Choking a bit, Bess coughed into her hand.“Don’t trouble yourself on my account, Lucy dear,” she managed to say, though it was a bit garbled.Was she laughing?
Lucy ignored that and forged ahead.“I am not being forced to wed Thornecliff, by him or by my own notions of propriety or by concern for my reputation, or anything so witless.”
“Then whyhaveyou agreed to marry him?”
Lucy swallowed.Bess had such a way of gently driving her point directly into one’s heart.Already feeling mired in lies, Lucy didn’t wish to add another.
So she said, “I’m honestly not sure.I suppose because there is something very tangled between us, and I think it may take a lifetime to unravel it.”
Thank goodness, that had caused Bess’s face to soften.“Oh, Lucy.That feeling, of there never being quite enough time to spend with another person, always more you want to know and discover about each other—that is all I’ve ever wanted for you.That, along with a ready sense of humor, is my exact recipe for a happy married life.”
“I’m sure we’ll do very well together,” Lucy said uncomfortably.“Listen, Bess, could you please promise me not to mention the engagement to Mama and Gemma?And ask Nathaniel to keep mum also?”
Bess knit her brows.“Why?”
Because if there’s the smallest chance that they might never need to know—if Gabriel’s memories return and he casts me aside, or if I break it off, or, or, or…
“I would so like to have the chance to tell them myself, in person,” Lucy improvised, and was relieved when Bess agreed.
The questions had stopped after that, though Lucy caught Bess eyeing her curiously as the days passed and Lucy spent every waking hour playing with Kitty, reading to Bess or studying books about head injuries instead of sitting at Gabriel’s bedside.
As she settled there now, in her accustomed chair, Lucy forced herself to acknowledge that being this near to him calmed the frantic flutter of her nerves to an alarming extent.
Staying away from him during the day was getting harder.But every day that passed without his memories returning made Lucy more and more anxious that the blow he’d sustained might have damaged him irreparably.
It had been four days since the accident, and she worried that Gabriel was losing the will to fight; when she’d checked in on him after supper, instead of exerting all his charm to get her to stay longer with him, he’d barely acknowledged her presence.His drawn, set features and air of abstraction filled Lucy with fear.
Even in sleep, when most people looked relaxed and calm, all cares and woes smoothed from their faces, Gabriel looked tense.His brows were lowered, his mouth a stern line that carved his face into something untouchable.
As she studied him in the dark, he twitched slightly, nostrils flaring.His chest began to rise and fall faster, as though he was dreaming about running or being chased.
In fact, she noticed with a pulse of unease that sweat appeared to have broken out along his hairline and at his temples.Was he ill?
She hesitated, not wanting to wake him, but ultimately couldn’t dissuade herself from reaching out to push back his mussed blond hair to check if his forehead felt feverishly hot.
But at the lightest touch of her hand, he twisted violently away from her, sitting up in bed with a choked-off shout that made Lucy flinch.
He stared at her for a moment without seeming to recognize her, panting and wild-eyed.
“Gabriel?”she whispered.Her fingers shook when she moved to light the candle on his nightstand.
He winced away from the light as though it hurt his head.
“It’s all right,” she said urgently, shielding the flame with her hand.“You were having a bad dream, I think.”
His chest heaved.His white nightshirt clung to him in patches where it was damp with sweat.He still seemed barely cognizant of his surroundings.
Concerned, Lucy moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed.He watched her, unblinking, jaw tight as though clenched on a cry.She wanted to touch him, to ground him in this moment here with her, to let him know he was no longer trapped in the nightmare, but she didn’t want to startle him.
The moment she reached out a tentative hand, however, he folded forward and caught her to him, burying his face in her shoulder.
He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe, but that didn’t matter since being in his arms like this rendered her breathless anyway.
The broad muscles of his back flexed and tightened under her hands.She felt the fine tremors running through him and the brush of his hair against her throat and the damp strikes of his breath at her shoulder.
“There now,” she crooned, stricken with tenderness in the face of his distress.“Gabriel, Gabriel.Come back to me.”
He shuddered once, his big body jarring hers with the involuntary motion, then seemed to breathe out a long sigh.
