Until You by Judith McNaught
Despite her outward composure, she looked extremely tense, frightened, as if she already sensed that something was terribly wrong, so Stephen changed his mind and decided the best course for both of them was probably the most direct one.
“Miss Lancaster,” he said, after quickly introducing himself, “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.” Guilt tore at him as he added tightly, “Lord Burleton was killed yesterday.”
For a moment, she simply stared at him in shocked incomprehension. “Killed? He isn’t here?”
Stephen had expected her to dissolve into tears, at the very least, or even to have hysterics. He had not expected her to withdraw her cold hand from his and say in a dazed voice, “How very sad. Please give my condolences to his family.” She’d turned and taken several steps up the pier before he realized she was obviously in complete shock. “Miss Lancaster—” he called, but his voice was drowned out by an alarmed shout from above as a cargo net loaded with crates swung wide from its winch: “STEP ASIDE! LOOK OUT!”
Stephen saw the danger and lunged for her, but he wasn’t in time—the cargo net swung wide, striking her in the back of the head and sending her flying onto the pier on her face. Already shouting to his coachmen, Stephen crouched down and turned her over in his arms. Her head fell back limply and blood began to run from the huge lump at the back of her scalp.
8
“How is our patient today?” Dr. Whitticomb asked as the Westmoreland butler ushered him into the earl’s study. Despite Dr. Whitticomb’s brisk tone, he felt as pessimistic about her chances of recovery as Stephen Westmoreland, who was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, his elbows propped on his knees, his head in his hands.
“There’s no change,” the earl said, wearily rubbing his hands over his face before he looked up. “She’s as still as death. The maids in her chamber are under orders to keep talking to her as you suggested. I even tried talking to her myself a few minutes ago, but she didn’t respond. It’s been three days,” he pointed out as frustrated impatience edged his voice, “can’t you do something?”
Dr. Whitticomb pulled his gaze from the earl’s haggard features, curbed the impulse to insist he get some rest, which he knew would be futile, and said instead, “She’s in God’s hands, not mine. I’ll go up and look in on her, however.”
“A damned lot of good that’s going to do,” his lordship fired at his departing back.
Ignoring that outburst of noble temper, Hugh Whitticomb walked up the grand staircase and turned left at the top.
When he returned to the study sometime later, the earl was sitting as he had been before, but Dr. Whitticomb’s expression had brightened considerably. “Evidently,” he said dryly, “my visit did do some good, after all. Or perhaps she simply liked my voice better than the maids’.”
Stephen jerked his head up, his gaze searching the physician’s face. “She’s conscious?”
“She’s resting now, but she came around and was even able to speak a few words to me. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have given a farthing for her chances, but she’s young and strong, and I think she may pull through.”
Having said all he had to say on that subject, Dr. Whitticomb looked at the deeply etched lines of fatigue and strain at Stephen’s eyes and mouth and embarked on the second of his primary concerns: “You, however, look like the very devil, my lord,” he pronounced with the blunt familiarity of a longtime family friend. “I was going to suggest we go up to see her together after supper—providing you invite me to stay for supper, of course—but the sight of you might frighten her into a relapse if you don’t have some sleep and a shave first.”
“I don’t need any sleep,” Stephen said, so relieved that he felt positively energized as he stood up, walked over to a silver tray, and pulled the stopper out of a crystal decanter. “I won’t argue about the shave, however,” he said with a slight smile as he poured brandy into two glasses and held one of them out to the physician. Lifting his own glass in the gesture of a toast, he said, “To your skill in bringing about her recovery.”
“It wasn’t my skill, it was more like a miracle,” the physician said, hesitating to drink the toast.
“To miraculous recoveries, then,” Stephen said, raising his glass to his lips, then he stopped again as Whitticomb negated the second toast with another shake of his head.
“I . . . didn’t say she was recovered, Stephen. I said she’s conscious and she’s able to speak.”
The earl caught the hesitation in his voice, and a pair of piercing blue eyes narrowed sharply on Dr. Whitticomb’s face, demanding an explanation.
With a reluctant sigh, the physician acceded to the demand. “I’d hoped to delay telling you this until after you’d had some rest, but the fact is that even if she pulls through physically—and I can’t promise you she will—there’s still a problem. A complication. Of course, it may be very temporary. Then again, it might not.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“She has no memory, Stephen.”
“She what?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t remember anything that took place before she opened her eyes in the bedchamber upstairs. She doesn’t know who she is or why she’s in England. She couldn’t even tell me her own name.”
9
With his hand on the ornate brass door handle, Dr. Whitticomb paused before entering his patient’s bedchambers. Turning to Stephen, he lowered his voice and issued some last-minute warnings and instructions: “Head wounds are very unpredictable. Don’t be alarmed if she doesn’t remember speaking to me a few hours ago. On the other hand, she may have already regained her memory completely. Yesterday, I spoke with a colleague of mine who’s had more experience with serious head injuries than I, and we both felt it would be a mistake to give her laudanum no matter how severe her headache might become. Even though it would help her pain, laudanum will put her to sleep, and we both think it’s imperative to keep her conscious and talking.”
