“Is it the same one each time?”
“Similar enough. Always wounded and dying while a battle rages.”
She sat up in bed and brushed the hair from his forehead as she had done before. “Have you always had it?”
“During the Peninsula War, on occasion, but it had gone away these past months.”
“Until now,” she prompted.
“I know what is coming and we have been preparing, and likely because it is what I have been thinking about, but most of all dreading.”
The nightmare still left him shaken but Blythe was comfort and he pulled her close as he had done the night before and lay down with her head on his chest while he smoothed her hair. He needed to hold her tonight more than at any other time and likely because of underlying panic and because he knew that his time with Blythe was short.
She wasn’t his and never would be and it wasn’t even right that they were lying in bed in this manner, but he wasn’t ready for this to end.
“What will you do when you return to England?” she asked.
She was likely trying to take his mind off the nightmare and what was to come, which he did appreciate.
“My aunt and uncle live in Hampshire with my sisters. I may settle there and be a village doctor.”
“You never did tell me much about your family.”
That had been intentional and he had avoided the topic for nearly a month. It was one thing to mention a sibling in a snowball fight or racing a brother across the fields. The background of how they came to be was not something he shared with anyone.
“Why were you raised by an aunt and uncle? What happened to your parents?”
“They died,” he answered simply.
“I am sorry. Of course that would be your answer.” She tilted her head back to look up at him. “If you will not tell me about your family, tell me a secret.”
“A secret?” he asked.
“It occurred to me that you hold my secret—about how my marriage ended. Two secrets,” she corrected. “The other about my family being smugglers. I trust that you will never tell anyone, but I hold no secrets of yours. I think it is only fair that I do.”
What she didn’t realize was that his secret was the truth about his family.
What harm would it do to tell her? He knew that he could trust Blythe. That was one of the few things that he was certain. She would understand the harm and embarrassment if the truth was ever learned, otherwise she would not be hiding and afraid of seeing someone from Society.
“You are correct, but you must swear to me that you never ever tell anyone.”
“I never would, Orlando.”
The sincerity in her blue eyes was deep.
She settled back against his chest. “Only tell me what you wish and I will never speak a word of what you tell me.”
Orlando found that he had a deep need to tell someone the secret that his family held near. “My mother was the daughter of the Marquess of Wingate. She was betrothed to a viscount but fell in love with a stable hand. The two ran off to Gretna Green because they knew that her father would never approve. When they returned, my mother was disowned and the stable hand was sacked. His name was Timothy Jones and just like your husband, believed that marrying her would better his circumstances.”
“Did he love her or did he spin lies?”
He smoothed a hand over her silken black hair. “I am not certain. I was only a child but I remember that he was often angry and drunk.”
“I am sorry for that,” she murmured.
“My parents have five sons, Demetrius, Benedick, Me, Mercutio and Petrucio. My father died before Petrucio came into the world.”
“Did she return home and remarry?”
