Mara waddled halfway across the room, then stopped with a gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Kitty demanded.
“Ye spilled your tea,” said Jack, her nose wrinkling.
“That’s... that’s not tea.” Mara’s face shone with a mixture of dread and excitement as she lifted her skirts out of the small puddle that had formed at her feet. “I need Dr. Chadwick. I need hernow.”
*
In the eastwing of the manor, covered in blankets and the warm trickle of winter sunshine spilling in through a crack in the drapes, Abigail was having a most wonderful dream.
She was in a meadow dotted with spring wildflowers. The sky was a clear, endless blue and a soft breeze tickled the nape of her neck as she turned in a slow circle to watch her cats romp playfully amidst the clover. From somewhere in the distance came the chime of feminine laughter. Her mother’s laugh, a sound she hadn’t heard in years but her heart instantly recognized. She started walking, trying to follow the sound toward the tree line at the far edge of the meadow, but every time she took a step forward it fell a step back, as evasive as a sunset.
“Mother?” she called, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Mother, is that you?”
The laughter stopped. At her ankle, she felt a small bump, and looked down to see Susan staring up her, the cat’s green eyes glowing unnaturally bright in the light of midday.
“What is it?” she asked, leaning down to scratch between Susan’s ears, and with a flick of her tail the cat bounded several yards away and then stopped, peering back over her shoulder as if beckoning Abigail to follow.
With a wistful glance at the woods, she fell in step behind Susan as they made zig-zagging path through bunches of bluebells, daisies, and buttercups. When the cat quickened her pace, she, too, went faster until they were both in a run, with Abigail hardly able to keep up.
“Susan, Susan wait!”
But the cat only lengthened her stride, leaving Abigail struggling to catch her as her breath began to come in fits and starts. A loud crack of thunder halted her in her tracks. With a stunned glance behind her, she saw that the blue sky had turned to black. A bolt of lightning shot through the air, striking thetrees and engulfing one in flames as another rumble of thunder shook the ground under her feet.
“Mother!” she yelled, but there was no response. “Mother!”
Wind blew through the meadow in a large gust, yanking her bonnet off her head and sending it sailing into a patch of yellow flowers. Her hair whipped into her eyes, half blinding her as she stumbled sideways, her foot catching on something in the grass. She fell to her knees and came face to face with Stephen lying sprawled on his back. He wasn’t moving, and when she threw her arm across his chest to shield him from the wind, her fingers came away sticky with blood.
“No. No, no,no.” More thunder rumbled and another streak of lightning flashed as she frantically searched for the source of the bleeding, but her search yielded nothing except more red. Pints of it, pouring out of some unknown wound that she couldn’t find. His pulse was weak. His color was ashen. And there was nothing she could do. No way to stop it. No way to heal him.
“Abigail.”
Desperate, she ripped her sleeve off at the shoulder and twisted the fabric to form a tourniquet, except there was nowhere to place it.
“Abigail.”
What was the point of all her training, of all her sacrifice, if she couldn’t save the people who mattered the most? She hadn’t been able to save her mother, and that was why she’d become a doctor. Now she was a doctor, but she couldn’t save her husband. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logical. There had to be an explanation. There had to be a way to fix him. A way to—
“ABIGAIL!”
She woke with a yelp, her eyes opening wide as her hands instinctively rose in the air, fingers curled as if still holding a makeshift tourniquet. And for a second, a terrible, awful,stomach-turning second, it was real. It was all real. Then she saw Stephen sitting beside her, his handsome brow furrowed with concern. She saw flecks of dust dancing in the sunlight. She saw Susan curled on a chair, fast asleep.
“It... it was a dream,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “A nightmare.”
“Are you alright?” Taking one of her hands, Stephen squeezed it tight. “You were thrashing around. I couldn’t wake you.”
“You’re not wearing any clothes,” she noted.
His mouth hitched. “Neither are you.”
She looked down and blushed when she realized that he was right. Grasping the top coverlet, she yanked it up to her chin as she examined her surroundings with a keener eye. While similar in size and composition to her own room, the colors were darker and the furniture was larger. There was also the matter of the nude earl next to her. “We’re in your bedchamber.”
“I carried you up last night.” He brushed a curl behind her ear. “You fell asleep in the library.”
The library.
Her blush deepening, she took a sudden interest in the embroidery on the coverlet, tracing the intricate stitching with her thumbnail as she struggled to reconcile the terrible image of Stephen, lifeless, in the meadow, with the very much alive Stephen beside her on his bed.
