Willson said slowly, “There’s a rowboat in the stable.”
Christa rocked back on her heels. “But the currents! You may be swamped if you try to cross.”
“One person couldn’t make it. But two might.”
She opened her mouth to explain that the crisis coming was unlikely to be affected by a doctor, but she stopped herself. Willson doubtless knew that as well as she did, but she saw that he had a desperate need for action, to feel he was doing something to help. She said slowly, “Are you sure of that, and that Jamie is well enough to go? You know his lordship would be the last man to want you to throw your lives away.”
Fiske returned, his color better and his expression eager. He had always been proud to serve Lord Kingsley, and his genuine affection had become near idolatry after the rescue. How many masters would risk their lives for a servant, particularly one who had been employed for only a few months? “I’m recovered now. Will you be able to manage alone, Christa?”
She glanced at Alex. He was lying still now.Still as death. “Yes, he’s sleeping well. I should be able to manage. But in the name of heaven, don’t let anything happen to you!”
Within ten minutes they were gone. Christa looked out the window after them, but they disappeared almost immediately. The snow had stopped falling and a bitter wind was blowing the existing flakes in near-horizontal lines. Dropping the unbleached linen curtain, she added more coal to the fire, then went to sit by Alex again. She still wore her shift and wrapper, and it hardly seemed worthwhile to change. The room was warm, and she had a superstitious need to keep Alex under her sight, as if he couldn’t slip away as long as she was watching.
An hour or so after the men left, Alex started getting more restless again. His movements were less violent than earlier, but his voice clearer. He talked of battles—“The shot is red hot . . . ’ware the fire!”—and of watching a friend die—“I’ll tell her, Will, I promise . . . I promise.”
Christa caught his hand, hoping that her presence might calm him, but he pulled away, gasping, “The guns! Spike the guns!” in a hoarse voice. His thrashing was getting worse and she was frightened. If he fell out of the bed again, she would be unable to get him back, and the cold, drafty stone floor would not help his condition. She pitched her voice as clearly as possible and said, “Alex, it’s all right! You’re safe now. The fighting is over. We won. Everything is all right.”
He stopped moving, but his eyes were staring at something seen only by him. “No . . . no—stop it!” He rolled away from Christa, pulling one arm over his head as if shielding himself from a blow. “In the name of God, stop! She’s only a baby. She’s only a baby.”
Alex seemed to be collapsing in on himself, pulling away from something that he couldn’t bear. He kept repeating, “She’s only a baby.. . .” His face was gray and his breathing shallow, and he looked so much like the vision Christa had seen at the Orchard that she was terrified.
“Alex, don’t give up, please!” Christa’s voice was urgent, and tears filled her eyes. The hand she held was getting colder, and the gale rattling the windows sounded like the wings of the angel of death, fighting to break into the room.
She slipped into the bed and wrapped her arms around him, trying to warm him with her body. “Please, Alex, don’t go! I love you, and I can’t bear to lose another person I love.Please!” Her tears were falling on his chest, and she held him desperately, as if she could hold back a departing spirit.
Alex’s breathing changed, becoming more ragged. “Christa . . . ?” His voice was distant and uncomprehending, but it was the first time he had shown any kind of response. His head turned toward her, his eyes questioning. “Christa,amour. . . ?”
She lifted herself and laid her face against his. “I’m here, my love. Everything is all right. It’s over, she’s safe, everything will be all right now.”
His arms slipped around her and then he was holding her hard against him, so tightly she could hardly draw breath. “Christa . . .” He was still not fully in this world and he clung as if she were a lifeline that kept him from being swept away. She crooned French endearments in his ear, telling him that the terrors were behind him, that he was safe, that she loved him and everything would be all right.
She could feel the warmth slowly returning to his body, and his breathing was harsh but stronger. His face turned toward hers, seeking, and she kissed him with all the longing of fear and months of hidden love. She could feel the growth of desire as he began to respond, his hands relaxing their death grip and beginning to caress, his lips and tongue warm and urgent on hers.
