All she managed was the barest shake of head.
Her lips moved but no sound came.
When first pushed in here, she’d tried to subdue it, she really had.
To just lift herself from the floor and sit upon the doubtless plush cushions.
It was simply a carriage. One with the curtains drawn. She knew Miles would tend to Daniel with all care. And it was better than the chaos of the horses and the storm outside.
Yet an uncontrollable terror had descended nonetheless.
A fear of being in. A fear of being out.
Icy slithers had impaled her skin, then her breathing had shallowed.
She’d tried to kneel, to reach the door.
Rain on the roof like pistol shots…
Nausea had loomed and her hands had trembled.
She’d endeavoured to imagine the carriage as large – large as a ballroom – yet instead she had felt it closing in around her like the shadows of her nightmares that she could not wake from.
There was no air and the more she fought for it, the more she could not breathe.
A light-headedness had beset her.
She’d struggled to lift, reach the handle…
Then collapsed into a heap upon the floor. Curled in upon herself.
“Tell me what’s wrong?”
And she so hated this.
For Miles to see her. Pathetic and wretched.
She gritted her teeth and, for a brief moment, fought with all her might to imagine…to imagine they were on an island,just Miles and herself. A beach with wide open spaces and she opened her mouth… “Ca…Can’t breathe…” It was a whisper, nothing more.
“Oh, Verity.”
Then she felt an arm wrap her shoulders, another beneath her knees, the hard carriage floor gone as she was lifted from it.
Still she could not open her eyes, despite the warmth that seeped from Miles, despite the motion that told her he was taking her from the darkness.
Dull daylight flitted behind her closed lids, red seeping into the black, and she felt Miles’ breath on her cheek as he gathered her closer, a bench creaked and she was settled onto his lap.
“Breathe deeply, Verity,” he whispered. “Such short breaths make you light-headed.”
Drizzle smote her face like lace and she flung her head back, needed to feel it…
Then gulped – vast breaths, hiccupped and shook, all the while, Miles smoothing a palm over her back and shoulders.
“I should have damn well realised,” he murmured. “The open phaeton, the dinner in the conservatory, your avoidance of the tents at the fair. I’ve seen this before. When captive men were returned. You fear smallness and darkness. No, it is worse than that, they terrify you.”
Every nerve bunched within her, every muscle. She had thought that perchance this affliction had gone or that it could be controlled, it had been so long, but she had been fooling herself.
And it rekindled such darkness, a darkness that whispered the deep truth: she was not fit to share a life with any man, but especially a man such as Miles.
