His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (34 page)

A moment later, Eden's merriment wedged in her throat. Sera's calls had shrilled, turning from eagerness to panic.

"Michael! What is it? What's wrong?"

Her heart slamming into her ribs, Eden raced down the corridor toward the blaze of gold that lit the parlor. The first thing she noticed, when she rushed through the doors, was that Michael was sagging nearly to his knees. Medical volumes tumbled down around his ears as he grabbed for the bookshelf. His face was ashen. His chest heaved like a bellows. He would have collapsed if Eden hadn't reached him in time to slide her shoulder beneath his arm.

The impact of his two hundred pounds nearly threw her into the shelves, but Sera grabbed his other arm, countering his weight with a strength that Eden hadn't thought possible in such a petite frame. Sera's face looked as gray as his, though.

"Michael, good heavens—"

"I'm fine," he rasped.

"You are
not—"

"Sera," Eden interrupted more sharply than she'd intended. "Help me get him to the settee."

Somehow, and Eden could tell the effort was gargantuan, Michael got his legs to stumble under him. He protested their assistance, trying to straighten every step of the way, which only made them meander off course several times before they finally bridged the ten yards to the couch. If Eden hadn't been so worried, she would have boxed his ears for his willfulness. As it was, she had her hands full settling him on the cushions.

He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, while she climbed up behind him on the sofa.

"Get smelling salts," she ordered Sera.

She hoped the diversion would earn her several minutes to help Michael compose himself. As it was, he was growling something unintelligible, trying to fight his way off the couch. She wrapped him in her arms, rocking and chanting, using her voice the way Talking Raven often had to soothe wild animals. The trick must have worked, because Michael's grip eased on her wrists, and he heaved a shuddering breath. The color began to return to his cheeks.

Sera flew back across the threshold just as he was starting to growl something new about not needing help. The tracks of her tears shimmered in the lamplight.

"Michael,
what is wrong with you?"
she cried, falling on her knees in a heap of peach muslin.

His smile was more of a grimace, especially when the stink of the salts assailed him. "Tired," he lied hoarsely, pushing her hands away and accidentally dislodging his pocket watch.

"Don't give me that. You haven't—" she gasped, recoiling from his watch as if its gentle bump had scalded her fingers. "M-Michael."

In growing concern, Eden watched her friend's eyes glaze over, changing from briny azure to sky-blue vacant. Even Michael must have noticed the difference, for he struggled out of her arms, his hand shaking as it stretched for his sister.

"Sera, your gloves," he demanded hoarsely. "Where are your gloves?"

She made a tiny broken sound, like a child whimpering through a nightmare. Eden remembered then how Sera had once confided that her visions were triggered by touch. And that she wore her gloves everywhere—except in the kitchen, when she was baking—to keep the dreaded Episodes at bay.

Michael grabbed Sera's shoulders, pulling her against his chest in a bundle of pastels and lace. She shuddered. Her black hair, the exact color of his own, gleamed in stark contrast to the pallor of his cheek.

"Sera..." Torment crossed his haggard features. "Honey, you're having one of your Episodes—"

"You' re sick," she choked, her fists clenching great handfuls of his starched shirtfront.

"No," he murmured, stroking her hair.

"You are! I can see when you were alone in the hall. You fell. Y-you knocked over the flowers and all the umbrellas. And then you just... just
lay
there! And you fell in your office. And you almost fell by the swimming hole. Eden was there..."

She gasped, jerking out of his embrace, the tears streaming down her face. She rounded on Eden.
"You knew he was sick!"

Eden swallowed, more than a little unnerved by her friend's visions—and the accuracy of at least one of them. "Sera, I—"

"You didn't tell me! You're supposed to be my
friend.
Why didn't you tell me?"

Eden bit her lip, her luminous jade stare pleading for the truth. She looked like she might cry herself, and Michael struggled with his guilt. More than that, he struggled with his dread. The numbness was at last receding from his feet and legs; his tongue no longer felt like a piece of cotton gauze.

