By the time the first stripe of sun fought its way through the nursery curtains, the fire had dwindled to a few stubborn embers and the world outside was being washed, gently and inexorably, of its darkness. Felix was still seated on the window seat, Lizzie curled in the crook of his arm, Rose resting heavily against his side. He had not moved in hours; his body was stiff, his legsnumb, but there was a stillness in the room so absolute that to disturb it felt like blasphemy.
Lizzie’s skin was cooler now. He tested her brow with the back of his knuckles every few minutes, not trusting the previous reading, unwilling to tempt fate by hope alone.
She was still, but her breathing had settled—no longer the desperate gasp of the early hours, but something quieter, content. The little fist that had been clenched at his shirt had loosened, fingers splayed, as if she’d given up the fight at last and decided to trust the world a little.
Rose, too, was changed. She had slipped from weeping to silence, then from silence to sleeping, her head against his shoulder and her hair stuck to her cheek in the messiest, most human way.
Felix watched the slow, regular pulse at the base of her throat and felt a kind of wonder at it. There was so much strength in her. He had seen it, admired it, even resented it, but now, holding her like this, it struck him as nothing short of a miracle that someone so battered by the world could still find the courage to love anything at all.
A discreet knock at the door broke the spell. Felix shifted Rose gently upright, and she made a faint protest, then slumped into the pillow he arranged behind her.
He laid Lizzie in the cradle, tucked her in with the blanket that still smelled of lavender and new milk, and crossed to the door.
The physician looked exhausted. His collar was wilted, his eyes ringed with sleeplessness. Felix respected him more for it; a man who could look that ruined and still do his job was worthy of the title.
“She made it through the night?” the doctor asked in a whisper, as if the baby could overhear and take offense.
“She’s sleeping,” Felix replied. “The fever’s down. Her breathing is…” He hesitated, unwilling to claim too much, “…better.”
The doctor washed his hands at the small basin, then moved to the cradle and bent low, listening, observing, counting the beats of Lizzie’s heart with two fingers pressed to the tiny wrist.
He was silent for a long time. Felix could not stand it.
“Well?”
The doctor straightened. “It has turned,” he said. “Barring any sudden change, she’ll recover. Give it another day, perhaps two or three, and she’ll be out of danger.”
Felix’s knees went loose. He gripped the edge of the cradle and blinked hard, embarrassed by the flood of relief. “Thank you,” he managed.
The doctor packed up his bag. “Your wife’s work is what saved her. I’ve never seen such vigilance. If I might recommend to you,Your Grace… let them both sleep as long as they are able. And you as well, sir. You look as if a breeze could topple you.”
Felix nearly laughed. “I will see to it.”
The doctor left, footsteps fading down the hall, and Felix lingered at the cradle, watching the rise and fall of Lizzie’s chest.
He touched her cheek with the tip of his finger, then, on impulse, brushed a kiss to her temple. The skin was soft, the scent of her as delicate as hope itself.
He returned to the window seat, to Rose. She was fully asleep now, limbs sprawled in disarray, mouth parted just enough to snore. Felix found a blanket and tucked it over her, pausing to stroke a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. She did not wake, not even as he settled next to her, just close enough that the weight of her against his side was the first real comfort he’d allowed himself in days.
For a while, he did nothing. He sat and listened to the quiet, to the tiny sounds of the females who had, against all reason and probability, become his world.
He was afraid, still. He knew that about himself and no longer tried to banish it. But there was something new beneath the fear—a wild, subversive happiness, the sort that threatened to undo a man if he let it grow. He thought of the old Carden motto,Fortis in Adversis, and wondered if it had ever meant anything but this: to survive, and to love, in spite of every story that said you could not.
Felix watched the morning unfold. The sun crept higher, burning off the last of the fog, and in that light the nursery was less a sickroom than a sanctuary, a place where the world, for the briefest moment, was held at bay.
He looked at Rose, at Lizzie, at the two lives he had sworn never to need. He let himself want them. All of them.
He closed his eyes and, for the first time, honestly believed they would see tomorrow together.
CHAPTER 22
The nursery, at last, was quiet. Not the brittle hush of dread and illness, but a silence built of gentle things.
Lizzie babbled, contented, giving the occasional pat-pat of a wooden rattle against the muslin coverlet as the nursemaid hummed a low murmur while sorting linens by the window.
Rose sat on the edge of the daybed, arms wrapped around her knees, unable to look away from the sight of her daughter—yes, hers, by every definition that mattered—alive and, if not unscarred, at least returned to her familiar self.
The hours after dawn had been a slow march to safety. The fever faded bit by bit, and she kept a careful watch of each of Lizzie’s breaths and swallows, feeling a half-crazed elation after every sign of the baby’s improvement. Rose had wept so much that her eyes were dry, each new tear nothing more than a salt sting on already-raw skin.
