Chapter Two

HAYDON COULD NOT STAND MUCH LONGER.

It had taken every shred of his strength just to follow Miss MacPhail and the boy here. He had not initially intended to do so. But the moment Haydon stood outside the prison walls clutching his injured side and gasping for breath, he realized he had absolutely nowhere to go. He knew no one in Inveraray, he was without money, and he was wearing a filthy prison uniform. Moreover, between his illness and his injuries, he knew he could not travel very far.

The sight of the compassionate Miss MacPhail walking with young Jack some distance ahead of him had offered his only hope. He had no illusions that Miss MacPhail would be interested in helping him. Although she was apparently generous and tenderhearted, she believed him to be a murderer. Aside from fearing that he might harm her, there was also the very real threat of her being prosecuted for aiding a criminal, should Haydon be discovered in her care. The lad, however, was another matter. By boldly stealing the warder’s keys and unlocking Haydon’s cell door, Jack had demonstrated that he was at least somewhat concerned about Haydon’s fate. Much as he loathed to ask it of the boy, at that moment he desperately needed assistance. If he could only hide in Miss MacPhail’s shed or coach house for a few days, with a little food and water brought to him occasionally, he could regain his strength.

Then he’d get the hell out of Inveraray and try to clear his name.

The fact that there had been no carriage waiting for Miss MacPhail outside the prison, coupled with the relative simplicity of her attire, had suggested that her financial situation was modest. Haydon was therefore surprised to follow her to this fashionable street and watch her enter a large, elegant house of smooth gray stone with numerous windows and a handsomely carved front door. The house was not grand by Haydon’s standards, but it bespoke gentility and affluence, as did the homes surrounding it. Jack had appeared utterly indifferent to his new residence, striding up the stairs and into the building without sparing it a second glance. It was clear to Haydon that the boy had no intention of staying there. Perhaps when they had a chance to talk he would be able to make the lad understand what a rare opportunity he was being given.

The draperies in the house had been drawn, leaving only a soft, buttery glow permeating the fabric. Nearly overcome with exhaustion, Haydon had forced himself to stand in the shadow of a neighboring house and wait. After an hour or more, the curtains in an upstairs window parted slightly, and a pale young face stared out at the street below. Haydon retreated farther into the darkness, watching. The face hesitated a moment, then disappeared behind the draperies once again.

Haydon could not be certain it had been Jack. He thought it had looked like him. Did the lad suspect that Haydon had followed him? It was possible. Jack had lived much of his life on the streets, and was undoubtedly more attuned to his surroundings than those who had enjoyed more sheltered existences. On the other hand, the lad might simply have been curious about his new environs, and was taking a moment to contemplate his situation before climbing into a clean, comfortable bed.

Haydon raised a hand to his brow, fighting the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him.

One by one the lamps in the house were extinguished, until all the windows were sheets of black. Shivering with fever and weary beyond measure, Haydon slowly emerged from the shadows.

Finally, realizing he had no choice, he picked up a handful of stones and began to fling them at the boy’s window.

 

THERE IS A MAN THROWING STONES AT OUR WINDOW!” shrieked ten-year-old Annabelle, her pale blonde hair flying out behind her as she raced into Genevieve’s room and leaped excitedly upon her bed.

“He’s been doing it for a few minutes,” Grace added, clumsily banging into Genevieve’s nighttable before joining Annabelle on the mattress. Grace was two years older than her stepsister, but contrary to her name, she lacked the charming mannerisms that came to Annabelle so effortlessly.

“What do you think he wants?” wondered Charlotte, limping in after them. A quiet, serious child of eleven, she had glossy auburn hair and large hazel eyes. Unfortunately, few people noticed anything about her beyond the fact that she walked with a limp.

“Maybe he is a secret admirer of Genevieve’s, come to profess his undying love,” rhapsodized Annabelle dreamily.

Grace frowned. “Why wouldn’t he come and profess his undying love during the day, when Genevieve is awake?”

“Because then we would all be awake to see him and he wouldn’t be a secret admirer anymore,” explained Annabelle.

“But we’re all awake now,” pointed out Charlotte.

In fact, Genevieve was only half-awake as she fumbled to light the oil lamp by her bed. Nevertheless, Charlotte’s point seemed a valid one. “There is a man throwing stones?” she murmured groggily, staring at the three excited little faces in bemusement.

