The Temptation of Your Touch (31 page)

Anne frowned, her concern growing. She was tempted to look in on him herself, but ever since the
night when she had stormed into his chamber only to end up in his arms, she had done all she could to avoid being alone with him in any room that contained a bed. “Perhaps he just needs a bit more time to recover. I’m sure he’ll ring when he’s ready to rejoin the world.”

That evening, after a long day spent helping the maids scrub the ash from the drawing-room walls and supervising Dickon and Pippa while they cleaned up the debris from the yard, she sent Betsy up with another tray, this one topped with the one thing she knew Dravenwood couldn’t resist—a steaming loaf of her freshly baked bread.

Anne turned around a short while later to find Betsy standing in the kitchen doorway, still holding the untouched tray. The look on the girl’s kind, broad face made Anne’s heart cringe with dread. “It’s the master, ma’am,” Betsy said reluctantly. “When he didn’t answer my knock, I looked in on him to see if he’d be wantin’ any supper, just like you said, but I couldn’t rouse him.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t rouse him? Was he still sleeping?”

“At first I thought he was just sleepin’. But he was moanin’ something fierce. And when I touched his arm, it was burnin’ up.”

Before Betsy could even finish speaking, Anne was through the doorway. She didn’t even realize she had knocked the tray from the girl’s hands until she heard it clatter to the floor behind her.

A
NNE YANKED BACK THE
bed curtains of Lord Dravenwood’s bed to find him caught in the grips of a full-blown chill. She touched the back of her hand to his brow. Despite the audible chattering of his teeth, her worst fears were confirmed. He was burning with fever.

His breathing had deepened to a painful rasp. He’d probably inhaled far more of the smoke than he’d realized when rescuing her from the attic, then compounded that insult to his lungs by spending the night in the cold, pouring rain.

Betsy hovered in the doorway, anxiously wringing her apron in her hands and looking nearly as helpless as Anne felt. “What should I do, ma’am? Should I run to the village and fetch someone?”

“Who would you fetch?” Anne asked grimly. “There’s no doctor there, and even if there were, you’d never be able to convince him to come here.” She glanced out the window at the gathering shadows, fighting a bitter surge of despair. “Especially not after nightfall.”

Eyeing the earl’s shivering form, Betsy asked, “Shall I fetch some more blankets, then?”

“No.” Shaking away the paralysis of her fear, Anne
briskly tore the bed curtains clean from their moorings, then whipped away his down comforter, leaving only the thin sheet draped across his waist. “He doesn’t need to be warmed. He needs to be cooled.” She marched over to the French windows and swept them open, welcoming in a rush of chill evening air, before returning to the bed. “Go to the kitchen and tell Nana to brew me up a pot of yarrow tea. Then find Lisbeth and Bess and bring me as much cool water as the three of you can carry.”

“Should I fetch Dickon to tend to him?”

Anne shook her head, her heart contracting with helpless tenderness as she gazed down upon the earl’s violently trembling form. “Not this time. This time I’ll be the one tending to him.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

A
NNE DID NOT HAVE
to keep her vigil alone. As night melted into day and day into night and one day into another, the other servants took turns finding some excuse to join her at Lord Dravenwood’s bedside.

Dickon was there to brace his shoulders while Anne tried to spoon some warm broth between his lips, spilling more of the stuff down his chest than down his throat. Bess and Lisbeth were there to lend their efforts to hers when his delirium deepened and Anne had to throw herself across his chest to keep him from harming himself as he thrashed about, shouting in a language none of them recognized until both his strength and his voice gave out. Lizzie was there to witness Anne’s relieved tears at finding him alive after she’d woken from a brief nap in the chair beside his bed to discover him so still and waxen she’d thought he had died while she
slept. Beth and Betsy were there to painstakingly arrange the sheets to protect Anne’s modesty as she bathed him, her hands tenderly trailing the soapy cloth over the muscled planes of his chest.

On the third day of her vigil, Anne looked up from reading the same passage from
Pilgrim’s Progress
for the tenth time to find Nana hobbling into the room.

Secretly relieved to be rescued from her own Slough of Despond, Anne leapt up from her chair, dislodging a disgruntled Sir Fluffytoes from her lap. She rushed over to assist the old woman, speaking directly into her ear. “Nana! However did you manage the stairs?”

“The same way I been managin’ ’em for the last fifty years, girl. By puttin’ one foot in front o’ the other.”

Nana shuffled over to the bed, shaking her head as she gazed down at Lord Dravenwood’s prostate form. “There’s nothin’ worse for a woman than to see such a powerful man laid so low.”

“I despise feeling so helpless,” Anne confessed, swallowing around the tightness in her throat.

Nana slanted her a chiding look. “Don’t give up on him yet, girl. And don’t give up on yourself. If there’s anythin’ you’ve always excelled at, it’s gettin’ your own way. I’m guessin’ you could still wrap fate ’round your little finger if you set your mind to it.”

“At the moment it feels more like fate has its fingers wrapped around my throat.” Anne noticed the colorful garment draped over the old woman’s arm. “Why, Nana, did you finally finish your . . .” Anne hesitated, at a loss as to what to call the voluminous creation.

“These old knuckles of mine are gettin’ too stiff to work the needles, and half the time I can’t see what color I’ve picked out. Someone might as well get some use out of it while I’m still here to see it.” The old woman carefully unfolded her gift and draped it across Lord Dravenwood’s chest.

