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And she wanted it to be true as she watched over him, pleading with the universe to let him live. She imagined that he would make good on that promise. That he would stand with her. Protect her.
Be with her, instead of the two of them being alone. Make their fantasies real.
What would that be like?
Impossible.
Still, Adelaide spent the long, interminable days watching over Henry, telling him stories, willing him to wake, willing him to heal—this impossibly strong, impossibly powerful man who now seemed impossibly quiet.
At first, it seemed that she could calm him with a touch. With a cool cloth and a gentle whisper. She told him a thousand stories in those days—things she hadn’t thought about in years. About the cat she’d had as a child, the one she’d hidden from her father, because he thought pets made children soft. About the time she’d stolen hair ribbons from a haberdashery in Croydon. The time she’d snuck into a Drury Lane theater and found herself in the wings of the stage.
She stopped short of telling him the worst bits. The secrets.
But she bargained with the universe and whatever gods might be watching, and when that did not work, she bargained with Henry, promising she’d tell him everything he asked if only he’d wake.
The dreams had stopped soon after that, and Adelaide did not know whether to take it as a good sign or not.
He stopped thrashing and groaning, falling into something that all the world would recognize as slumber, and Adelaide imagined that some would think it a boon. But she hated the silent stillness to which he had succumbed. Hated that his breathing was even and he no longermoved. Hated that he no longer turned toward her when she whispered his name. That he no longer turned away when she pressed a too-cool cloth to his too-warm brow.
Hated other things, too. That she hadn’t thanked him for taking a blade for her. For fighting for her. For letting the brute break his nose and one of his ribs.
That she hadn’t thanked him for the night he’d held her in his arms and made her feel pleasure like nothing she’d ever experienced.
That he wouldn’t wake up, so she might be able to do those things. To have more of them. To have more of him.
She watched him, still as death—terrible phrase, that—until she couldn’t anymore. Until she had to move, finding a pot of salve in her bag and tending the bruises and scrapes he’d collected for her.
His nose. His cheek. His ribs. The painful-looking bruise on his thigh. The wicked scrape at his shoulder. The raw knuckles he’d earned when he’d gone mad to keep her safe.
She cursed harshly in the quiet room. He’d been in her company less than a week, and this was what she had done to him. This was her world, and it threatened this good and decent man every step of the way.
The heat at his brow scorched like flame. How long could a body survive a fever? The question threw her from her seat, across the room to rinse another length of linen, a final effort.
He didn’t move.
“Henry,” she whispered, filling the word with all the fear and sorrow she would never speak aloud. There was nothing left to say, except “Please.”
She was tired.
And so, with another soft whisper of his name, she folded herself in the chair, set her cheek to the counterpane, and with her fingers threaded tight through his, slept.
Chapter Fifteen
When he opened his eyes, the room was aflame, and he imagined for a heartbeat that it was another dream, this one featuring nothing but her shining, beautiful curls wrapping themselves around him like fire.
He lay there for a long moment, cataloguing the space—the wood beams on the ceiling and the white plaster walls and the window on the far side that looked to the east, where the sun rose, chasing the night from the land.
It was cold, the fire in the hearth having died sometime in the night, and he turned toward it, an ache waking in his neck, as though he hadn’t moved in days. Had he moved in days? It had been night when he’d last been conscious, just before Adelaide had taken a needle to his side. Just before she had knocked him out with a concoction no doubt designed by one of her crew. They would have words about that.
He shifted, testing the place where he’d been stabbed. New, but not fresh.
Slowly, he tracked the state of his body, the sting at his side, the ache in his neck. The simultaneous sense of exhaustion and rest, as though he’d been unconscious for both a moment and an age.
The hand in his.
Herhand in his.
He looked down the bed, over the coverlet, and theaches and pains faded away, his breath catching in his chest. Adelaide was there, hunched over in a chair, her cheek on the edge of the bed, facing him, asleep.