“And he’s terribly handsome!” added Annabelle breathlessly, clasping her delicate hands to her breast. “He looks like a prince!”

“You don’t know that,” Grace retorted. “You barely saw him.”

“I did so see him,” Annabelle argued. “And there was moonlight shining down upon his handsome face, and he looked as if his heart was broken.”

“He did look a little sad.” Charlotte carefully arranged herself on the edge of Genevieve’s bed and rubbed her stiff leg.

“He wasn’t wearing a hat,” reflected Grace, frowning. “Don’t princes always wear hats?”

“Princes wear crowns,” Annabelle corrected.

“I thought kings wore crowns,” said Charlotte.

“Kings wear bigger crowns,” Annabelle informed her with great authority. “That is why princes want to become kings—then they get to wear the biggest crown.”

“Are you girls certain there is a man there?” Genevieve wanted nothing more than to return to sleep. Morning came relentlessly early in her busy little household, and she treasured every moment of respite she could get.

“Come and see for yourself!” squealed Annabelle, tugging on her arm.

“Quick, before he leaves and decides to throw himself in the river!” Clearly Grace sensed Genevieve needed some added incentive.

Reluctantly Genevieve dragged herself out of bed and followed the three girls as they raced into their room.

“Stand there so he can’t see you,” Charlotte instructed, indicating the corner by the window.

“Why shouldn’t he see her?” wondered Annabelle. “Her hair is a bit untidy, but other than that she looks very nice—like a princess.”

“We don’t know who he is, Annabelle,” Grace cautioned. “For all we know he could be a dangerous cutthroat.”

Annabelle’s blue eyes grew round. “Do you really think so?” She sounded perfectly exhilarated by this new possibility.

“I only meant that a strange man shouldn’t see Genevieve in her nightgown,” explained Charlotte impatiently. “It isn’t fitting—is it, Genevieve?”

“No, it isn’t,” Genevieve agreed. “Now, would you all please lower your voices before you waken the entire house.”

The three girls obediently fell silent. Genevieve slowly drew back part of the curtain, then peered cautiously through the exposed sliver of window.

“Gracious me!” she gasped, whipping the curtain closed.

“Did you see him?” asked Grace excitedly.

“Isn’t he handsome?” Annabelle squealed.

“He didn’t see your nightgown, did he?” fretted Charlotte.

Jamie bounded into the room, his red-blond hair tousled and his eyes surprisingly alert for an eight-year-old lad who was supposed to be asleep. “What’s going on?”

“Is someone sick?” piped Simon, who was three years older but not much taller, scrambling in behind him.

Jack followed the two boys in, scowling. “How does anyone get any sleep around here?”

“Genevieve has a secret admirer waiting for her outside,” reported Annabelle.

“We think he’s a prince,” Grace added.

“Or maybe a cutthroat,” finished Charlotte.

Jamie and Simon needed no further enticement. Before Genevieve could stop them, they tore across the room and ripped back the curtain to catch a glimpse of the mysterious stranger on the street below.

“I see him!” squealed Jamie, ecstatic. “Look!”

The other children swarmed around the window, knocking and jostling one another as they each fought to secure a better view.

“Hello down there!” called Simon cheerfully. He pressed his freckled nose against the glass and waved, inspiring all the other children to do the same.

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

Genevieve stared in horror at Jack, her mind reeling. It was suddenly appallingly clear what the lad had wanted with Warder Sims’s keys. Jack sauntered over to the window and took a cursory glance at Haydon. Then he looked at her.

“I didn’t think he would come here.” He shrugged.

“You know him?” exclaimed Simon, studying Jack with awe.

“Is he a prince?” asked Annabelle excitedly.

Jack snorted. “Hardly. He’s a—”

“He’s leaving!” interrupted Grace, diverting everyone’s attention back to Haydon.

“Oh my,” murmured Charlotte in a soft, sympathetic voice, “he can hardly walk.”

“What’s wrong with him?” wondered Jamie, concerned.

“He was badly beaten by the prison warder for tryin’ to help me.” Jack stared at Genevieve, his expression challenging.

“We have to stop him!” said Simon. “Come on!”

“Wait!” cried Genevieve as the children stampeded for the door.

Reluctantly, they stopped and regarded her with impatience.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she ventured, trying to grasp a moment to think.