Still, his gut churned, hot enough to process steel. This time, it wasn't due to the eerie coincidence of Sera's insights, concocted by an overwrought young woman with more imagination than was healthy. No, this time the nausea was due to the fear that his illness, whatever it was, had taken a decided turn for the worse. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

"Sera." His voice cracked, harsher than he'd intended. He couldn't bear to see her cry, couldn't bear to know she was feeling every stab of the pain from which he had fought so long to spare her. "Eden is my wife. I made her promise to say nothing. To anyone."

"But I'm your sister!"

Eden shifted uncomfortably behind him. "Sera—"

She threw off Eden's hand, as if it were some kind of insect. The glare she shot his wife pierced Michael to the bone.

"I have a right to know if you're sick, Michael. You're not just my brother, you're my guardian!"

He averted his eyes. He could see her tears anyway. They dripped onto the fists she'd clenched in her lap.

"I'm sick, Sera," he confirmed bleakly.

Her swallow was audible. "Is it bad?"

"Yes."

"Bad enough to... to die?" she finished in a tremulous voice.

Self-loathing roiled through him. He'd been unable to ward off illness, cure himself, or protect his sister. Now Eden was caught up in the lies his failures had spawned.

"Yes," he said flatly, clinging to the dispassion his profession demanded. "I may die."

"But you can't!" The hand she pressed to her mouth was shaking even harder than the rest of her. "You have to see a doctor!"

"I have already consulted three—"

"Then consult a fourth. And a fifth! I don't care how many, only..." Her voice broke. "Don't die, Michael. Promise me you won't die."

The mantel clock chimed, six grim strikes of its mechanical innards. Between each one, an eternity fell away. Michael stared at the blank whiteness of the wall. He could hear Eden's uneven breaths behind him, feel her valiant struggle to hide her own upset. Sera's tears burned like acid where they fell on his knee.

He thought of his mother, who'd died so young. He thought of Gabriel, who'd died even younger. He would have gladly surrendered his life to save either one of them. And now, for her sake, Sera was demanding that he fight this debilitating curse that no doctor could name. Should he make yet another promise he couldn't keep?

"I'm sorry, Sera." Thirty-one years of cynicism, bred by good intentions gone awry, crept into his tone. "Would you have me lie to you again?"

A primitive keening ripped from her throat, rolled through the room, mingled with the thunder. Eden reached for her. This time, Sera let Eden hold her.

"I'm sorry, Sera," he whispered again.

Rain began to pelt the tin roof. He rose shakily. Drained by the endless effort to quash his own grief, he turned away. That's when he spied two shadows hovering in the doorway that led to the hall.

"Michael Jones." Claudia sounded more grim than he had ever heard her. "I ain't ever known you to run before."

Collie's eyes gleamed, ghostly in the pale yellow wash of the lamplight. He said nothing. He just stood with a shotgun by his side, barring any retreat.

"Let me pass," Michael growled.

"Ye're too young fer that."

"I meant..." He felt the old rage starting to build. He might be a failure, dammit, but he wasn't any coward. "Step aside."

"I'm writing to Rafe," Sera sniffled. "I'm telling him to come home."

"No!" The word exploded from Michael's mouth. Watching his half-brother gloat while he grew progressively weaker was more than he could bear.

Claudia harrumphed, folding her arms across her chest. "Rafe's got duties toward Sera. She'll need a male guardian."

"I'm
her guardian."

"Not fer long, the way ye're talkin'."

"That's enough." Eden's voice cut like glass through the rain, the thunder, the weeping. "Michael needs support, not an interrogation. I will not allow you to bully him. If you choose to grieve, do so when he breathes his last. God willing, he'll outlive us all."

Michael's throat constricted. If ever there was an avenging angel, his wife was it. He silently thanked her with his eyes.

