike first, to let the duke know that their bargain had changed. That he no longer wanted a part of it and that he would not be accepting the ten thousand pounds they had agreed upon.
That Tilly was his.
But there had also been the sense of fear, which had dogged him at every step. What if Longleigh refused to allow Tilly to leave? What if he would not allow them to take a carriage to the train station? And so on. Going to London first would negate some of those worries.
“It will not be easy for us, I am afraid.” He did not know all the intricacies of the law.Hell, he’d had no need for them, having been scarcely more than a lad himself when he had wed Amelia and later, being a simple man with a simple life, one who never intended to marry again. “The laws are not in our favor, and the duke is a powerful man.”
He suppressed a shudder at the thought, the reminder of what his mother had endured returning with a vengeance then. But he would not allow the same fate to befall Tilly. This he vowed. He would protect her with everything he had.
“I am prepared to do whatever we must.”
He pulled her nearer, and she came willingly, wrapping herself around his body, her silken curves pressed to him. “As will I, my love.”
* * *
Tilly woketo the faint strains of dawn and a terrible lurching in her stomach. Sunlight filtered through the edges of the window dressing and through a narrow gap where the sumptuous fabrics had parted. Outside, the birds were already merrily singing their chirps of optimism. She rolled to her back, attempting to control the upset in her belly.
Above her, the ceiling was a mocking swirl of shadows. The light illuminated a lone cherub. Was it symbolic? Why did the room seem to be spinning?
At her side, wrapped in the bedclothes, Robin began to stir. The bed dipped and moved as he reached for her, caressing her arm in his state of half-wakefulness.
Her stomach rebelled again, a violent churning seizing it, a sensation she recognized.
Dear heavens.
She was going to be ill.
Of all the days for an ailment to suddenly overtake her, this—the day she was leaving Coddington Hall in secret with Robin—was by far the most inconvenient. She tore herself from the bed, clapping a hand over her mouth as she stumbled frantically toward the bathroom adjoining her apartments, scarcely able to snag a dressing gown and secure it around her. There was a water closet within, and she needed to reach it.
Now.
She knocked her elbow into an immovable piece of furniture and hissed in pain as the wretched coils of illness tightened on her stomach. Numbly, she found the door and scarcely had enough time to throw it open with a violence that was unlike her.
Bangwent the door.
There was no natural light within the bathing chamber. Her feet slid on the slippery tiles, almost bringing her to her knees too soon. The water closet was here, a handful of paces more, and…
She fell to her knees and retched.
The force of her illness took her by surprise. As the heaves subsided, she became aware of a calming hand passing over her spine, of hands swiping the curls which had fallen forward in her misery from her face.
Robin, of course.
And what a terrible thing, for him to be seeing her thus. How mortifying it was. If she did not feel so wretched, she would have been humiliated, she thought. But instead, all she felt now was comforted and loved, much as she always did with him.
“Are you unwell, love?”
His voice was soft, consoling. She closed her eyes and swallowed, concentrating on her breathing.Steady. In, out.One, two. Three, four.
“Perhaps it was the fish at dinner last night,” she managed to say.
But surely the fish would not have also rendered her dizzy? Questions rose, each calling to be answered. Why did she feel so strange? What was wrong with her?
There was a rushing sound in her ears, then the ringing of a bell. She found the world tipping into an abyss, herself falling into it.
