The storm finally broke. A sudden deluge washed over the countryside, powerful enough to prevent the physician from coming.
In Meg’s bedchamber, Lucien hovered over her like a man possessed. He barked orders for charcoal and water and muslin, doing everything he could think of to counteract the substances in the vials they’d found sewn into a hidden placket in the maid’s satchel.
He refused to stand by and do nothing. And whenever the dread of losing her threatened to overwhelm him, he reminded himself that he was no longer a helpless seven-year-old boy.
He would not let her die! Not when their life hadn’t even begun.
So he stayed by her bedside all through the night, and even for the days after Dr. Bedivere arrived, ignoring everyone who told him to go and rest, that he’d done enough. But it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Not until she opened her eyes.
Lucien didn’t know what time it was when he heard the voices in the hall. All he knew was that there was a patch of pale light leeching in through the part in the drapes.
Through the partially opened door, he saw the gray-haired physician speaking to someone. “I’m not certain I would have thought to give Miss Stredwick doses of charcoal and water. But she likely would have been lost without it.”
“‘Would have been?’” Hullworth asked, his voice raw.
“It appears as though she has come through the worst of it,” Bedivere said. “She’s resting now, peacefully.”
On the other side of the door, several soft sobs answered this statement.
Lucien wanted to feel relief, but he was still waiting for proof.
Sitting on a chair beside the bed, with Meg’s hand in his own, he studied her face. She was still too pale, the flesh beneath her eyes tinged violet, her lips not even a tenth of their usual color.
Her sister-in-law touched him on the shoulder. “I believe you heard that, too. So I suggest you take a moment to eat and freshen up.”
“I’m not leaving her, Ellie,” he said stubbornly.
“I want to change her bedding and her clothes,” she clarified with a blush. When he remained implacable, she added with an uncharacteristic huff, “This is not a request but an order.”
Too exhausted to argue, Lucien allowed himself to be shooed from the room. But it was a long while before he stopped pacing in front of her door.
After the midnight chime of the clock in the main hall, Sylvia gave him a gentle shove and made him leave a second time. Touching his cheek with a fond pat, she told him not to come back until after dawn.
So he climbed the stairs to check on Guinevere.
The nursery had two occupants, and he was careful not to wake either one as he crept across the floor. Kneeling, he pressed a kiss to his daughter’s wispy blonde hair, inhaling the sweet smell that was similar to her mother’s but tinged with the fragrances of honeysuckle and ivy.
My daughter, he thought in wonder as he looked down at drowsy lashes resting on her sleep-pinkened cheeks. He was a father. It hardly seemed real. And yet, he recalled feeling an instant connection to her, a need to protect her that he hadn’t experienced when he’d met her cousin, Johnathon.
Meg had told him that she’d written to him for two years, and he hadn’t wanted to believe her because he hadn’t had proof. Yet, here was the proof, sleeping beneath a blue coverlet, with a little cherub face.
Though, he should have guessed by her name alone. Only Meg would have thought to name their daughter Guinevere.
And he would have known sooner if not for Morgan.
Leaving his daughter’s side, he went downstairs and into his sister’s bedchamber.
Thinking back, he hadn’t paid much attention to her peculiar eagerness to collect the mail at Caliburn Keep. He’d only thought she was toying with his steward’s affections. She’d always liked little games like that. But now that he knew more, it was entirely possible that, for the past two years, she’d been hiding Meg’s letters. In addition, it shed new suspicion on her insistence to use Mr. Richards. And Lucien had asked Pell to look into that.
The bedchamber was in disarray, the servants having been instructed to leave it untouched for the time being.
Lucien lit the lamp on the low bureau beneath an oval looking glass and sifted through the trunks that had been opened, contents spilled in a mad search to identify the poison. But he wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Perhaps he was merely attempting to understand.
He spotted the fringe of a familiar green shawl sticking out from beneath her bed. Bending down, he carefully lifted it, remembering the night in Italy when Meg had used this to wrap the book. It was empty now, the woven cashmere folded flat. But it was proof that Meg had been telling him the truth.
She had not taken the book.
This realization didn’t hit him with sudden enlightenment. He wasn’t startled by it either.
Because, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always known. But perhaps he’d needed to give himself an excuse to chase her, to find her. Perhaps he’d needed to give himself permission to stop his quest for the book so that he could have a new purpose. A new life. And he wanted that life with Meg.