The love her gaze poured back to him buckled his knees.

With a garbled oath, he shouldered past Collie and Claudia. He didn't know where he was going when he flung open the door and stalked out into the storm. He knew only that he felt a primal kinship with the wind that ripped his clothing and the rain that knifed his face and throat.

* * *

No one spoke much about that day. Not in Michael's presence, anyway. Eden refused to let Sera wallow in woe, speaking of her brother as if he were already buried. Eden insisted that they focus on living, rather than dreading an uncertain future, and she sternly counseled Collie and Claudia, who'd been eavesdropping to begin with, to keep silent about Michael's secret. After all, a runaway wagon could strike any one of them down, Eden argued, just as Berthold Gunther's had nearly killed Jamie.

But rumors spread anyway.

At first, most people didn't pay much attention. Michael's hasty marriage gave the gossips more fat to chew than a couple of missing pounds off his broad-shouldered frame. When Bonnie blamed Michael's pronounced cheekbones on Eden's kitchen skills, Claudia just as vociferously pointed out that Michael was spending more time in bed of late—romping with his wife. Eden wasn't sure that Claudia's rumor mill was the lesser of two evils, but she kept her peace, hoping that the illusion of her happy marriage would bore Blue Thunder Valley, and folks would start grumbling again about the mosquitoes, drunken lumberjacks, and the stench of Gunther's animal compound.

By October, however, folks couldn't rely on Michael, as usual, to be holed up in his office, waiting to treat their ills. Eden, who'd been dividing her time between Claudia's store and Michael's medical practice, briskly explained away her husband's shortened hours and brooding preoccupation, claiming that Michael was making more time for his family. But his clients lost patience with his odd behavior. They started turning to her for their treatments.

The most unsettling defection of all was Bonnie.

* * *

Eden rose early to prepare the clinic for Michael's return. The previous night, he'd been called to the bedside of an elderly sodbuster, and he'd slept at the ailing man's farm.

At least, that's what Eden wanted to believe.

Michael's long hours continued to be a bone of contention between them. It worried Eden to watch him ignore his fatigue, to see how he slumped over what little food he spooned onto his dinner plate, to see the hollows that ringed his eyes when he woke. Living under her husband's roof had proven eerily similar to living under her father's: Both men were driven to save lives, and both were too selfless to worry about their own. The similarity only intensified Eden's fear that her herbs were failing Michael.

And that she was, too.

As if to drive this point home on that particular Tuesday morning, early in October, Bonnie dashed through the clinic's back door. She didn't knock. She didn't even call out a greeting. She simply rushed around the corner, her crimson taffeta and trailing cape rustling like autumn leaves against the bleached pine of the floor.

"Oh." Bonnie slid to a halt before she could bowl over Eden, who was dutifully scrubbing medical instruments in a soapy basin of water. "I didn't know
you
were here."

Eden's hackles rose. Shaking the suds from her hands, she forced herself to count to ten before she spoke.

"Michael isn't here. He had to pay a call on Farmer Garretson."

"I wasn't looking for Michael."

Eden arched a brow.

"I was looking for Jamie."

She's lying.

Eden frowned. As usual, her intuition was hard to substantiate. She had nothing to base it upon, except the unusual timing of Bonnie's call. Still, the knowledge that something was amiss rang inside her head with the vibrancy of an alarm bell.

Reaching for a towel, she struggled to maintain an air of professional courtesy. "Jamie isn't here, as you can see."

Bonnie moistened her lips. "Are you sure?" She edged toward Michael's desk, her knuckles nearly bloodless as she steadied herself against the scarred wood. Her complexion looked as pale as her hands. "Perhaps you should go in the other room and... and look for him."

Eden's suspicions climbed another notch as Bonnie's gaze darted furtively to the medicine jars filling the glass cabinet over the instruments. "I'm quite certain we're the only ones here. Is Jamie missing from the schoolhouse?"