“This is when I have need of your stubbornness most, Alaric.” She dabbed at his face with the cloth, her thumb tracing across his skin. “I do not know what ails you, but fight it. Please, fight it.”
Alaric’s skin was gradually returning to its normal color. The terrible gurgling sound in his chest was easing. The vice around Catherine’s relaxed, but only slightly.
His eyes snapped open, and her heart raced. Alaric looked around the room with a feverish intensity. He tried to sit up, but she placed a hand on his chest.
“Catherine!” he cried out.
“I am here. Shh… Rest, I am here. See? Listen to my voice. I am right here,” Catherine soothed him.
His skin was burning up now, and Catherine was not sure if it was better or worse than the cold.
Curse that physician! If Alaric dies before he arrives, I swear I will make sure he never works again.
“Catherine.” Alaric’s eyes were glassy.
“Rest, Alaric. You are burning up with fever. Save your strength.” She cupped his face in her hands, feeling the roughness of his stubble beneath them. “And once you are better, we shall see that this does not happen again.”
Alaric nodded, his eyes fluttering open and closed. “I love you.”
The words were like three daggers to her heart.
It is just the fever talking.He is probably not even talking to me.
A lump formed in her throat as she looked down at her husband. This was the man who had rescued her more than once, even though she had not known it at the time: first from scandal, then from her mother. The man who had stood by her side. He was the man who had danced with her until the world around them faded.
“Do not leave me.”
“I do not want to leave,” Catherine whispered, resting her forehead against his. “I want to stay with you, Alaric.”
She knew he could not hear her, but she could not help saying it. “Come back to me, stay with me.”
She gave a gentle kiss to his lips, tears streaming down her cheeks and landing on his burning skin. “Please.”
CHAPTER 22
Pain laced through Alaric’s body as his mind traveled through time. He was a boy learning what it meant to be proper. He was a young man embarking on his Grand Tour. He was a grown man discovering yet another of his father’s secrets.
Memories flooded him, rapid and intense. Everything he had lost rushed back like a bullet. He was nine, standing by his mother’s sick bed, begging her to eat, watching her grow weaker and weaker.
“Please, Mother, please,” he begged, his voice shaking.
Each breath made a horrifying rattling sound in her chest, somehow far too wet and yet bone dry at the same time. It reminded him of the fish he had caught from the lake.
He could feel every bone in her wasted hand, her eyes glazed over, and the sound stopped. “Mother? Mother!”
He shook her, but she stared blankly past him. Tears streamed down his face as he let out a primal howl of anguish, so wild that several birds took flight.
“I told you to be quiet.” A hand collided with the side of Alaric’s face, sending him flying. “She is dead, boy. Your wailing will not bring her back.”
He lunged at his father, but the man easily pushed his small frame aside, hardly noticing Alaric as he looked over his wife’s dead body, lips curled in disgust.
“Even in death, she continues to be a nuisance.” He shook his head and beckoned for servants to come in and take the body away.
“Do not touch her!” Alaric roared, but his father backhanded him once more, sending him sprawling.
“You will learn respect, boy. Your mother has indulged you for too long. It is time you understand what it is to be a real man.”
“Mother loved me.” Alaric was pressed against the wall, staring up into the monstrous form of his father.
