“You are not willing to try?” Patrick looked at every pair of eyes in the room, but he already knew the answer.
“Absolutely not.”
“She will die if you do not help her,” he said, disgusted with the lot of them. “How could you stand there and sentence your daughter to death, Bedford? How?”
Linley’s father grew very still and very calm. “Because she will die either way.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“If we leave with her, she will die in the wilderness,” Sir Bedford explained. “I have seen what happens to dead things left out in the heat and the elements, and I do not in a million lifetimes wish to see my only child rot before my eyes.” He took a few breaths, bracing himself. “At least here she can die peacefully in a safe, warm bed. And she can be given a proper funeral.”
Patrick felt sick to his stomach. He gripped the back of the stiff wooden chair to keep from reeling. The mental image of Linley festering in the forest was too much for him.
But so was the thought of living without her.
“Do you understand now, Lord Kyre? My daughter has suffered enough already. I will not risk hurting her any more.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice too weak to be his own. He swallowed down the tightness in the back of his throat. “I understand.”
Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin and the rest of his team shuffled through the curtained doorway. Their movements were slow, tired. Beaten. Linley’s illness took its toll on all of them, it seemed. And why shouldn’t it? The others knew her much longer than Patrick had. They were like a family. Patrick remembered what death had been like in his family. How it killed them all, little by little.
Of course the Talbot-Martin team was devastated.
Alone in the room, Patrick took a seat on the wooden chair at Linley’s bedside. He watched her chest rise and fall beneath the blanket. He did this just as he did the night before. And the night before that.
And the night before that.
She barely moved. Sometimes her eyes opened, but she stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing. Saying nothing. Hearing nothing.
Patrick reached for a basin and a cloth, dabbing the cool water across Linley’s forehead. He smoothed back a tangle of brown hair from her face. She was almost too hot to touch. He pressed the water to her lips, cracked and drawn across her teeth.
How desperately he longed to kiss her.
But he didn’t. Patrick placed the basin and the cloth down onto the floor. He settled in for the six long hours of his watch. It was agony wondering if each breath she took was her last.
Patrick had been too young to remember his mother’s death, but he remembered Johnnie’s. Remembered hearing his school chums whispering about it. Remembered reading about it in the papers years after the accident.
If only he’d gone swimming with his brother that evening, Johnnie would still be alive and everything would be the way it should have been all along.
Linley stirred, drawing Patrick’s attention down to the narrow cot. Her eyelids fluttered open and she rolled her eyes around in her head. They seemed to move with no definite purpose, bouncing from object to object, wall to wall like a runaway squash ball.
Suddenly, they fixed themselves on the man in the chair at her side.
Did she see him? Did she recognize him? Patrick was not sure.
Her lips parted as if to speak, and she lifted her arm just high enough off the blanket to point a trembling finger. At first, Patrick thought she gestured at him, but then he realized she wanted something else. Something in the corner behind him.
Her pack.
Patrick spun around in the chair and picked up the worn leather bag. He tried to hand it to her, to place it beside her on the cot. She was too weak to speak. Too weak to tell him what she wanted. But it was clear she wanted something, and that something was inside her pack.
He unlatched the flaps and looked inside. He saw nothing out of the ordinary—socks, underclothes, traveling papers, sanitary towels. He dug through the rest of the bag, finding nothing interesting at all. What could she possibly want? He looked down at the stack of traveling papers in his hand. Patrick pulled them out, asking if they were what she needed.
But Linley’s eyes were closed. She’d slipped back into her own little world.
For curiousity’s sake, Patrick untied the twine holding her traveling papers together. He leafed through them, one by one, until something caught his eye. It was a photograph clipped from a magazine. And it was of him.
How on earth did she get it? Patrick remembered sitting for the photograph a year or so before. It must have come out in one of the papers—Country Life, or The Bystander, or another one of those society magazines. He hardly ever read them, but Georgiana told him he was mentioned often.
He held it between his thumb and index finger, noting there was not a crease, not a wrinkle, not even a torn edge of the flimsy paper image. Linley obviously took great care with it. Treasured it, even. She had carried him with her halfway around the world. Always within reach. He might as well have been tucked in her skirt pocket.
Patrick knew women kept photographs of men they fancied—exactly the same way men kept photographs of beautiful ladies. Back at Kyre, he had a few Gladys Cooper postcards hidden in the drawers of his night table. But, never in his life had he imagined someone kept photographs of him.
What did it mean?
