“He also asked…asked if I would marry him and I said ye–”
Amelia was jumped on once more, shrieks of joy, Phoebe whooping.
“Lawks-a-mussy!” cried Sally. “I knew it. How I love a weddin’.” And she burst into tears all over again as a beaming Mr Cruikshank passed her a new handkerchief.
Mrs Dawkins sagely nodded. “I told you all, I did. Eh, Mr Cruikshank?”
Amelia swiped at her cheeks as she was fussed over. Just like the entire household, she needed to sup some breakfast, breathe in the fresh air of spring and sleep for a week.
But Hugh would still require all their care and support for some while yet. He’d need to be coddled with kindness and patience.
It would be a time of togetherness and tender healing for them all.
Eight days later.
“Hugh Cadwalader,if you do not eat that porridge, I will tie you to that bed and force it down your gullet at knifepoint.”
Hugh wouldn’t object to being tied up but the porridge… He peered at the unappetising bowlful before returning his eyes to his beloved, who was tapping her foot, arms folded and with a militant gaze. “It’s grey,” he grumbled. “Why is it grey?”
“Mrs Dawkins might have added a few drops of castor oil but–”
“Can’t I have bacon?”
“Porridge first.”
With a grimace, he devoured the lot in three spoonfuls.
Gads…
Castor oil wasn’t the sole added ingredient, he felt sure. “Now can I have bacon?” His arm still twinged but was healing. A headache oft plagued but sleep aided. His back ached but he blamed that on lying in bed for so long. Hunger, however, seemed constant.
“You are the worst patient ever.” Amelia huffed. “And don’t think I haven’t heard about you walking around the room and pestering Towlson for your slippers.”
“You hid them.”
“You…” A finger pointed like a sabre, words stabbing. “Were told to stay in bed.”
He patted the coverlet. “Amelia, come sit by me.”
Ignoring his pat, she perched upon the chair instead, glaring daggers at him with those beautiful amber eyes.
Not that he could blame her as Hugh knew he wasn’t the best of patients. Never had been.
The days and nights he’d been lost in delirium were now bewildering recollections – of torment and bliss, burn and chill, rage and peace. Nonsensical dreams had plagued him – poetry-reciting hares lolloping around a Welsh mountain while numbers and letters had swirled in a mass of cyphers.
But he recalled Amelia on that foreboding night. When his will to see dawn had ebbed, when the fever had coiled, twisting him in its deathly embrace, whispering of release…
Yet Amelia’s hand had never let go.
He owed her his life. He owed everyone in this household his life – for all their care. And although he knew he was acting the curmudgeon, he was now impatient to get on with that life.
The sole problem was convincing Amelia that he was ready to leave his sickbed.
“I feel much better. I had a bath this morning, a fresh nightshirt and–”
“Little more than a week ago you almost died.”
“I heal quickly.”
