Page 84

“You’re swaying,” he noted, alarm evident in his voice. “Laura…”

“I’m fine,” she said, pressing a hand to her brow to steady her gaze.

“You are clearly not fine.” He stood up and rounded the bed to press her into her seat. “Stay there. Don’t argue with me.”

He was gone only a few minutes before returning with a tray a maid had clearly assembled in haste. Fresh bread, cold meat, and a pot of tea gone lukewarm from its journey up the stairs sat on the tray. He set it before her.

“Eat,” he urged. “I’ll watch her.”

“Nathaniel, I don’t want to leave her.”

“You’re not leaving her. You’re sitting three feet away, eating bread, while I sit here instead. That is not abandonment, Laura, whatever your exhausted mind is currently telling you.” His voice softened. “You will do her no good if you collapse on the floor. Dr. March will need to care for you both if you don’t eat something. Please.”

She hesitated a moment longer, torn between the fierce, protective instinct that had carried her through the hours and the sheer, undeniable weakness in her limbs. Finally, she reached for the bread.

Iris stirred as she ate, whimpering, her tears already falling before she’d fully surfaced from whatever fresh fever dream had gripped her. “Mama. I want Mama.”

“I know, little button.” Nathaniel gathered her carefully against his chest, his voice dropping into something low and sweet. “Would you like to hear about the night garden? Your mama used to ask for it when she was small and feverish, just like you.”

Iris’s crying quieted, just slightly. “The night garden?”

“There is a garden,” Nathaniel said, rocking her gently against his chest, “that only opens once the sun has fully set and only for children who are brave enough to be a little frightened and go looking for it anyway. The flowers there don’t bloom in ordinary colors. They bloom silver, and violet, and a blue so deep it looks nearly black until the moonlight catches it just right. If you stand very still and listen closely, you can hear them humming very softly.”

“What do they hum?” she murmured.

“A tune no one has ever quite been able to write down properly, because it changes every single night,” he said, a small smile on his face.

“Did Mama go there?” she asked drowsily, her small fist curling into his shirt.

“Every night she couldn’t sleep. She told me about it for years, insisting it was real, though I never once managed to find it myself, however hard I looked.” His voice had gone rough. “She said the garden had a guardian, a great silver fox with eyes like lanterns, who let only the kindest children through the gate. She said I could never find it because I wasn’t kind enough yet, and I spent a great many years quite offended by that, before I realized that she likely meant it as encouragement rather than insult.”

Iris let out a small, sleepy laugh and burrowed further against him. “I’m kind.”

“Then I imagine you’d have no trouble finding it at all,” Nathaniel murmured.

He kept talking in a low, unhurried voice, weaving another half-remembered thread of the story Isabella had apparently told him decades ago.

Slowly, Iris’s breathing evened out, her fever-flushed face going slack with exhausted sleep.

Laura watched it all from her chair, the bread forgotten in her lap, her chest aching with a tenderness so fierce it nearly stole her breath.

How I missed him.

“You should sleep too,” Nathaniel said quietly, once Iris had settled, glancing over at Laura with something gentler than she’d seen from him in a week. “I’ll watch her for the rest of the night.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“I didn’t ask you to leave. Only to rest in the chair, the way I intend to.” A faint, tired smile touched his mouth. “Neither of us can be of use to her exhausted past reason, Laura. There is no shame in resting while she sleeps. We will be right here if she wakes.”

Laura didn’t answer, only settled deeper into the chair. She watched Iris’s small chest rise and fall in the candlelight.

I will only close my eyes for a moment.

Hours later, she woke to gray predawn light at the window and a blanket tucked around her shoulders that she had no memory of drawing up. She blinked her eyes and looked around the room.

Nathaniel was still sitting exactly where he’d been the night before, Iris’s small hand still held loosely in his. His brown eyes were heavy with exhaustion but fixed steadily on his sleeping niece.

Laura did not move, not wanting to disturb the quiet that had settled over the room. She just sat there and watched him for a long moment in the pale, gathering light.