“We are going to help him, aren’t we?” asked Charlotte.

“Of course we are,” Jamie assured her. “Genevieve always helps people.”

“And if he helped Jack, then we should help him,” reasoned Grace.

“We must stop him now,” declared Annabelle, wringing her hands dramatically, “before he disappears forever!”

Genevieve looked helplessly at Jack.

He regarded her with cold contempt, as if her hesitation was no more than what he expected of her.

And then he turned and marched toward the stairs.

The children needed no further encouragement. They raced after him, flying down the staircase with their pale cotton nightgowns billowing around them like wings.

“Stay back!” barked Oliver, bursting suddenly from the kitchen wielding an ax in his wizened, trembling arms. “There’s an unsavory rascal out there and I’m going to chop him into wee bits and have Eunice grind him into haggis!”

“Now, Ollie, ye should know better than to be scarin’ the bairns with such talk,” chided Doreen, the plentiful lines of her plain, thin face crinkled with disapproval. “However am I to get them to eat their food when ye’re constantly fillin’ their wee heads with such blather?”

“I’m of no mind to make haggis out of some poor, half-starved wretch,” added Eunice, squeezing her bounteous form into the crowded hallway. “He’s bound to be all string and gristle.”

“Oh, Oliver, you mustn’t kill him,” pleaded Charlotte earnestly. “He’s hurt!”

“And he’s Jack’s friend,” Grace added.

“We’re going to invite him in,” explained Annabelle.

“Then could we have some tea?” asked Simon hopefully. “I’m starving.”

“At this hour?” Eunice regarded Genevieve with dismay. “But we’re scarcely fit to receive company, Miss Genevieve—we’re all in our nightclothes!”

“He won’t mind,” Charlotte assured her.

“He’s from prison!” chirped Jamie, as if this were a marvelous endorsement.

Jack threw the front door open. The children surged forward, only to find Haydon’s figure slowly retreating down the street.

“Hello there!” Simon shouted.

“Come back!” cried Charlotte.

“We won’t let Oliver chop you up for haggis!” Annabelle promised.

Realizing that Haydon might not find that particularly reassuring, Jack sprinted into the frigid darkness in his bare feet, catching up to Haydon just before he disappeared around the corner.

“It’s all right,” Jack told him. “You can come in.”

Haydon stared at him in confusion. His vision was blurred by fever, and every step required excruciating effort. Even so, he had no desire to endanger Miss MacPhail and the flock of white-gowned children who were calling to him from the doorstep. This was not what he had planned.

“No.”

“You must,” Jack insisted impatiently. “You’re too weak to walk, and soon all of Inveraray will be lookin’ for you.”

“Didn’t want her to know.” Haydon’s tongue felt thick and clumsy as he labored to form the words. “Didn’t want her to be part of it.”

“She doesn’t mind,” Jack lied. He wrapped a thin arm around Haydon, supporting him. “She wants you to come in.”

Haydon looked over at Genevieve. She was clad only in a creamy nightrail, her tall, slender figure rising above the excited, waving children clustered around her. His vision was too clouded to make out her expression.

In that moment she was as close to an angel as anything he had ever hoped to see.

“Just for tonight,” he mumbled. “No longer.”

Leaning heavily against Jack, he began to stagger back toward the house. Jack helped him through the door and into the hallway, where Haydon stared vacantly at the fascinated audience surrounding him.

And then crashed in a heap upon the floor.

“What’s happened to yer friend, laddie?” Oliver frowned at Haydon over the blade of his ax. “He dinna look so good.”

“He was beaten while trying to help me,” Jack explained. “And he’s sick.”

“Sick, ye say?” scoffed Doreen. “He looks nigh fit to be buried.”

Jamie looked up at Genevieve, his eyes wide with concern. “Is he going to die?”

“Of course not,” she replied, affecting far more assurance than she felt. Even if she managed to nurse him back to health, the man lying on the floor of her hallway was a convicted murderer. If he was captured, as he most certainly would be, he would be hanged.

She pushed the thought from her mind. All that mattered in that moment was that he was badly injured and needed their help.

