“I’m sure you’ve been worried to death about him,” she said. “I’ll wager you haven’t had a moment’s rest since getting word of the accident.”
Crewe denied feeling any fatigue or undue worry.
“You will be of little help to Mr. Carsington if you get no sleep this night,” she said. “An hour or two’s rest will do you good. I’ll keep watch in the meantime.”
The valet protested. Mirabel’s very sensible arguments—about his needing rest to be of full use to his master, and his being within easy call should any difficulties arise—fell on deaf ears. But when she gave her word of honor not to kill his master in his sleep, Crewe looked very shocked, stammered an apology—he never meant to imply any such thing and never dreamt it, for a minute—and meekly took himself into the adjoining room.
He left the connecting door open.
Mirabel settled into the chair by the bed and studied Crewe’s master.
During her discussion with his manservant, Mr. Carsington had got himself turned about. He now lay partly on his stomach, and the shape of the bedclothes outlining his body told her his injured foot had slipped from its pillow. She debated whether to waken the footman to help her turn the patient onto his back again. Before she could decide, she found herself recalling her father’s remarks about laudanum, Egyptians, and Captain Hughes.
What had led Papa to that sequence of thoughts?
He said Mr. Carsington’s sleep was not restful.
Mirabel rose and came nearer to the bed to study his face. It seemed peaceful enough, and strangely youthful, with his tousled hair falling over his brow. She could see the boy he must have been. He snored softly, rather like a lion purring, but it was uneven.
She linked her hands behind her back because she was dreadfully tempted to smooth his hair back from his face, as though he were that young boy, as though the gesture would be enough to soothe him.
The soft snoring stopped, and he shuddered.
Mirabel’s hands would not remain sensibly behind her back. She reached out and lightly brushed his hair back. She stroked his cheek.
He stirred and began to mumble. At first it was only incomprehensible strings of sounds. Then came a hoarse whisper: “Zorah. We must find her.”
More muttering. By degrees, Mirabel began to distinguish phrases here and there. Something about being sick. Something about butchers.
He began to toss and turn. “Get away…no…can’t look at it…vultures…I knew him…No, don’t talk. Never say. Didn’t see. Make a joke. Ha. Ha. Attached to it. Getting on so well together. Gordy, find her. Flesh wound. Zorah. She said. Get me away. Don’t let them.”
His voice scarcely rose above a murmur, but he was flailing about. She must stop him, or he’d tumble out of bed or otherwise harm himself.
She touched his shoulder. “Mr. Carsington,” she said gently, “please wake up.”
He jerked away and kicked at the bedclothes. “Can’t breathe. Get them off. Sick. Sick. God help us.” He threw himself toward the edge of the bed.
Mirabel flung herself across his chest.
He shuddered briefly, then stilled.
Mirabel waited, uncertain what to do. Had she truly calmed him, turned his sleeping mind elsewhere, or was it only a pause? Should she let him sleep or wake him? If he slept, he might return to the nightmare.
She listened to his breathing. Not slow. Not like peaceful sleep. She remembered what her father had said, how sure he’d been that Mr. Carsington had suffered a head injury at Waterloo. She recalled what she’d read of his actions in battle, and of what he’d endured afterward. He’d been believed dead and might have died in fact, if his friend Lord Gordmor hadn’t scoured the battlefield for him, through the night, among acres of corpses. Was this what the famous hero dreamt of?
He didn’t want to talk about the battle or hear about it. Perhaps in his place, she would feel the same. He could not wish to be reminded of what must have been the most horrendous experience of his life.
Everyone said it was a miracle he’d survived until he was found, many hours after the battle. It must have taken unimaginable courage and a will of iron. Not to mention a remarkably strong and resilient body.
It was this thought that brought her back to the present, to where she was, lying across the famously indestructible body.
His chest rose and fell under her, but now she became aware of more than its unsteady rise and fall.
He’d pushed away the bedclothes. His nightshirt had fallen open. She hadn’t thought about his state of undress. She’d simply acted to quiet him. Now she was conscious of the faint friction of her nightgown against his shirt, of the place where the flannel of her gown brushed his bare skin, of the edge of the shirt opening touching her cheek. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and she was acutely aware now of the hardness and warmth under her, of the hurried, irregular rise and fall, a countertempo to the quickened, unsteady beat of her heart.
She felt again, as though it were happening now, his hands circling her waist and saw once more the intent golden gaze, the lurking smile.
If only…
She took a deep breath, and let it out, and told herself to get up. Cautiously, she lifted her head and looked at him…and found him looking back at her.
His eyes were open and dark but for the faint gleam of reflected candlelight.
Mirabel swallowed. “Bad dream,” she said.
“You had a bad dream?” His voice was a sleepy rumble. He smiled lazily, and his hands slid up to her hips.
His hands were so very warm, and as they stole up farther, her mind slowed.
She wanted to stop thinking entirely and let those long hands slide over her. She wanted to touch her lips to that sleepy smile….
Seduction, a voice called to her from far, far away.
It was the faint voice of her rapidly disappearing intellect. She didn’t want to call it back, but she’d had years of practice in overcoming such inclinations, in doing what had to be done, like it or not.
Swallowing a sigh, she wriggled away from the insidious hands, slid off the bed, and stood back out of reach. As though she were in any real danger. As though he would, if wide awake instead of half asleep and thinking of someone else—by name of Zorah, perhaps—reach for her.
“You had a bad dream,” she said.
/> “And you were comforting me,” he said.
She clenched her hands. “I tried to keep you from throwing yourself on the floor. You were thrashing about. I should have called for help, but it was quickest to—to—”
“Jump on me.” His mouth quivered.
Mirabel’s face burned, and she reacted instinctively, attacking from an unexpected quarter, as she’d learnt to do when cornered and made to defend herself. “Who is Zorah?”
His amusement vanished, and the atmosphere instantly thickened.
She knew she wasn’t to upset him, but she was too angry with circumstance, with fate, to behave sensibly. “You spoke her name more than once,” she persisted. “You wanted to find her. I take it she’s important.”
He raised himself up on the pillows. Though he did so without wincing, Mirabel knew it hurt. She could tell by the way his features hardened. She cursed her bad temper and self-pity and wayward tongue.
“Never mind,” she said. “It is none of my business. I panicked. And behaved stupidly. I should have let Crewe stay. He would have known what to do.”
Mr. Carsington looked about the dimly lit room. “Where is he?”
“I sent him to bed,” Mirabel said. “He looked so tired and worried.”
“Do you never sleep, Miss Oldridge?”
“No, I always prowl about the house in the dead of night, looking for unsuspecting gentlemen to leap upon.” She realized her dressing gown was falling open. Not that there was anything to see. Her sensible flannel nightgown left everything to the imagination.
Nonetheless, she drew the dressing gown closed and began tying the ribbons. “Not that we ever had any unsuspecting gentlemen here before,” she went on into the pulsing silence. “But if we had, I should have leapt upon them, too. So you are not to think there is anything out of the way about my behavior.”
“You are tying those ribbons into knots,” he said.
She looked down at her too-busy fingers. “Yes, well, I could be calmer, I daresay.”