With sharp clarity Christa knew that she could break away if she tried, but the desire to make love was a powerful manifestation of life, and passion might banish the death shadows that threatened to take Alex away from her. She had sworn to do anything that might aid him, and her virtue was a small price to pay toward his healing. Besides, giving herself to the man she loved was no great sacrifice even under these circumstances.
Alex rolled over on his right side, pulling Christa down against him. The passion that had always been between them flared into searing life and she forgot fear and doubt to exist solely in the moment, for Alex’s kisses, for the touch of the strong hands that slid under her shift and robe. His lips traversed her bare body, sometimes teasing, sometimes demanding, and she moaned, her pleasure as unselfconscious and primal as his own.
Such an intensity of passion moved quickly, and when he entered her there was a moment of pain so sharp that Christa cried out and tried to pull away. But then there was no more pain, and she knew for the first time the physical closeness that was the expression of the love she felt for him. Even with Alex half out of his head, there was a triumph in holding him, and she understood the songs poets had proclaimed from time immemorial.
When it was over, he rolled back to his side and held her still, stroking her back and whispering her name. His color and breathing were almost normal now, and as he slid into a healthy sleep, she knew in her bones that the danger was past.
The fears and events of the last hour had exhausted her, and Christa felt almost too tired to rise from the bed. With dry humor she considered the irony that her first experience of loving was such a solitary affair. When Alex woke, he might not remember any of what had happened, and she could imagine no good reason to tell him. He was pledged to another woman, and Christa had no honorable place in his future.
But for these few moments Christa could relax and savor his closeness, pretend that they were lovers in truth. She must not let herself get too comfortable, she thought drowsily. In just a minute she would get up, in just another minute . . .
* * *
It seemed that he had been wandering in darkness for a painful eternity, groping through swirling mists that would occasionally thin to put him in the middle of some wretched memory such as his first major battle, when Alex’s closest friend among the midshipmen was torn to pieces by a cannonball. He fought his way upward through an endless kaleidoscope of fear, disease, and loss, dimly aware that light and sanity must be somewhere beyond the mists. The veils were thinning when he stumbled into the worst memory of all.
He was a boy of ten, home from school for the summer; his mother was paying a brief visit to the country and in a vile mood. Annabelle was a toddler and she had wandered into her mother’s chamber when Lady Serena was dressing. The child was playing with a bottle of expensive perfume and dropped it when her mother shouted at her, the crystal vial shattering and the heavy scents of musk and neroli permeating the room. Furious, Lady Serena snatched up her riding crop and started to beat Annabelle, slashing down with her full adult strength.
Hearing his sister’s screams of terror, Alex rushed into his mother’s chamber and tried to stop the beating. Annabelle, bleeding and weeping hysterically, ran headlong from the room. Deprived of her original victim, Lady Serena turned her fury on her son, whipping him savagely around the head and shoulders.
He was too proud to run and could not bring himself to strike his mother back. Instead he fell to his knees on the floor, trying to protect his head, trying to withdraw from the unbearable knowledge that his mother was more than a little mad. Her maid finally intervened to stop the attack, and Alex had staggered from the room, holding his tears until he was alone in the marshes by the shore. He had buried the memory for years, the pain and the sense of desolation, the knowledge that his mother was as cruel and violent and uncaring as she was beautiful.
The memory had carried a despair as vivid as the event itself, and he was drowning once more in desolation. As Alex tried to withdraw from the anguish of the past, he began a nightmare-slow fall down a bottomless well, into an endless night that promised cessation of pain.
And then Christa was there, her warm voice and touch pulling him back from the dark. The mists still obscured his sight, but Alex clung to her, to warmth and the memory of sanity and laughter. He dreamed of her with such intensity and passionate detail that the dream surpassed reality. Floating up from the depths of sleep, he could even imagine the rosemary tang of her hair.
