“I’m not stealing!These are mine.”
I threw up my hands.“Why did you drag me out here?I need to handle whatever is going on in the dining room.”I attempted to side step him, but Maddox blocked me.
“You don’t need to handle everything, Giselle,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous!Of course I do!”
“Would it be such a bad thing for Edmund to go with Beatrice?”he asked.“His condition is delicate and it seems like he needs supervision.Plus...I think we’re intruding on Alexander.”
“He agreed to house us!”
“He didn’t agree to taking care of a sick man, especially amidst weather problems,” Maddox said.“We should let Edmund recover someplace else.”
I wanted to argue with him, but deep down I knew he was right.We had asked Alexander for more things than I had intended.It was meant to be an easy stay, just food and lodging.But the list had grown to food, lodging, secrecy, caretaking a sick man who may or may not be contagious...
“Fine,” I said, slumping into the stool Gio had sat on earlier.“Then what do you suppose we do?Stay here until our emissary recovers?And what about the weather?”
“I suppose we’ll have to find out what's wrong,” Maddox said.
I dragged a hand over my face.“You know, it’s unlikely Beatrice would even take Edmund.”
At that moment, the dining room door swung open and Beatrice stepped out.“I’ll take him,” she announced.
17
“Apparently Alexanderpromised her first pick of the produce for two months,” I muttered to Maddox as he and I carried Edmund between us in the flimsy collapsible stretcher Beatrice had in her kit.
The poor man was still unconscious—or sleeping.It was difficult to tell.
“That’s worth bringing a sick stranger into her home?”Maddox whispered from over Edmund’s head.The pile of blankets between us should’ve concealed my view of Maddox, but we were on an uphill incline, and my burning legs made that hard to forget.
“Hurry, children!What are you two whispering about?”Beatrice asked a few feet ahead.
“Sorry,” Maddox called out.
We increased our pace.