However, Hullworth was right, too. It had to be her decision. He wasn’t going to force her to be his wife. She wanted magic, while his nature preferred facts.
He lifted the shawl and breathed it in, hoping that some remnants of her remained in the weave, but they were lost to the stale mustiness of time. He was about to drop it into the trunk, when he heard the rustle of paper. Then a folded sliver of foolscap drifted to the floor.
Seeing the neat scrawl, he bent to pick it up.
Dearest Lucien,
Circumstances have forced me away this very night, and I must bid you farewell in this note. From here, the aunts and I travel to Wiltshire and my home at Crossmoor Abbey.
My love, as you know, I am a firm believer in fate. Our paths would only have crossed if it was preordained. If you feel the same—if you feel anything at all—then, come to me, Lucien. I will be waiting for you.
With all my heart,
Margaret Stredwick
His fingers curled around the missive, and he closed his eyes. If he was the kind of man to believe in wishes, he would have made one just then.
Morgan had caused this.
Her hatred of him and need for revenge had driven her to commit despicable acts. Not wanting to leave Meg’s side, he hadn’t confronted his sister about what she’d done. But he’d heard her shouted rantings drift up the stairs as the constable had dragged her out of the house, and so he knew her reasons went back to their father.
Remembering bits and pieces of instances over the years, he was able to surmise how she’d accomplished her deception. And, even though he’d been young when his parents had died, he could recall every aspect of that night. Including the fact that Morgan was the only one who could have known how to take the key from where it was hidden in the hilt of his dagger. Only Morgan could have left the study window open for the intruders. Only Morgan could have hired them.
But Lucien had chosen to ignore those things as a child because she’d saved his life.
She was nearly the only family he had left. Family was something that his father and mother had taught him to treasure.
So he’d chosen to ignore years of petty remarks. Years of her sly comments that left him feeling guilty and ashamed for what he’d supposedly done to cause his parents’ deaths. Years of her teaching him through her own deceptions that no one was to be trusted.
On a heavy sigh, he smoothed Meg’s note, carefully folded the page, then tucked it in his pocket.
Leaving his sister’s room, he was wrung out and listless, his gait slow and ambling, without purpose. It felt like his skin didn’t fit him any longer. Like it had been singed to a crisp and was ready to slough off, revealing the raw flesh beneath.
Not paying attention to his footfalls, he went back to Meg’s chamber, intent on being at her side.
But he stopped cold when he saw Hullworth speaking to Bedivere, a stark expression on his face. Beside him, Sylvia and Ellie were in tears. Distantly, he heard words like worsen, deteriorate, lapse.
Numbly, he started walking again, ignoring Hullworth’s request to speak with him.
Inside, Lucien saw Meg in the flickering light of a single taper, her breaths shallow and slow, her skin ashen. There was an eerie stillness in the room that wanted to root him to the floor. But he staggered forward, counting each step, each heartbeat.
Her hand was shockingly cold in his own. Her warmth all but gone. And she looked so small, so frail, so unlike the vibrant woman who had thoroughly transformed his life.
She had made him want to live, to drink in each day, to taste the sweetness of every moment. And now she was just going to leave him? To spend endless years, utterly lost without her?
Agony broke over him, so great that it brought him to his knees. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking, his eyes burning with tears. Then his heart fractured, splintering into trillions of shards, the detritus moving through his blood with painful slices, opening every vein.
This couldn’t be happening. No, Bedivere had said that she was through the worst of it.
Refusing to believe this was anything more than a nightmare, he squeezed her hand. “Wake up, my little wolf. Come on, now. You’ve slept long enough.”
He tried to sound severe, disapproving, but his throat was raw, shredded from holding on to his last hope.
He couldn’t fathom a world without her in it.
Looking at her face, he wanted to see her eyes open to that startling blue and her teeth flash in the smile that he knew so well. But his spectacles were useless disks of glass, wet and smudged. So he tore them off.
He pressed a kiss to her cool cheek, her temple, her hair. He breathed in her scent, needing to hold it inside him forever. Then he whispered a plea to the heavens, to her, to whoever would listen.
“It was fate that brought us together, my love. I know that now. Fate that put you in my path. And fate that tethers us, that will always tether us. You are my soul’s counterpart, and I cannot live”—his breath stuttered—“without you.”
Then the sob he’d been holding at bay finally broke free. “Please, please, don’t make me live without you.”