“Oliver, please help Jack take his friend up to my room and put him on the bed,” she instructed briskly. “Eunice, kindly warm some of that broth you made earlier, and bring it up with a pot of strong tea. Doreen, please fetch a jug of hot water, a jug of cold water, some soap, and a pot of ointment. Simon and Jamie, bring some wood up to my room and add it to the fire. Annabelle, Grace, and Charlotte, see if you can find an old, clean sheet, and tear it into narrow strips for binding.”

Everyone immediately rushed in all directions to do her bidding.

Genevieve inhaled a slow, steadying breath before hurrying up the stairs to her bedroom.

“We’d best get him out o’ these clothes,” remarked Oliver after he had eased Haydon onto the bed. “Were ye wantin’ me to burn them?” He regarded Genevieve meaningfully.

She nodded. Oliver was well acquainted with the ill-fitting moleskin jacket, trousers, cotton shirt, and braces that comprised local prison uniforms. Clearly he didn’t want anyone beyond their household to recognize it as such—not even if it was tossed in the garbage.

“Here, lad, help me to sit him up so we can get these things off,” Oliver said to Jack.

Their patient was an unusually large man, and it took the three of them to lift and turn him as they peeled away the filthy layers of his prison uniform. Finally he was stripped to the waist.

“Dear Lord.” Genevieve stared in horror at the ugly purple and black bruises streaking his muscular torso. “Did that awful warder do all this?”

Jack shook his head. “He was hurt when he came to the prison. Said somethin’ about being attacked. That’s why Sims hit him in the rib cage.” His voice was filled with loathing as he finished, “He knew it would make it worse.”

“They’re a nasty lot, prison warders.” Oliver’s expression was grim. “I’ve known my share, and they’re all the same. Here now, lass, ye’d best look away while Jack and I pull off his trousers.”

“I’ll see what’s keeping Doreen,” said Genevieve, suddenly embarrassed.

She returned a few minutes later carrying a pile of thin towels, to find her bedroom in complete turmoil.

“Ye canna stack logs on a fire like bricks,” Oliver was saying to Simon and Jamie as he poked violently at the hearth, which was merrily spewing thick gray smoke into the room. “Ye’ve got to give ’em room to breathe, or else they’ll make ye sorry for it.”

“Girls, can ye not find elsewhere to do that?” clucked Eunice, nearly tripping over Annabelle, Grace, and Charlotte, who were seated upon an enormous sheet as if they were having a picnic.

“I think we have to get off it if we’re going to tear it up,” reflected Charlotte.

“Nonsense,” Grace said, struggling to start a rip in one corner. “It will be much better if we all sit on it to keep it steady.”

“Look at me—I’m an Arabian princess!” Annabelle stood and draped a length of the threadbare sheet in front of her face. “Where, oh where is my handsome desert sheik?”

“’Tis a shame we can’t just toss him in a bath,” remarked Doreen, staring at Haydon with her work-reddened hands fisted on her hips. “’Tis the best way to get a man really clean.”

“Or to drown him,” quipped Oliver. He gave the fire one final thrust, then handed the poker to Simon, who immediately began to flail it around as if it were a sword. “Especially in his condition.”

“I’ll help to wash him,” offered Jamie, pulling a sopping wet cloth out of the wash bowl and letting it drip water all over the bed. “I know how.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Genevieve set down the towels and scooped up the dripping cloth from Jamie. “Oliver, Doreen, and I will take care of Jack’s friend. The rest of you may go to bed.”

Simon stopped his swordplay to regard her with a crestfallen look. “But we want to help.”

“We won’t make any noise,” Grace assured her.

“And we won’t get in your way,” added Charlotte.

“Please,” chimed Annabelle from behind her makeshift veil.

Genevieve sighed. “I appreciate your desire to help. But there are too many people in this room, and the best way you could help is by going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep. There will be lots of other things for you to do tomorrow.”

“Like what?” asked Jamie eagerly.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Eunice, please take the children back to their rooms and make sure they are nicely tucked in.”

“Come on, then, duckies.” Eunice opened her slack, plump arms and gathered the children together like a flock of little birds. “If ye move smartly, ye each may have a special sweetie at yer plate in the morning.”

Excited by that wonderful possibility, the children instantly abandoned their pursuits and raced from the room.

“Jack, you may also go to bed,” Genevieve said, dipping her cloth in warm water. “We can manage.”

“Are you going to report him to the police?” His voice was low and hard.

