Luke, exhausted by his injury and his admissions, obeyed and soon slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Later that night the fever started. Bella sat up with Luke all night, feeding him willow bark tea and spongingdown his heated flesh.
As she sponged, she thought about the story he’d told. Two young men’s lives had been destroyed by that woman. Almost destroyed.
Luke felt such guilt over his betrayal, but even Bella, with her limited experience of life, could see that an eager and impressionable young man would have no chance against the wiles of a clever and beautiful woman. Witch.
The rose carved into Luke’s flesh was a constant reproach. A brand of guilt.
It was too late to save Michael, but as she tended Luke’s feverish body, Bella vowed she would make the rest of Luke’s life as happy as she possibly could.
Luke’s fever passed quickly, and in two days he was well enough to insist they continue on their way.
Bella, of course, gave it a flat veto. “It’s ridiculous to think you can travel yet. Riding is out of the question! You’ll open up that wound again, and then it will get infected and—and, peoplediefrom such infections, Luke!”
Themarquéshad intervened. He owed them a debt, he insisted. If it was ever discovered that he, a known patriot, had married a notorious French agent, a traitor, and a torturer… No, no, and no! That woman was never to be mentioned in the Castillo de Rasal again. He had wiped the whole unpleasant incident from his mind.
The old gentleman was putting a brave face on it, Bella thought. Deep down he was grieving. His wife’s betrayal had cut deep. He had been intensely humiliated, and yet… he loved her.
Love is pain.
Themarquéswas also, Bella suspected, only too glad to get rid of herself and her husband; reminders of his grievous mistake in judgment, as well as witnesses to his killing of his wife, so when Luke had proved so stubborn about traveling on, themarquéshad seized on the excuse and pressed his best traveling carriage on them so Luke could travel in the utmost comfort. He’d provided a coachman and grooms and two outriders and had sent riders on ahead to arrange the change of horses with minimum delay.
Apart from sleeping overnight at various inns, they’d traveled almost nonstop for four days. Bella was weary of it.
Luke was dozing again. He’d spent a good part of the journey sleeping. It was good for his recovery, she knew, but carriage travel, even in a well sprung, comfortable carriage, was so dull. She’d attempted to read one of the books themarquéshad pressed on her as a parting gift, but the carriage bounced so much, trying to concentrate on the print made her feel ill.
They hit a pothole, and Luke grabbed a strap with his good hand. Good, he was awake.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking in the last few days while you’ve slept, Luke, and I’ve made a few decisions.”
“Sounds ominous,” Luke said with a faint smile. There was a new ease to him since they’d left the Castillo del Rasal. A lightness. As if he’d started to forgive himself. Not that he talked about it, or probably ever would, but she was hopeful.
“It’s not quite that, but you might not like what I’ve decided to do,” she said seriously. “It concerns my mother’s fortune.”
“Your fortune,” he reminded her.
“Yes, exactly,” she said, leaning forward. “It ismyfortune, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And I can do with it whatever I want, and you won’t try to stop me?”
He considered that for a moment. “I suppose it depends what you want to do. If it seems to me unwise or imprudent, I will voice my opinion, possibly quite strenuously.”
“But you won’t actually stop me?”
“I can’t stop you,” he said. “It’s your fortune.”
Bella could still hardly believe it. For so long she had owned nothing, and before that she hadn’t had any choice in any of her life. But this man, this beautiful wonderful man had signed away all his rights to her fortune—and though she had no exact idea of the extent of it yet, she knew it must be substantial.
“I’ve decided what I want to do with it—part of it, I mean, not the whole.”
“I see.”
“I’m going to give some of it to the other girls in the convent.” And before he could say anything, she rushed on, “You see they’re all stuck there because they have no dowries and their families are too proud to admit it or to let their daughters marry men not of their class. It’s such a waste. They’ll end up having to become nuns and nobody should be a nun unless they want to! And they’re my friends.”
He nodded. “So you’re going to give them a dowry? All, what is it, six of them? That’s quite a sum.”