Stephen nodded, but Whitticomb wasn’t finished. “Earlier today, she grew very anxious and frightened when she couldn’t remember anything, so do not, under any circumstances, say or do anything to add to her anxiety. When we go in there, try to make her feel calm and reassured, and make certain any servant who enters this bedchamber is under the same orders. As I said, head wounds are very dangerous and very unpredictable, and we wouldn’t want to lose her.” Satisfied that he’d covered everything, he turned the handle.
Sheridan sensed the presence of people in the darkened room as she floated in a comforting gray mist, drifting in and out of sleep, her mind registering neither fear nor concern, only mild confusion. She clung to that blissful state, because it allowed her to escape the nameless fears and haunting questions nagging at the back of her mind.
“Miss Lancaster?”
The voice was very near her ear, kind but insistent and vaguely familiar.
“Miss Lancaster?”
He was speaking to her. She forced her eyes open and blinked, trying to focus, but her vision was strangely blurry and she saw two of everything, each object superimposed over the other.
“Miss Lancaster?”
She blinked again, and the images separated into two men, one of them middle-aged and gray-haired, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a neat mustache. He looked kindly and confident, just as he sounded. The other man was much younger. Handsome. Not so kindly. Not so confident, either. Worried.
The older man was smiling at her and speaking. “Do you remember me, Miss Lancaster?”
Sheridan started to nod, but movement made her head hurt so horribly that spontaneous tears burned her eyes.
“Miss Lancaster, do you remember me? Do you know who I am?”
Careful not to move her head when she spoke, she answered his question: “Doctor.” Her lips felt dry and cracked, but talking didn’t seem to make her headache more intense. The moment she realized that, her own questions began to rush in on her. “Where am I?”
“You
“Where?” she persisted.
“You’re in England. You sailed here from America.”
For some reason, that made her feel uneasy, depressed. “Why?”
The two men exchanged a glance, then the doctor said reassuringly, “That will all come back to you in due time. Don’t concern yourself with anything right now.”
“I . . . want to know,” she insisted, her whisper hoarse with tension.
“Very well, child,” he agreed at once, patting her arm. After a slight hesitation he smiled as if he were giving her happy news and said, “You came here to join your fiancé.”
A fiancé. Evidently, she was betrothed . . . to the other man, she decided, because he was the one who’d looked the most worried about her. Worried and exhausted. She shifted her gaze to the younger man and gave him a wan, reassuring smile, but he was frowning at the physician, who was shaking his head at him in some sort of warning. That frown bothered her for some reason, and so did the physician’s warning look, but she didn’t know why. It was incongruous, but at that moment, when she knew not who she was or where she’d been or how she came to be here, the only thing she did seem to know for certain was that one must always apologize for causing unhappiness to another. She knew that rule of courtesy as if it were deeply ingrained in her—instinctive, imperative, urgent.
Sherry surrendered to the overwhelming compulsion, and in a faint, thready voice, she waited until her fiancé was looking at her and said, “I’m sorry.”
He winced as if her words had hurt him, and then for the first time in her recollection, she heard his voice—deep, confident, and incredibly soothing. “Don’t apologize. Everything is going to be fine. All you need is a little time and some rest.”
The act of speaking was beginning to require more effort than she could make. Exhausted and bewildered, Sherry closed her eyes, then she heard the men move as if to leave. “Wait . . .” she managed. Suddenly and irrationally terrified of being alone, of sinking back into the dark void that was tugging at her and never being able to surface again, she looked at both men, then settled her imploring gaze on her fiancé. He was the stronger of the two, younger, more vital—he would keep the demons in her brain at bay, with sheer force of will, if they came back to torment her. “Stay,” she said in a faint whisper that was draining the last of her strength. “Please.” When he hesitated and looked at the doctor, Sheridan wet her cracked lips and, drawing a labored breath, she framed into one feeble word all the thoughts and emotions that were warring inside her. “Afraid.”
Her eyelids felt like lead weights, and they closed against her will, shutting her away from the world of the living. Panic set in, pressing her down, making her fight for air. . . . And then she heard the sharp scrape of chair legs on the polished wood floor as a heavy chair was pulled up beside the bed. “There’s nothing to fear,” her fiancé said.
Sheridan moved her hand an inch forward on the coverlet, a child blindly seeking reassurance from a parent she couldn’t even remember. Long masculine fingers closed over her palm and held it in a reassuring grip. “Hate . . . afraid,” she mumbled.
“I won’t leave you. I promise.”
Sheridan clung to his hand, and his voice, and his promise, and she took all three with her into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Guilt and fear made Stephen’s chest ache as he watched her drifting deeper and deeper into slumber. Her head was swathed in bandages and her face was ghostly pale, but what struck him forcibly was how small she looked in that bed, swallowed up by pillows and bedcovers.
