Page 3 of Atone, Adonis

With a practiced flick of her wrist, she hurled it, just missing the creature’s flank. But it worked well enough. The fox yelped and fled, streaking across the frostbitten grass. She straightened, brushing her gloved hands together and lifting her chin with a satisfied smile.

“Well, then. That’s a far sight better, isn’t it?” she murmured to herself.

She glanced once more toward the garden beds, already calculating which seeds she might risk planting early, before the frost truly lifted. The soil ought to be ready but it wasn’t close yet and if she waited too long they’d miss the growing season.

“He’s only coming back later tonight, you know.”

Julianna turned, startled to find her brother there, framed by the barn door. Thomas was still eight years her senior, thirty now, but he bore little resemblance to the strong twenty-two-year-old man he’d been when he went off to war. His coat hung off his too-thin frame, and the fevered flush on his cheeks could not hide the pallor beneath. His unending cough had recently become flecked with blood.

“Why are you outside, Thomas?”

“Because I want to be, Julie-bug. I’d never miss the chance to see you take pot shots at our furry friends.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He was giving her that smile. The one that had swindled governesses, melted their aunt’s sternest rebukes, and once earned them free toffee from a market vendor in London, but it was wasted on her now. She was too old—or perhaps too jaded—to fall for it again.

“Put that grin away, Tom. Another cold snap is coming and I won’t have it infecting your lungs. And don’t call me Julie-bug.”

“Firstly.” He edged closer to his sister. “You will always be Julie-bug to me. And secondly, you and I both know it’s not the cold that’s in these lungs.”

“I’ll remind you that you’ve not been diagnosed yet and I’ve no interest in pretending you have been. Or that you’re a physician capable of doing it yourself.”

He smiled again, softer this time, and placed a shaky hand on her shoulder. His tremor had become too pronounced to hide months ago.

“Julianna, you’re going to have to face up to my condition sooner or later. We have to make plans for what you’ll do when I’m gone.”

“No.” She jerked away. “Go back inside and I’ll make you some tea.”

Her eyes flicked again to the herb bed by the cottage wall. The thyme had not survived the winter, which meant she could not steep it with honey for his cough. But she could substitute the rosemary. It might work. She had tried everything else: yarrow, coltsfoot, licorice root. Anything the old herbals suggested might soothe damaged lungs. None of it had cured him, of course. Sometimes it eased his breathing though, and sometimes that had to be enough.

“Julianna. I am going to die.” The cold made him cough and she turned her body away from it and from him. “And when I do, you will need protecting. Let me do this for you.”

“No. I will not countenance these doomsday prophecies of yours. Yes, you will die. As will I, eventually. But neither of us knows when, no matter what you’ve convinced yourself of. And if it does happen that you are the first to go, I’ll find a way to take care of myself, thank you very much.”

“How?”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly as I said. HOW will you care for yourself? You’ve no dowry, sister. No connections. No savings. Father was an extraordinary composer but it wasn’t exactly remunerative work. Cousin Howard will take the house. Will you throw your future into his hands? He’s an imbecile.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“You’ll find starvation. Or worse.” His voice was rough now in its urgency. “Julianna, listen to me. You must accept the annuity Frederick offered. That 120 pounds a year is more than most women have, and you know it. You will need some protection. I don’t want to die with this on my conscience.”

“I won’t take his blood money, Tom. How dare you ask me when you yourself were the one that refused it? Or do you think your moral quandary is somehow stickier than mine?”

Thomas sighed and pulled her into him, resting his head on top of hers. “I think you’ve been through enough. And I would not have you be prey once again to any scoundrel who passes by and finds you living alone.”

Julianna let out a long sigh. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to imagine a world without Thomas in it. She didn’t want to believe that the disease steadily eating away at him since he’d returned from Crimea was indeed the wasting disease, as he was so convinced it was.

Nor did she want to dwell on the past. She’d learned her lesson about the hearts and minds of men, especially the scoundrelly ones, well enough. It did not bear repeating.

“Not yet, Thomas. I cannot have this conversation with you yet.”

“No, sister, I’m sorry. We must have it. We’ve put it off far too long. If you don’t swear to me you’re going to accept that money, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

Behind them the frost was piled too high along the edges of the garden beds, the dark soil needing sunlight that could not reach it. She stared at it instead of crying. Thomas was all she had. And she, him.

Their parents had died in that horrid accident ten years ago, and the aunt who begrudgingly took them in afterward had passed nearly a year before Thomas had returned from Crimea. And in between Robert Rothchild, a man she deemed it best not to mention.