Page 69 of Mail-Order Viscountess

“One of his rare visits.” The words carried an edge he hadn’t intended. He softened his tone. “We thought we were in trouble. We weren’t allowed to go to town by ourselves yet.”

“But?”

He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see it. “He didn’t scold us. Just stood there looking at our pitiful pile of logs and asked if we’d considered the rapids just before the sawmill. We hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t even known they existed.”

The memory sharpened—his father crouching down to their level, pointing out the flaws in their construction with the same critical eye he brought to everything. Except this time, he hadn’t stopped there.

“He spent the rest of his visit helping us rebuild it properly. Showed us how to lash the logs so they wouldn’t come apart. Even helped us test it in the shallows.” He swallowed against the tightness in his throat. “We never did float to town. But James and I spent the rest of that summer on that raft, fishing and swimming and pretending we were explorers.”

Silence from the other side of the door.

Then, quietly, “That’s a good memory.”

“It is.” He didn’t add that those were the memories that hurt most now—the rare moments when his father had been present. When he felt like a real father instead of a distant monarch in England who oversaw their lives from the far side of the world.

“Thomas?”

“Yes?”

A pause. “What’s your earliest memory? The very first thing you can recall?”

He closed his eyes to wander back through the fog of early childhood.

“Light,” he said finally. “Sunlight through a window, I think. And the smell of lavender. My mother’s scent, I think. I remember feeling warm. Safe.”

Before he’d learned that warm and safe didn’t last.

“That’s beautiful.” Her voice came barely more than a whisper. So much softer than the Kate she showed the rest of the world.

His Kate.

Silence settled like it had often, but something felt different this time. Tighter. Heavier.

He straightened, pressing his palm flat against the door as if he could reach through the wood to touch her.

“Kate? Are you all right?”

No answer. But then came a soft, hitching sound. The barely audible catch of breath that meant she was crying and trying to hide it.

His chest constricted. Three days of distracting her, of filling the silence with stories and questions and the sound of his voice. Three days of doing everything he could, but knowing it probably helped so little.

And Clara still lay in that sickroom, fighting for her life, while Kate sat alone with nothing but worry and a cracked door.

He shut the book and stared at the crack of light beneath her door.

Lord, I don’t know how to do this.

Not the waiting. Not the helplessness. Not watching Kate drown in fear with nothing to offer but words.

If You’re there—and I know You are—help me be what she needs. Help Clara live. Show me what to do for Kate.

He rose to his feet. The doctor’s warnings rang in his mind—the risks of infection, the possibility that Kate was already carrying the fever without knowing it. If he went in there, if he touched her, he might end up sick himself.

But three days had passed. No fever. No rash. No sign that Clara’s sickness had spread to her sister.

And Kate was crying alone in the dark while he sat uselessly in the hall.

He pushed the door open.