Doreen’s aged eyes rounded in shock as she studied the man sprawled on the bed. “Sweet Saints,” she gasped. “He’s the one I went to see, isn’t he? The murderer who escaped from the jail this evening?”

Genevieve wrung out her cloth and calmly began to wash Haydon’s face. “If not for him, Jack would have been brutally beaten today,” she stated quietly. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

“He had no reason to help me.” His voice was low and fierce, as if he thought she might debate the matter. “But he did. Sick and hurt as he was, he pulled that bastard warder off me. Told him he would kill him if he touched me again. And then he got pounded for it.”

Genevieve eased her cloth down the chiseled contour of Haydon’s cheek. His face had the black growth of a week or more, and there were dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes. Even so, he was an uncommonly handsome man. A man convicted of murder, she reminded herself uneasily.

Who would rise to the defense of a helpless boy, when he himself could barely stand.

“Do ye ken who he is, laddie?” asked Oliver, his white brows knit with concern. “Or who he murdered?”

Jack shook his head. “I only shared a cell with him for a few days. He never talked much. But he’s from money, judgin’ by his speech. The warder used to call him ‘his lordship.’”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Doreen scoffed, grabbing a cloth so she could help Genevieve wash Haydon. “Warders are always makin’ sport of their prisoners. It’s part of how they have their fun.”

Jack regarded her curiously. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve been in prison,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“We all have, lad,” added Oliver, sensing the boy’s surprise. “Except for Miss Genevieve, of course.” He chuckled.

“But Miss Genevieve knows the black ways of prison, make no mistake.” Doreen cast Genevieve an adoring smile, then resumed her earnest scrubbing of Haydon’s hand.

“The authorities are searching for him now,” Genevieve mused, skimming her cloth with gentle care across the hot, bruised flesh of Haydon’s chest. “And as Jack and I were the last ones to see him in his cell, they will undoubtedly want to question us when they fail to find him tonight.”

“I won’t talk to them,” Jack spat fiercely.

“I’m afraid you will have to, Jack. We both will.” She hesitated, studying Haydon’s face.

I am no murderer, he had told her, his gaze boring into her with painful intensity. And in that moment, as he held her within his desperate grip, she had almost believed him. She knew nothing of the facts of the case—knew nothing about him whatsoever. Except that in his last hours upon this earth, he had been more concerned about the fate of a sullen, thieving boy than himself.

And when that lad was about to be savagely beaten he had intervened, and offered himself instead.

“What we tell the authorities, however,” she finished in a soft, determined voice, “is another matter entirely.”

HAYDON FELT AS IF HE WERE ON FIRE.

He flung himself from side to side, desperately trying to douse the flames, or perhaps just find a shred of cool air to ease the terrible burning. And yet he was shivering, his teeth clattering together like loose pebbles, his jaw clenching so hard he thought the bones would snap. There was pain, too, lashing against him each time he shifted, a deep, racking torment that surged through every inch of his body. He could neither move nor lie still, for both were excruciating, and the frustration of it made him feel as if he were going mad. He tried to cry out, a hoarse, desperate plea, wanting it to end, even if that meant death. Surely even the cruelest God could not expect him to endure such agony.

And then it occurred to him that perhaps he was dead, and this was the abominable hell to which he had been sentenced.

His cry died in his throat.

“Hush,” soothed a voice, soft and achingly feminine. “It’s all right, now.”

A cold, wet cloth slid gently over his face, dousing the flames in its path. It lifted away from his skin for a moment and then returned, slipping across his searing flesh, cooling the terrible, melting heat. The liquid chill dribbled in silvery rivulets down the sides of his face, into his hair, through his papery lips, into the dry parchment of his mouth. A splashing of water in a basin and the cloth was back, making slow, sure movements across the battlefield of his broken body, swirling and caressing, like gentle waves lapping over him. Slowly, the fire blazing through him began to wane. Finally he sank deep into the softness upon which he lay, his breath shallow but steady, his chills all but vanquished.

Perhaps he was not dead after all.

He dozed a while, vaguely aware of the sweet graze of the cool cloth across his burning skin. Along his chest and down his stomach it moved, then gingerly up the sides of his waist and ribs. Its touch was sure yet strangely tender, as if it sensed the injuries hidden beneath, and knew just how much pressure he could withstand. Again and again it traversed him, lulling him with its rhythmic caress, making him feel cool and clean and cherished, although he could not imagine who might think him worthy of such regard. A whisper of music filled the air, fragile and hushed, as if it was not meant for him to hear. He forced himself to lie utterly still, tried to even quiet the weak sigh of his breath so he could hear the lovely singing drifting like a feather on the air around him. It filled him with pleasure, wrapping around him in an ethereal embrace; tender, absolute, forgiving.

