Fall from Trace

by Rebecca Connolly

  “Don’t die again, Alex,” she whispered harshly. “I’ve not healed from the first time yet.”

  Alex said nothing, but his chest moved unsteadily on yet another wheeze.

  “Please,” Poppy added in a low voice, folding her arms on the bed and laying her head on them. “Please, don’t die.”

  Chapter Four

  He was comfortable.

  Such a realization shouldn’t have terrified him, but Alex hadn’t been comfortable in four and a half years.

  Why was he comfortable now?

  He forced his left hand to move, but that made the fabric over his right ribs move, which seemed fairly odd for a left hand. His right hand moved, and he gripped at some fabric, then pressed the hand down.

  A mattress? Why was he on a mattress?

  He tried to lift his head, but that only made it pound harder than it already was, and he felt faintly nauseated at the sensation. Having his head remain still allowed him time to realize that his head was on a pillow, if not two.

  Pillows and a mattress? Either Battier was growing soft, or…

  Images suddenly poured into his mind, and his breath caught at them. Barreling through the night on borrowed horses, riding as inconspicuously as he could through the day, nearly collapsing onto the third horse’s back as they rode on, only faintly aware of the direction they were going, in and out of consciousness the entire time…

  And then…

  He forced his eyes to open, then moaned when they did so and squeezed them shut again, the room being entirely too bright for his eyes and head to tolerate.

  “Sorry, is it too bright in here? I didn’t expect you to wake in the middle of the day, or I’d have closed them.”

  Though his chest did not feel as tight as it had only days ago, it suddenly was as though a crushing weight were upon him, compressing both lungs and his heart, making thought, breath, and anything else impossible.

  Poppy.

  Vaguely he recalled stumbling along the grounds of Parkerton, hardly glancing at his own property and moving straight on towards Whitesdown only to find the house completely dark and without any sign of life.

  Then he’d seen the farmhouse, unoccupied for the entire time he’d lived at the lodge, but now alight and gleaming in the distance. He and Poppy had always joked that they would live there if worse came to worst, and something drove him to that light, that memory.

  Part of him hadn’t expected her to open the door when he’d banged on it, and yet she had.

  Or at least, he thought she had.

  Barely conscious when he’d arrived, and clearly less than that since then, things were a bit hazy now.

  He heard a motion off to his left, and he forced his eyes opened again. “Wha… Where…?”

  “Shh,” Poppy said as she suddenly came into view, her hair just as gloriously vibrant as it had ever been, a small smile on her lips. “You’re still feverish. Don’t strain yourself.”

  Alex stared at her for a long moment, taking in everything he was sure he had seen when he’d arrived but perhaps not fully appreciated at the time.

  Poppy was still as beautiful as she had been when he’d left, as lovely as in his memories. Her eyes were just as blue, an almost startling shade of it, though there were a few lines from the corners now. Her hair was simply braided and pinned, and at the moment seemed somewhat disheveled. Her clothing was not as fine, and in fact, looked rather worn.

  Almost everything about her was different from the Poppy Edgewood he had known.

  Almost.

  So many questions swirled in his mind. Why was she here on the farm? What had happened to her since he’d been gone? How long had he been here? How long had she been here? What had she thought when he’d suddenly appeared?

  Was she married?

  He’d never considered the possibility before, but seeing her here suddenly brought that question to his mind.

  Lord above, had he stumbled upon her family’s home in this state?

  Poppy stared back at him, raising a brow as she clasped her hands before her. “Staring, Alex?”

  He shook his head, then winced at the motion and groaned.

  “Sorry about that,” he murmured, his voice more of a croak and his words slurring. He scrunched his eyes up hard, then opened them again to look around the room. “Sorry to be here.”

  “It is rather a trial having a guest who doesn’t offer to help with chores, that’s true,” Poppy was saying, though he wasn’t paying her much attention.

