“I can’t… talk about it now,” Albion hissed, his legs on fire.
“But if you are so viciously determined to pursue her and find her, does that mean you have changed your mind?”
He grimaced. “I am more afraid of losing her… than I am of anything else. It doesn’t mean my mind… has changed, but I won’t be a coward. I won’t allow myself to be haunted if… it means she will never set foot in this house again or deign to… be near me anymore.”
“You love her,” Constance gasped as shocked as if he had just grown horns.
“I love her,” he confirmed. “And I fear… something terrible has happened to her. I think… someone is trying to… take us both out in one fell swoop. But only you know I am… awake. It must stay that way. Let the culprit… believe I am still foundering.”
His mother was many kinds of mad, but he did not believe that she could be behind the poisoning. Not after losing one son and a husband already.
Constance wrinkled her nose, her gaze clouding over. “Well, I did not realize you loved her. Nor did I realize thatshewas the reasonable one, and you were the one refusing to abide by your duties as a husband.” She tutted under her breath. “Nevertheless, I still do not think it wise for you to do this now. You are shaking all over and your skin is… terribly hot.”
She practically slapped her hand against his brow, recoiling instantly. “Your fever is worse, my dear boy. Please, let us return to your bedchamber. I can send someone else to hunt for your absent wife.”
“No one… else can be trusted,” Albion hissed, gulping down great mouthfuls of air as he finally came to the bottom of the staircase. Just the entrance hall, the front door, the porch, and the distance between the house and the stables stood between him now… as well as the indefinitely long ride to find out where his wife was.
I can’t give up,he urged himself though he was no fool; he could feel his weakness and sickness as well as his mother. It was like his blood had been replaced with thick oil, and there was an invisible mire all around him, making each step feel like wading through mud while his lungs had become shriveled prunes and his heart was akin to faulty clockwork, stalling and surging at intervals.
“Albion,please!” his mother begged, but he broke away from her, lumbering toward the front door.
He wrenched it open and staggered out, clasping each of the descending pillars like an old friend as he swung from one to the next in order to get down the porch steps.
“Albion, I beg of you, come back inside!” his mother cried.
She sounded so far away, as though he was under water and she was on shore. But there was another sound beating above her strained voice: a low percussive thud and the crunch of gravel under heavy feet. Horses. The clatter of the cavalry, sweeping in to swing the scale on a half-lost battlefield.
Frowning through blurred eyes, he looked up at the driveway. Two horses were barreling toward him. Riding ahead on a silver beast, hair flying out behind her, skirts too, he could have sworn he was seeing Matilda. But she hated horses, and she was far away, somewhere he could not find her.
The rider pulled the silver horse to a rearing halt and slid down from the saddle, running the short distance to where Albion swayed, his arms tight around the last pillar.
“My love, are you well?” The figure looked and sounded like Matilda, but he feared that his fevered mind was playing tricks on him. She would not have said “my love,” for one thing.
He had experienced it before when he was lying in a tent in France, being tended to by the field physicians after the canister exploded in front of him, almost costing him his eyes. The wounds had suppurated after several days, and a vicious fever had claimed him, making him see and hear things that were not there: his father, his brother, old friends, his mother.
“Jenna came to fetch me,” Matilda continued. “She said you had been poisoned. She said it was larkspur. How… is it possible that you are awake? My love, speak to me.”
Albion pulled away from her reaching hands. “You’re not real. I wish you… were, but you’re not. You’re just what I… want to see.” His throat constricted. “I wish you were real. I wish it was… you.”
“My love, itisme,” Matilda replied, resting her hand upon his brow. “Goodness, you are far too warm. You are delirious, my love. It is the poison, still working through your veins. Come, let us get you inside.”
“That is what I have been saying!” his mother snapped unhelpfully.
My mother can see her? How can that be?He had never heard of others being able to see the visions or hear the sounds of delirium before. Unless, he was imagining that, too.
“You left,” he rasped. “I… made you go. I’m sorry. I’m so… sorry.”
Matilda gathered him into her arms as best she could though one of his arms remained around the pillar. “You are unwell, my love. We can talk of things said and done when you are better, but you will not get any better out here.” She looked behind her, to the other rider—a stranger to Albion. “Help me. We must get him into bed at once. No one else can be trusted.”
“Is it… really you?” She felt solid in his embrace, her breath hot on his neck, the scent of her—earth and flowers and the sea—so familiar to him. “Did you… come back?”
Matilda gazed into his eyes, brushing her hands over his sweat-soaked hair. “Of course I did, my love.”
She hugged him then, so tightly it stole the last few morsels of air from his lungs. And as he let go of the pillar to hug her back, overcome with relief and joy, his love-given strength abandoned him. The darkness descended for a second time, blotting out her beautiful face… and everything else, for what he was certain was the final time.
He had lived just long enough to see her again.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