His sleep deepened.

Time seeped by. When he awoke it was by slow degrees, a languid peeling away of the hazy layers of confusion and weariness. Fresh, cool air filled his nostrils, tinged with the smoky, sweet scent of firewood burning. The mattress beneath him was soft, the sheets covering him, clean. The faint ticking of a clock lulled him, its quiet, perpetual song tapping lightly at his senses, speaking of reason, order, and logic. He sighed, taking immense comfort in the distilled quiet around him. He could not remember where he was or how he had come to be here, but one thing was utterly clear.

He was no longer rotting in a foul cell with death looming over him.

With enormous effort, he opened his eyes.

Dark shadows veiled the room, indicating it was still night. A low fire cast ripples of apricot light into the darkness, spilling across the carpeted floor, flickering over the rumpled plaid blanket covering his bed. He followed the shifting ribbons to the chair beside him, where they danced up a white nightgown, then dappled the creamy pale skin of the soundly sleeping Miss MacPhail.

She had curled herself into the padded constraints of the chair as best she could, tucking her legs up beneath herself and leaning over so she could use her slender arm as a pillow. Her coral and gold hair spilled lavishly over the snowy linen of her nightgown, setting it afire with strands of silken color. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and her gown was copiously water-stained and wrinkled. It was she who had tended him through the night, Haydon realized, glancing at the porcelain water basin and abandoned cloths resting on the table beside her. The lines of her brow were deeply etched, and wine-colored shadows stained the delicate skin below the fringe of her lashes. Exhaustion had dragged her into a heavy sleep, too absolute to permit her to be roused by the cool breeze gusting through the window, or the discomfort of her position, or the fact that her patient had awakened. He studied her with reverent fascination, watching the slow rise and fall of her sweetly rounded breasts, the slight shifting of her slender body, the nearly imperceptible deepening of the lines between her brows as she buried her cheek deeper into her arm.

He could not remember a woman ever staying by his side to watch over him so.

He was unaccustomed to being helpless—especially before a female he scarcely knew. And it seemed he truly was helpless. The savage beating he had received at the hands of his assailants some two weeks earlier, followed by the illness that had gripped him in prison, and then that final beating from dear Warder Sims only hours ago had combined to reduce him to a weak and shivering invalid. He had no idea how he had made it from the prison to this home. All he could remember was Jack leading him, and the sight of the lovely Miss MacPhail standing amidst a cluster of angels who were waving and calling to him.

Perhaps sensing that she was being watched, she stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She studied him a moment, her enormous brown eyes void of either suspicion or fear, as if she was merely trying to recall how a battered, half-naked man had come to be lying in her bed.

And then she bolted upright and scrambled to find something with which to cover herself.

Clearly, she had remembered.

“Good evening,” rasped Haydon, his throat painfully dry.

Genevieve grabbed the woolen shawl that had fallen onto the floor and hastily wrapped it over her shoulders and across her chest. How long had he been staring at her like that? she wondered nervously. And what was she thinking, falling asleep beside a strange, naked man, with her hair down and her feet bare, when she was supposed to be watching over him? She reached for the jug on the bedside table and poured him a glass of water, using the simple task to compose herself.

“Here,” she said, modestly clamping her shawl closed with one hand as she held the glass to his lips. “Try to take a small sip.”

The water trickled into his mouth and throat. Haydon took a swallow, then another and another, until finally the glass was drained. He was a man who had indulged heavily in the finest of wines and spirits, yet he could not remember ever finding a drink so enormously satisfying.

“Thank you.”

Genevieve placed the glass on the table and self-consciously adjusted her shawl. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

She glanced at the tray Eunice had brought up so many hours earlier. “Would you care to try some broth? It’s cold now, but I could run downstairs and heat it—”

“Not hungry.”

She nodded and fell silent, uncertain what to do or say next.