  The bedchamber was small, but neat and tidy, a window off to his left gave him a perfect view of the barn. The door to the bedchamber was open, leaving him a view of the rest of the cottage, and it was equally neat and tidy, but small and cramped. It was everything he had ever anticipated the cottage to look like, and the thought had never bothered him before.

  Now that he saw Poppy within its walls, he hated every square inch of it.

  He’d brought her to this, he knew. Somehow, in some way, this was his fault. He was to blame. How could he think to come here after all this time? He was dead to her, and dead to the world, and he ought to have stayed dead.

  He ought to have actually been dead.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” he muttered, shifting restlessly and gripping the bedcovers, ready to fling them off.

  “I wouldn’t attempt to get up just now,” Poppy said in a wry tone he once knew too well. “You’ll find you’re indecent.”

  He froze, his hands gripping the bedcovers, and slowly turned to look at Poppy, who had folded her arms and looked the slightest bit amused.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Now she smiled in earnest. “Oh, there’s his coherent speech. I was wondering if you were worse than I thought.”

  Alex growled in irritation. “Poppy…”

  “Alex,” she retorted, just as she always had done.

  He glared at her as darkly as he could manage, though his head pained with it, and waited.

  Poppy withstood for only a moment, and then rolled her eyes. “For pity’s sake, Alex. You showed up on my threshold after all this time, and then dropped as though you were dead…”

  “After you hit me,” he remembered, his eyes widening and his right hand going to his face.

  “Oh, please,” Poppy protested with a snort. “I hit you all the time and you never so much as felt it.”

  He smiled a little. “Yes, I did.”

  Her eyes went wide, and she gaped a little.

  “You what?”

  Now he managed to laugh, though it made his chest ache with deep, racking pains.

  “I always felt it when you hit me. You hit hard. It’s just that I was very good at playacting, and you believed me.”

  Poppy seemed to sway a little where she stood, blinking awkwardly. Then she shook herself and put on a polite smile once more.

  “Well, regardless, I didn’t hit you so hard as to render you unconscious. Since I am not an unfeeling woman or hostess, my servant and I took you in and tended to you.”

  “You tended…” Alex tried to sit up and groaned loudly with the effort, everything in his body suddenly roaring with indignation. “It was not your duty to…” he panted, his breath hissing through his teeth.

  “Stop trying to do things,” Poppy insisted, coming to his side, placing her hand on his brow. “You will spike your fever, if it isn’t already on its way up.”

  Alex grabbed at her hand, flinging it away, though he suddenly seemed to feel the heat billowing up within him. “Then… why not… render me more decent… afterwards?”

  Poppy smiled and replaced her hand on his brow. “Security measures, to be sure. Keeps you abed where you need be, as well as more convenience in seeing to your wounds.”

  “How can you…?” Alex tried, hesitating amidst the mixture of delight and pain her touch gave him. “How can you bear to touch me? To be kind to me? I should be…”

  “Dead,” Poppy quipped, her lips curving a little. “Yes. Quite a su
rprise.”

  “Then let me go…” he trailed off, coughing roughly. “You… deserve…”

  Poppy shook her head at him and picked up a wet rag, somehow still smiling. “Well, I can’t very well rage at a man so ill, no matter how much he deserves it.” She pressed the cool rag to his throat, and he sighed at the contact. “Don’t worry, I’ll rage at you in all fury when you’re not in danger of dying again.” Her smile trembled just a touch, and her eyes met his. “I thought we’d lost you last night, let alone the night before when you arrived.”

  “Two days?” Alex cried, jerking away from her. “I’ve been laid up in this bed for two bloody days?”

  “Hush!” she scolded, pressing him back into position. “You’re slurring again, Alexander Sommerville, and it doesn’t suit. And if you upset those bandages just when we’ve gotten you to stop bleeding, I will give you such a scolding…”

  He could barely think straight, couldn’t make sense of her words. They’d… bandaged him? He stretched a little, testing the matter, and found linen tightly binding his chest and abdomen.

