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This was no more than seasickness, reason told him. The delirium must be part of it—or due to her having little sleep and hurried meals, thanks to her mad haste to get away from him.
Whatever caused the alarming symptoms, she was too ill to be left on her own. He left his servants to look after themselves while he tended to her and tried to stay calm. He knew what to do, he told himself. He worried all the same.
He was no physician and he wasn’t used to playing nursemaid. He told himself that he and Longmore had lived through the cholera epidemic on the Continent, and he’d learned a few basic principles from the doctors who’d had any success with the disease. They hadn’t much success, and they argued about what worked and what didn’t, but this wasn’t the cholera. This was seasickness, and there was nothing to worry about, he told himself. When the storm passed, she’d be better.
If the ship didn’t go down.
But it wouldn’t.
Meanwhile, he knew he needed to make sure she took in nourishment, and especially liquids—not easy when she couldn’t keep anything down. The brandy might have helped a little, but the laudanum proved more effective. It took a while, and she was out of her head for part of the time, muttering about witches and Macbeth and angels and devils, but eventually she quieted. When at last she fell asleep, he let himself draw a breath of relief.
He sat on the edge of his bunk and gently bathed her face now and again with a wet cloth. He didn’t know that it did any good, but he needed to do something. Saunders undoubtedly would know what to do, but Saunders was attending the maid—or seamstress—or whatever she was.
Gad, the facts about Madame Noirot were as slippery as the deck under his feet.
Deception, thy name is Noirot.
Manipulative and elusive and not to be trusted.
If he had trusted her, he wouldn’t have set a spy on her, he wouldn’t have pursued her from Paris, and he wouldn’t be on this curst vessel in this hellish storm.
Yet not trusting was no excuse for his deranged behavior. He had no excuse. She wasn’t even beautiful, especially not now. In the murky light, she looked like a ghost. He found it hard to believe that this was the same vibrant, passionate creature who’d straddled him in the carriage and kissed him witless.
He smoothed the damp hair back from her forehead.
Dreadful, dreadful woman.
Marcelline awoke to a watery light.
At first she thought she’d died and was floating in another realm.
By degrees she realized that the ship was rocking, but not in the deranged way it had done before. The clamor had quieted.
It was over.
The storm had passed.
They’d survived.
Then she became aware of the weight and warmth pressing against her back. Her eyes flew open. In front of her was only blank wood. She remembered: her desperate visit to Clevedon’s cabin, the vicious seasickness that seized her ... brandy ... laudanum ... his hands.
This wasn’t her cabin, her bed.
She was in his bed.
And judging by the size of the body squeezed alongside her in the narrow bunk, Clevedon was in it with her.
Oh, perfect.
She tried to turn over, but he was lying on the skirt of her dress, pinning her down.
“Clevedon,” she said.
He mumbled and moved, flinging his arm over her.
“Your grace.”
His arm tightened, pulling her closer.