All night long she had tended to him, despite Oliver’s and Doreen’s adamant protests that they had done as much for him as anyone could possibly do. The matter of whether he succumbed to his injuries and his fever or not, they assured her, was now in God’s hands. But it had been years since Genevieve had yielded matters that she believed to be at least somewhat within her grasp, solely to God. Regardless of who this man was or what he had done, she could not simply retire and leave him to suffer through the night alone.

And so she had stayed with him.

She had spent long hours swabbing his bruised, burning body with soothing cool cloths, alternately covering him with more blankets and peeling them away, pressing the softness of her palms against his searing forehead and roughly bearded jaw as she tried to ascertain whether she was winning her desperate battle against his fever. She knew every chiseled contour of his chest and shoulders and belly, the hard heat of his skin where it stretched tightly across his pectorals, the dark swirls of hair that formed a mysterious line beneath his navel before disappearing under the thin linen of the sheets. She knew he shifted and tried to curl onto his side when a chill began to grip him, and flailed his arms and legs wide when he was suffering unbearable heat. She knew just how much water she could drizzle from the edge of a cloth between his lips without making him gag or have the water leak down the sides of his face, and how much pressure she could render in her touch to soothe him instead of causing him pain. She was familiar with every bruise and scrape and welt upon him, and was reasonably sure of which ribs were broken and which were sore but solid. This intimate knowledge had made her strangely at ease in his presence as he slept, as if she had known him for years and had no reason to feel either threatened or self-conscious.

Now that he was awake, however, she didn’t feel at ease in the least.

“Did you…help him?”

She regarded him blankly.

“The boy,” Haydon explained, laboring to form the words. “Did you help him…free me?”

Her initial inclination was to assure him that she most certainly had not. But that wasn’t quite true, she realized. She had watched Jack clandestinely lift the keys from the warder’s belt. Instead of stopping him, she had created an enormous fuss to distract the jailer from noticing. In the ensuing melee, she had not set out to find Jack promptly and bring him back to Governor Thomson’s office as she should have. Instead, she had waited nervously for him to finish whatever his business was and reappear.

Had she not at least suspected his intent—especially after Jack’s insistence that she take this condemned man with her in addition to him?

“I am not in the habit of breaking convicted criminals out of prison.” She was unsure if she was trying to convince herself or him.

“You took Jack out.”

“By completely legal means, with Governor Thomson’s knowledge and consent,” she retorted. “Furthermore, Jack is only a boy, and should never have been sent to prison in the first place.”

“Nor should I.” It was an enormous effort just to talk. He wearily closed his eyes.

His brow was furrowed and his jaw clenched, indicating he was experiencing pain. Genevieve wet a cloth and pressed it lightly against his forehead, trying to ease his discomfort. A stifled groan escaped his lips. She removed the cloth, dipped it in cool water once more, and began to skim it over his face.

What kind of a man would rise to the defense of a young thief, when he himself was so racked with fever and pain he could barely stand? she wondered. Jack had told her that this man had been gravely ill and injured even before he rose from his bed, tore the prison warder off Jack and threw him across the cell. Surely he must have known that in his condition he could not possibly win a battle against Warder Sims. And he had not even befriended the lad. According to Jack, they had scarcely exchanged a half-dozen words with each other in the entire time they had shared a cell.

For a convicted murderer, he was capable of remarkable compassion and nobility.

His head dropped to one side and his breathing grew deep, indicating that he had fallen asleep. Genevieve leaned over him and gently lay her hand against his brow. He was still overly hot, but not with the same burning intensity he had suffered an hour earlier. Still, experience in dealing with the children’s fevers had taught her that the body’s temperature could drop and then suddenly flare again with alarming speed. She would have to monitor him carefully to try to make sure that didn’t happen. She adjusted the blankets over him, then picked up the tray Eunice had prepared, intending to return it to the kitchen and bring up some fresh water.

“Stay.”

His voice was rough, making it sound more a command than a plea. But his blue eyes were clouded with fever and desperation, and she knew that he was not trying to intimidate her.

“I shall only be gone a few moments,” she assured him.

He shook his head. “They will come for me soon and I will be hanged. Until then, stay. Please.”

“They will come and I will send them away,” Genevieve returned emphatically. “They need not know you are here.”

His eyes widened slightly in surprise. And then they closed, as if he no longer had the strength to keep them open.

Genevieve hesitated.

And then she set the tray down and returned to her chair, preparing to stay by his side for the rest of the night.