  “Poppy,” he slurred, his eyes closing, drowsy with his fever, his shoulder aching in time with his head. “My… wounds…”

  “Oh, yes,” she said in a too-light tone. “I’ve seen them. Well, most of them, I’d wager. Stanton took care of the indecent aspect.”

  Alex frowned, groaning again. “Good of him… to protect you…”

  He felt Poppy’s hand curve around the back of his head, lifting him up a little. “Come on, Alex. Before you drift off, let’s have you take a sip of this.”

  “What is it?” he asked, his words nearly lost in the jumble.

  But Poppy understood, it seemed, for her response came. “Willow bark tea. For the pain, and to get something in you so you won’t waste away. If you drink it all, I’ll give you broth the next time you’re awake.”

  That hardly seemed much of an inducement, but he supposed it was designed to be one. He felt himself nod and drank the tea, the warm liquid relaxing him considerably.

  “Excellent,” Poppy praised, her voice doing far more for his ease and comfort than the tea could have.

  He let himself sink into the mattress and pillows, sighing heavily.

  Poppy worked in silence, pressing cool compresses against his skin over and over again, wiping his brow and face and throat with them. Each touch seemed to sizzle as though his body were on fire, and only the brush of the cool cloth could dampen the heat.

  But rather than comfort him, it was a painful experience.

  In more ways than one.

  Had he even a small amount of strength left, he would have been up from this bed, indecent or not, and doing something. Anything, really, at this point. The moment he’d been free, he’d known he would go to Poppy. He would go home, or whatever remained of it, but he could honestly say that he hadn’t thought too far beyond those grand ideals.

  Now he was here, and he could see what a fool’s errand it was.

  Oh, he should have done so, to be sure, but to just drop himself on her doorstep after all this time, and in the condition he was in?

  Not that Alex had had any say in the condition that he’d been in, and he didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go that wouldn’t have some significant implications on a rather grand scale, but it was worth stating.

  He’d been through hell and back again, and he would have given anything to keep his wounds and his scars a secret from Poppy, and from anyone else. No one needed to know what he’d endured, and there was no explaining it.

  There were not even words for it.

  A shudder ran through him as dark memories assailed his mind and conscience. Moments he had cried out in sheer agony though no wound had been inflicted, moments he had kept silent when the pain was too great, and moment after moment where his will had been tested to its fullest extent, and still it did not break. The moments where the haunting laughter ringing in his ears was all he could hear as his skin was scorched, stabbed, or beaten, and sometimes all three at once. The hours of hanging suspended in his hold, his arms numb but for faint throbbing where they attached to his body, every breath more difficult to take in.

  “Easy, Alex,” Poppy murmured, her voice breaking through the fog of his memories.

  He turned towards the sound, eyes still closed, breath hitching yet again.

  How often had her voice come to him in those dark moments? How many times had she saved him from crying out? Or her face been all that his eyes saw when the truth could not be borne?

  “Fever’s up again, is it?” a somehow familiar male voice interjected.

  “So it seems,” Poppy replied with a sigh that told Alex her light manner with him was not as she truly felt. “He did wake, though. And talk.”

  “That’s good. Now if only he’d be awake long enough to take real sustenance. He seems to be wasting away in that bed.”

  Alex rather felt as though he was wasting away, actually, and having experienced it before, he was quite familiar with the feeling.

  “He’s not wasting away,” Poppy scolded in a tone that Alex was all-too familiar with. “He’s only weak, and he is getting better.”

  “Is he, indeed?” came the dubious response. “I see no great difference.”

  Poppy sputtered loudly and wrung out a fresh rag of cool water on Alex’s head, sending the droplets streaming down his face and neck. “That is because you have not sat beside him all day and all night, Stanton. If you had, you would see a very great change.”

