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Chapter 29
It is only, moreover, when she is certain that she is truly loved, and that her lover is indeed devoted to her, and will not change his mind, that she should then give herself up to him.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
The next few days passed in a blur of carrying on with life, while her heart and mind lay sleeping in the bed with the still unconscious Nick.
Patrick came to report that he’d had Coleman arrested for attempted murder and he was being held in jail awaiting trial.
Lear assured her that Jane was halfway to Scotland now and safe from pursuit.
Alice sat with Nick every day, as she was sitting now, in a chair beside his bed, holding his hand, reading to him, crushing lavender and soothing it over his temples.
Kali liked to sleep curled up against Nick’s side. She was here now, sniffing Nick’s cheek inquisitively.
“He’ll come back to us, Kali,” Alice said. “He must.”
Dr. Forster entered the bedchamber for his daily visit. Even though his medical specialty was lunacy, Alice wouldn’t allow another physician to tend Nick. She trusted the doctor completely.
“How is he today?” Dr. Forster asked.
“The same.”
“Please go out, Lady Hatherly. You’ll make yourself sick and he needs you strong and healthy when he recovers.”
“You think he will come out of this?”
“I have seen patients in a comatose state for months that suddenly recovered. Now go outside. The sun is shining. You’ll do him no good if you are weak with an illness.”
Reluctantly, Alice left the bedchamber.
She walked the path to the orchid conservatory.
She hadn’t been out of doors in days. The sun felt like a kiss on her cheeks.
She found the duke in the conservatory with Berthold, tending his orchids.
“How is he?” Berthold whispered with worried eyes.
“The same. But the doctor said I needed to come outside and enjoy the air. So here I am.”
“It will do you good, my dear,” said the duke. “Remember the orchid you helped me water last week? See what you did? Isn’t she lovely?”
Alice knelt on her knees to have a closer look.
The orchid’s beauty almost hurt her.
The perfect swooping formation of the five overlapping petals, the cup in the center with its two symmetrical tendrils, the small bud inside bordered by very precise marking like the stripes on Kali’s flanks.
The petals weren’t uniformly purple, but crisscrossed with a spider’s webbing of violet veins, like the veins visible beneath the skin of her wrist.
She loved those flowers with the fierce awe of possession.
She had helped create this beauty and now it was here, in this world, a burst of velvet purple and a secret spiraling darkness inside.
Several more small buds, as long as the distance from her nail to her knuckle, were close to opening. The power to form blossoms surged in the roots of the plant, replete with life and possibilities.
The duke handed her a watering can. “Why don’t you water it, my dear? Remember, only a small amount of water. And don’t leave even one drop on the petals or the leaves. They don’t like that.”