The photograph was exactly what Linley wanted him to see. No question about that. Perhaps she wanted him to know how she felt—after all, she did believe she was on her deathbed. People usually confessed that sort of thing, Patrick guessed. He slipped the image of himself back the between the sheets of her traveling documents and retied the twine. Closing the latches on her leather pack, he sat it in the corner just the way he found it.
But then he stopped.
How could he sit there and accept Linley’s death? Watch her die without so much as lifting a finger to help her? She deserved a chance to live, and with everything they’d been through, Patrick knew he owed her that much.
He picked her pack back up and slung it over his shoulder. He’d lost his mother, his brother, and his father. He had not been able to save them. And he might not be able to save Linley, either. But, by God, he was certainly going to try.
Patrick shoved as many of Linley’s things into the leather bag as quickly as he could. She would need her boots, her clean clothes, and her rain slicker. He would not have time to gather his belongings if they expected to make it out of the monastery without being noticed. They couldn’t afford to draw attention to themselves. It would be hard enough dragging her outside without anyone seeing them.
He reached down and scooped Linley’s limp body into his arms. She weighed next to nothing. Patrick doubted either of them would survive the journey—one inept, and the other incapacitated. He had no idea how to survive in the wilderness, even if he set out adequately prepared. They were leaving with little more than the clothes they wore. The cards were stacked against them, Patrick knew, but for once in his life, he was not going to sit back and accept his fate. If he died out there, he would go down kicking.
“Going somewhere?”
At the sound of the voice, Patrick jumped. He spun around to see Schoville blocking the door.
The man took three slow steps into the room, his eyes never leaving Patrick’s. “I had a feeling you would pull something like this.”
Clutching Linley against his chest, Patrick squared his shoulders.
“Only, I had no idea you’d be this reckless,” Schoville continued. “Do you really expect to just pick her up and walk out of here? Trot out into the forest without so much as a tent or a canteen?”
“She deserves a chance to live.”
“Walking out of here would be suicide for you both.”
Patrick ground his heels into the floor, refusing to budge not one inch. “I don’t care. I’m taking her.”
“Good,” Schoville said. “Because if you weren’
t, I was.”
“What?”
“I don’t agree with Bedford any more than you do,” the man explained. “Which is why I am going to help you. God knows you’ll need it, from the looks of you.”
“You…you’re going to help?”
“That’s right. But understand that I’m not doing this because I like you. I am not on your side. I’m on Linley’s.”
Patrick nodded.
“Put her down,” Schoville said, gesturing to the narrow cot. “We cannot leave tonight. We need time to prepare—gather food, fresh water. You’re chummy with the lama. Do you think he might help us? Donate a little something to our cause?”
“I can ask.” He laid Linley on her bed and brushed a long strand of dry, broken hair from across her forehead.
“Then do it. Do everything you can. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at midnight. Be packed and ready to run.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“My friend is dying,” Patrick said. “She will not last much longer.”
The lama sat cross-legged before him, hands folded between the swaths of red and yellow robe draped around his shoulders and pooling on the floor. As Patrick spoke, the man tilted his head to one side and then to the other, listening.
“I am afraid.”
“You not stranger to death, to loss,” the lama said. “Why so different now?”
Patrick swallowed. “I do not want her to die.”
“But she will die. Someday, everybody die.”
“I don’t want her to die now.”
The lama shifted on his cushion. “That not your decision.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Patrick said.
“You should not try to stop what you cannot control,” the man explained. “Death beyond your control. You must accept. And you must help her accept it.” He unfolded his hands and placed them on his knees, and then leaned closer to Patrick. “Let her die peacefully. Death is not to be feared.”
But death was to be feared. Patrick had feared it all his life. He knew all to well what it could do to a home, to a family, to everything he held dear. It would take, and take, and take, and leave nothing left for him. Death had taken his mother, his brother, his father, and now it would take Linley, too.
He wanted to scream. To shout. To hold her close and say ‘No, not this one!’ He wanted to smear blood over the door of his heart and tell God to pass over. To spare her.
To spare him.
Please God, let her live. It was what Patrick prayed every night. Please God, just let her live. She must live, because Patrick was not sure he could live without her.
The lama sat back, watching him. “Do you remember what I told you was Purpose of Life?”
“To be happy.”
He nodded. “Yes, to be happy. But what make you happy?”
“Right now I will just be happy if she lives.”
Again, the man nodded. “Strange how things once important to us change. Money not important now, but before you thought it might make you happier. Power not important now. Neither are possessions. I ask you the question before, but you could not answer. Yet now, I ask you the question and the answer so simple to you.” He pressed his palms together and held his hands to his lips, as if thinking of the best way to say what must come next. “Maybe your friend die so that you learn to appreciate life, seeing how you did not before.”