She had apologized, when he was entirely to blame, not only for the death of her fiancé and her dreams, but for this calamity as well. He knew the dangers on a dock, and yet he’d positioned himself, and her, directly in the path of a winch. On top of that, he’d been so preoccupied with her reaction to Burleton’s death that he’d failed to see the loaded cargo net swinging toward her, and then he’d failed to react in time to the stevedore’s warning shout. And if she hadn’t been in such a state of shock over what Stephen had told her, and the blunt, clumsy way he’d told her, then she might have been able to react in time to save herself.
As it was, he had put her in the path of danger, failed to protect her, and then made it all but impossible for her to protect herself. If she died, the fault would be entirely his, and he knew he’d never be able to live with that on his conscience. He already carried enough of a burden over young Burleton’s death to torment his nights and haunt his days.
Her breathing changed suddenly, and fear clawed at him. He held his own breath until her chest rose and fell in what seemed like a reasonably steady rhythm, then he exhaled and looked down at the hand resting trustingly in his palm. Her fingers were long and graceful and smooth, but her nails were trimmed very short—an aristocratic hand belonging to a prim and proper young lady with an obvious penchant for tidiness and practicality, he decided.
He lifted his gaze to her face, and if he hadn’t been half crazed with fear and half dead from exhaustion, he would have smiled as he wondered how she felt about that face of hers, given her prim and practical streak. There was certainly nothing prim about those soft, generous lips, and nothing practical about those incredibly long, curly lashes that lay like lush crescents against her cheeks. He had no idea what color her hair or eyes were, but her cheekbones were delicately molded, her ivory skin almost translucent. In contrast to all her other features that seemed to exemplify fragile femininity, there was a firmness to that small chin of hers that hinted of willfulness. No, Stephen corrected himself, it more likely hinted of courage. She hadn’t wept with pain or fear; she’d said she hated being afraid, which implied she preferred to fight that debilitating emotion, rather than succumb to it.
She undoubtedly had courage, he decided, and kindness as well—enough to try to apologize for worrying him. Courage and gentleness, a remarkable combination in any woman, but particularly in one so young.
And so vulnerable, he realized with a fresh surge of panic as her chest rose and fell in fitful little gasps. Tightening his grip on her hand, he watched her seem to struggle for air while a lump of pure terror swelled in his throat. God! She was dying! “Don’t!” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t die!”
10
Bright sunlight was peeking between the green draperies at the far end of the room when Sheridan opened her eyes again. Her fiancé was seated in a chair beside the bed, still holding her hand, fast asleep. Sometime in the night, he’d removed his coat and neckcloth, opened his collar, and fallen asleep with his arms crossed on the bed and his head resting on them. His face was toward her, and Sheridan cautiously turned her head on the pillow, breathing a sigh of relief when the slight movement didn’t unleash the hammers in her brain.
In the peaceful daze that comes after a deep sleep, she idly studied the man to whom she was betrothed. He was tanned, she realized, as if he spent time outdoors, and his thick hair was a rich dark brown, beautifully trimmed to lie flat at the sides and to barely touch the collar of his shirt. At the moment, his hair was rumpled from sleep and there was something endearingly boyish about that and the way his spiky black lashes lay against his face. There was nothing boyish about the rest of him, however, and she felt a mixture of fascination and an inexplicable uneasiness at the discovery. The shadowy beginnings of a dark beard had appeared on a square jaw that was hard and resolute even in slumber. His straight, dark brows were drawn together into a scowl that boded ill for someone in his dreams. The fine white fabric of his shirt was stretched taut over powerful shoulders and muscular arms. Crisp, dark hair peeked from the deep vee of his open collar and lightly covered his forearms. He was all rugged angles and sharp planes, from his finely carved nose to his chiselled jaw and long fingers. He looked stern and uncompromising, she decided.
And handsome.
Dear God, he was so handsome!
Reluctantly, she lifted her gaze from his face and, for the first time, she looked at her surrou
Her attention drifted back to the dark head resting near her hip, and she felt her spirits lift a little. She was obviously very fortunate, because her betrothed was not only startlingly handsome, but he was obviously extremely wealthy too. Moreover, he’d stayed with her all night, sleeping in that dreadfully uncomfortable position and never letting go of her hand; therefore, he must be very much in love with her.
He had obviously courted her and asked her to marry him. She closed her eyes tightly, searching for any recollection of him or of her past, but there was nothing except a black void. No woman could possibly forget being courted and loved by a man like this; it just wasn’t possible. She’d remember it all in a minute, she told herself fiercely, fighting back a surge of panic so strong it made her feel nauseated. In her mind, she said things to herself that he must have said to her: “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, Miss . . . ?” Miss who? Miss WHO?
“Stay calm!” Sheridan warned herself desperately. “Concentrate on other things . . . sweet things he must have said.” Unaware that she was breathing faster and clutching his hand so hard that her nails were digging into it, she tried to think, to remember some of their times together. He would have treated her in a courtly manner as befitted a proper suitor. He’d have brought her flowers and told her that she was clever and charming and beautiful. She’d have to be all those things in order to have captured the heart of such a supremely eligible suitor. . . .