“Oh, Nana, it’s beautiful!” Anne breathed. The garment’s rainbow of hues did brighten the room considerably, even giving the illusion of color to Dravenwood’s pallid cheeks.

“There’s a bit o’ love woven into every strand.” Offering Anne a toothless smile, Nana tenderly stroked the knotted yarn with her gnarled fingers. “Never forget, girl. Love is still the most powerful medicine of all.”

“I
F HE DIES, THE
constable will swear we murdered him,” Pippa said glumly from her rocking chair on the other side of the bed, peering over the top of her much-read copy of
The Mysteries of Udolpho
at Anne.

Anne leaned forward in her chair to smooth the earl’s sweat-dampened hair away from his brow. He had been drifting in and out of delirium for most of the day. “Perhaps we did.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself. It was his choice to go after Hodges. We didn’t force him to play knight in shining armor.”

Anne remembered how Dravenwood had told her about saving his brother from a firing squad, how he had looked after Clarinda when she had fallen ill, his determination to prove Angelica had no part in her own downfall, how he’d charged up the attic stairs to rescue Anne from the fire without giving a thought to his own welfare. “I don’t think he had any other choice. He may be loathe to admit it, but I suspect it’s the role he was born to play.” A rueful laugh escaped her. “He even rescued Dickon from that ridiculous wig.” Anne’s smile faded, her fingers lingering against the hot, dry skin of his cheek. “He just hasn’t figured out yet that he can’t save everyone. Perhaps not even himself.”

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
A
NNE
found herself alone with Dravenwood at last. After watching Pippa nod off into her book not once, but three times, Anne had finally coaxed the girl into going to bed by
promising to don a nightdress and curl up on the divan for a nap once she was gone.

Anne had slipped into Dravenwood’s dressing room to change into the nightdress and tug the pins from her hair, but instead of curling up on the divan, she had claimed the rocking chair Pippa had vacated and drawn it even closer to the bed.

At some point in the past few days, she had stopped worrying about the impropriety of spending the night in a gentleman’s bedchamber, much less spending the night in a gentleman’s bedchamber in her nightdress.

She glanced at the French lyre clock on the mantel. It was just after midnight. Even though she knew its voice had been silenced forever, sometimes she still caught herself listening for the hollow bong of the longcase clock in the entrance hall.

Sleep held little attraction for her. Every time she drifted off, she would feel herself slipping beneath the surface of the waves, feel the strangling cords of silk tightening around her ankles, making it impossible for her to kick her way toward freedom. Then she would begin to sink . . . down . . . down . . . down into the darkness of utter oblivion before yanking herself awake with a start.

She couldn’t sleep and Dravenwood couldn’t seem to wake up. His fever had finally broken, but
except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he was as still and pale as a carved marble effigy on a tomb. Anne would almost have preferred delirium to this. At least when he was raving and thrashing, she didn’t have to touch her ear to his lips just to hear the whisper of his breathing.

If he didn’t survive, she would have to gather pen and paper and write to inform his parents of his death.

Would they mourn the man he had been or would his father grieve because he’d lost his precious heir? How long would it take for word to travel across the distant seas to reach his brother? Would Ashton Burke remember the difficult man Dravenwood had become or would he fondly recall the boys they had once been together—the boys who had played at toy soldiers and fought mock naval battles in the bath? Would Clarinda shed a tear for the man who had loved her so long and so faithfully? Would she regret scorning a loyal heart another woman might have cherished? Would little Charlotte even remember her “Unca Max,” the man who had scooped her up in his big, strong arms and held her so tenderly, no doubt thinking that she might have been his if circumstances had been different?

Anne hugged her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. None of Nana’s medicinal teas or
poultices seemed to be working. They hadn’t been able to get so much as a drop of broth down his throat since dawn. All she could do was bathe him, shave his jaw, keep his sheets fresh, gently polish his teeth with her own tooth powder, and accept that he was probably never going to wake up. She would never again see his brow furrow in one of his infuriating scowls or hear him snap out some order she had no intention of obeying.

His face blurred before her eyes as she caught his hand in a fierce grip. “Damn you, Dravenwood! You survived cholera in Burma, a sandstorm in the Tunisian desert, and a broken heart! How dare you let a little rain finish you off? If you’re planning on dying just so you can spend eternity flitting hand in hand around the manor with your precious Angelica, then you’re wasting your last breath. She won’t have you! I’ll see to it!”

The irony wasn’t wasted on Anne. If he died, she would be the one haunted until her dying day. She would be the one who would awaken in the middle of the night, aching for a touch she would never know, craving a kiss she would never taste again.

Still clutching his hand in both of hers, she glared at him through her tears. “Pippa was right, you know. You’re probably just doing this out of spite. If you die, they’ll swear I murdered you. Is that what you want, you stubborn, arrogant fool? Do you
want me to hang because you were so foolhardy as to rush out in the storm after I tried to warn you it could kill you?” Her voice broke on a raw sob. She doubled over and buried her brow against their entwined hands, watering his flesh with her tears.

She was so distraught it took her several seconds to feel the hand gently skimming over her unbound hair. Trembling with disbelief, she slowly lifted her head.

Dravenwood was looking right at her, his eyes alight with a tender regard that stole the breath right out of her throat. “There you are, angel,” he said, disuse deepening the husky note in his voice. A half smile curved one corner of his mouth. “I always knew you’d come back to me.”

Chapter Twenty-nine