  “All day,” Stanton repeated, his tone disbelieving. “Have you really, madam? I don’t think that was necessary.”

  Alex felt the same way, wondering why in the world she thought he needed to be tended at all hours, and why she thought she ought to be the one to do it.

  “It was necessary, or I would not have done it,” Poppy snapped.

  Back down, man, Alex thought through the vague feeling of listlessness he currently endured. That tone is dangerous.

  “Of course, Miss Edgewood.”

  Good man.

  “I think I may have to give him a shave in the next day or two.”

  If Alex could have sprung from his bed, he would have done so to protest that.

  “For God’s sake, Poppy, do not get near him with a blade at any time. I will shave him, if he needs to be shaved, but I’d rather get scratches like his myself before I’d allow you to wield a razor.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Poppy protested with a laugh, and Alex would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could have managed it.

  There was silence once more, and then Poppy set a cold compress on his brow.

  “Did you see to the harvest?” Poppy asked of Stanton, her voice lower still, though she undoubtedly thought he was unconscious or asleep.

  Harvest? Yes, he supposed it was that time of year, but the idea of Poppy having to concern herself with a harvest was bewildering.

  Boards creaked as though a heavy weight had shifted. “I secured four men to come harvest with us, yes. They will come in three days, and we should be able to take in a great deal with that help. Possibly the entire lower field in two days.”

  “And how much is that help going to cost?”

  Alex did not like how tight her voice was, how strained she sounded. Were they in dire financial straits? Was the farm not profitable? Were things worse than they appeared?

  “No more than any other year,” Stanton assured her. “And you said it yourself, we have more than expected this year.”

  Poppy sighed heavily. “Remind me, Stanton, why I decided to settle on a farm.”

  “Because you were abandoned by your family, and you refused to leave Cheshire and Moulton.”

  She was… what?

  Alex cursed the fever that was rampant within him for it muddled his thoughts and made his head rage further still.

  Poppy had been abandoned here? That wasn’t too far-fetched, actually. Her family had always disapproved of him, and if she ha
d shown any particular devotion to Alex after his death, they would have been upset by it.

  But the second part… She had refused to leave Cheshire and Moulton? He was afraid to consider the implications of that, or the reasons for it. What reason could she possibly have had to stay if her family were gone? He was dead to her, and surely, she would…

  Surely, she would…

  “Shall we check his wounds again?” Stanton asked, coming over to Alex’s other side. “If his fever has come again, the wounds might need attention.”

  “I suppose we should. He’s not sensible at the moment, so he won’t mind.”

  Well, he was not quite insensible, just a trifle ill and weak from being so. He tried to tell them both that, but it seemed words were beyond him.

  Not that he would have any say in the matter, as it appeared, as the bandages around his chest and stomach suddenly became loose.

  No, he tried to protest. No, don’t…

  Poppy couldn’t see his scars. She couldn’t be witness to what he had endured.

  Stanton could, or any other objective person, he didn’t care.

  But not Poppy.

  Not her.

  The wrapping came away completely, and Alex felt as raw and exposed as he ever had aboard the Amelie Claire, though not quite so in danger.

  But vulnerability was a danger for him, no matter at whose hand.

  There was far too much to protect, and far too much to hide.

  Layer by layer, the bandages on his front were removed, and he could hear Stanton and Poppy talking over him about what was being revealed, though the details were now lost on him. He was finally too far gone to hear them, though he could still feel every brush of cloth against his skin. He could feel the new bandages being placed, the agonizing sting of alcohol against the wounds, apparently still somehow open enough to pain him.

  Rough hands sat him up, and Alex groaned at the movement, his head weak and heavier than it ought to have been.

  He knew this state, and he knew it well.

  Soon, he wouldn’t feel anything at all, let alone the burning that was now on his back.

  And when the fever broke once more, and he regained some strength, he would still be in this bed, not in his hold. He would be tended by people who cared about and for him, not by his tormenters.