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He did doubt it. He doubted the pill and powder concoctions were little more than sugar and spice, and figured his mother’s moods had more to do with some indecipherable flux of nature than environment or drugs. But her nurse, the woman who had kept her safe and fed and secret for the last eight years, needn’t know his doubts.

“You’d best hope it,” she grumbled, and stabbed into the next stitch.

Rafe forced his feet to close the distance between himself and the bedchamber door. He rapped on it twice, and when he heard the soft rasp of a yes, he opened it.

The room’s atmosphere hit him in layers, first in scent. Strong ginger: her stomach must be troubling her. Dusty linens: she must not be leaving the bed long enough for Abigail to wash them. And, always, the smoky heat cheap tallow put off. In the room’s center, veiled by black smoke thin enough to almost seem imagined, sat his mother in her bed.

“Good evening, Mother.” The words, and the voice that said them, seemed ill-suited to such a space. An odd inception point, cordial and friendly, to an obviously unhappy climate. He stepped up to her bed, and his restless fingers drew out the wrapped parcel. “Are you well?”

With some of the smoke out of the way, he could see her clearly, red cheeks under a sheen of perspiration, copper curls flattened by a tilted mobcap, and frail limbs crammed beneath a bland-colored counterpane. To her credit, she drew out a hand and fitted it to his with a smile.

Maybe the mood had broken at last. It seemed the tempest of it had subsided, and that was always something to be grateful for. Rafe swallowed and settled himself on the edge of the mattress.

“But how are you, my son?”

“Ah, I’m fine, Mother.” He gave her hand a little shake. His other hand eased its grip on the bottles. “How are you?” He would ask it until she answered.

“I’m …” Her eyes, so like the ones that stared back at him in every ill-placed looking glass in Thomas’s house, turned away. A trident-shaped crease formed between her brows, which were growing thin with age. “I’ve suffered some discomfort these last days, but I’m quite on the mend.”

He wondered just how bad it had gotten, but he wouldn’t ask her for her pride’s sake, and he sure as hell wouldn’t ask Abigail. This was how it was, how it had always been—unpredictable bouts of agitation, sleeplessness, and the deepest melancholy. It was what the accident had left her with: all her emotions, but nowhere safe to put them.

“I’m pleased to hear that.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ve brought what you asked for, but perhaps you’re well enough without all that now.”

She smiled, a long stretch for lips weighted with frown lines. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Silence descended. Abigail must still be at her mending, for the small house was quiet. Even the street seemed to have momentarily chosen peace and civility. Mother coughed once. When the second one came, she rid herself of his hand and covered her mouth. It was a rasping sort of cough, as though something had soiled her lungs and refused to get out.

“Might I put out a few of these candles?” He was already standing, eyeing the ridiculous number of them around the tiny room. Three on the little writing desk, four on the credenza with the missing drawer pulls, and one in every corner. God’s grace—the whole place was a fire brigade’s worst nightmare.

He had made it to the writing desk and dampened two fingers with his tongue when her cough eased enough for her to answer. “No,” she croaked. “Please.”

Rafe’s fingers hesitated, bracketing the flame until he could bear the heat no longer. He sighed and turned to her. “Please, Mother, this cannot be good for you to breathe.” I’m sorry I can’t afford beeswax candles, or gas lamps, so that you might indulge this paranoia without expense to your health.

Her eyes, now wide, not so like his, flicked about the room in jerky movements. She had sat up in bed, and the counterpane slipped down to her waist. God, she was thin. He could see the skeletal symmetry of her breastbone from across the room. No doubt her ribs showed, too, beneath the weight of that dressing robe. And Abigail had her supper on the table! Why would she not eat?

“At least allow me to open the window.”

She shook her head violently. “You may put out three. Only three. And not those in the corners.”

Rafe complied, his gaze lingering on the unfinished list laying atop the writing desk. Her penmanship was still beautiful. That list, and all its commonness, might have belonged to a country squire’s daughter. Sat in the entry hall of her beautiful Hampshire home. It could have easily belonged to the same Mrs. Margaret Balfour who kept an ivory-sheafed calendar and carried her son on her hip until his legs grew long enough to knock her knees.

She was strong, bold, capable, maternal, protective, and had been a veritable force against the maelstrom that was her husband. It was the accident that had affected these changes in her. Fears of dark corners and open windows, bones showing through skin and smiles that held all the warm-blooded authenticity of carved marble.

Rafe doused the third candle. He hadn’t re-wet his fingertips, and the scorched wick singed his skin with a low throb. Thomas had done this. It wasn’t the horse that threw her, nor the rock which her head had landed on. Maybe the fear had begun with all those doctors that had been in and out of the house, or solidified when her evil bastard of a husband had her carted off to an insane asylum when he saw she would never recover to full strength. But it was him. He was the root of what harmed her.

“Rafe?”

He lifted his head on a sharp inhale. “Yes?” His palms were damp with sweat, his thumb and forefinger burning with the memory of the flame. He uncurled his clenched fists.

“I believe I’d like something to eat.”

He was at her side in an instant, taking one of her hands as she pushed out of bed. She released him once she stood, and he followed her slow, dragging steps to the table. The worst of this episode was over; that was good. He should be glad.

But as he sat with her and watched her spoon tremble from her bowl to her lips, he felt afire with purpose. This arrangement had worked for longer than it should’ve already. At any time, Thomas could discover he was paying that asylum quarterly for a patient who was no longer a resident there. Someone could break into this tenement, which Rafe could already barely afford to let, and rob the few possessions his mother and Abigail owned. None of them could afford to replace those things. Mother could become ill, truly, urgently ill, and he wouldn’t be able to procure more than the cheapest physician’s opinion.

It was a miracle it had functioned this long, his fragile and deceitful attempt at caretaking. But it was plain in every clearing of her throat and each annoyed huff from her nurse that things must change. She needed a real home with clean linens and cleanly burning light to stave off her demons—if the improvement in living and doctoring couldn’t absolve her of them altogether.

Hope. Ah, yes. Even as pessimistic a fool as Rafe still held a little of that novel specimen. And suddenly that edict to call on Miss Penney seemed a divine thing, a ticketed entry to a better life.