Patrick balked. “You are telling me that the purpose of her life was to help show me the purpose of mine?”
“Everything must play its part,” the old lama said. “From you and me, all way down to lowly insect.”
“Then what is my part?” Patrick asked. “Couldn’t the purpose of my life be to save my friend?”
The lama thought for a moment. “It may be so,” he said. “But what you willing to give up to save her? Your home? Your family?”
“Yes, all of that.”
“If you save her, but never see her again, would you still do it?” he asked. “Would you die for her?
Patrick looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“Then I will help you.”
***
Patrick’s heart raced. More than once he though it was a trick, an ambush. That at midnight, not only Schoville would walk through that curtain, but Archie and Reginald as well.
Thank God he found a pistol in the bottom of Linley’s bag. He shoved it into the waistband of his trousers and took a seat by her bedside.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Was it only one man? Two? Three? More? Had the entire monastery conspired against him, and did they come now to capture him, like a stupid moth tangled in a spider’s web?
His hands shook. The footsteps drew closer. Patrick swallowed, his throat tight and dry. He grazed his fingertips across the grip of the gun, feeling the damp space between it and the fabric of his shirt.
The curtain at the door swept aside. Patrick pulled the gun out just as a figure stepped into the room.
Schoville blinked, face to face with the business end of a .455 Webley. “Who do you think you are, bloody Hopalong Cassidy?”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get Linley out of here,” Patrick said. “I’d shoot anyone who tried to stop me.”
“The next time you point that thing, you’d better mean to use it. You could get us all killed waving a gun around.”
Patrick stood up and shoved the gun back into his trousers.
Shaking his head, Schoville pointed at the two leather satchels on the floor beside the cot. “Do you have everything?”
“I’ve got her things and mine.” He lifted the bags up and slipped them over his shoulders. “There’s a stretcher outside by the steps, as well as a few days provisions.”
“Good. I have the tent.”
Patrick took a deep breath. “We are ready, then.” He lifted Linley up, blanket and all, glad he had the foresight to dress her in warm, sturdy clothes while they waited for Schoville.
It would be a long journey.
***
The moon shone bright and clear, lighting the way without the need for lamps. There was not even a cloud in the sky. The good Lord was on their side, it seemed. Patrick held the front end of the makeshift wooden stretcher while Schoville held the rear. The load was cumbersome, despite Linley’s emaciated state.
“I’m going to lose my place because of this,” Schoville said, taking one last look at the monastery in the moonlight. “Not to mention going to prison for kidnapping.”
“How long does one get for kidnapping?” Patrick asked.
They tottered down the stone steps carved into the side of the mountain, careful not to tip or bounce the stretcher and lose their precious cargo.
“Doubt you’ll have to worry about that,” Schoville said. “They’ll go easy on you, being a marquess and all. Probably won’t even have your name in the papers. They’ll say I did it singlehandedly…or they’ll probably say I kidnapped you, too.”
“Sod off! I can’t help who I am anymore than you can.”
The men walked on in silence. Only the sound of the waterfall, and an occasional groan from Linley broke the sound of their footfalls in the valley. It was cold and, despite the strenuous work making his way down the mountain, Patrick shivered.
Linley must be cold as well.
“Stop,” Patrick said. “Put her down.”
Schoville did as he asked.
“We should cover her,” Patrick explained. “I brought a canvas sheet just for that purpose.” He sat the stretcher down and pulled one of the leather packs around his arm. Digging through the bag, he found the sheet of canvas and placed it across the length of the stretcher. “Now give me your belt.”
“Why?”
“I want to tie her in.”
Schoville unbuckled his belt, slipped the leather from between the loops of his trousers, and handed it over. Patrick took his own belt and, after combining them together, fastened them around the stretcher and canvas blanket. Linley looked stra
pped in and secure.
“Good idea,” Schoville said, surveying Patrick’s handiwork. “Now we won’t have to worry should she start thrashing.”
With a nod, Patrick picked up his end of the stretcher, and they started down the mountain again.
***
By midday, Patrick noticed there was far more mountain above than sky below. So far, they made good time.
But their good fortune would not continue. The hard rain set in a few hours before nightfall. The steps grew slick with rainwater, making anything faster than a tip-toe too dangerous. Rushing would be no good to anyone, should it send the three of them over the side of the mountain.
“We should stop,” Patrick said. “I can hardly see in front of me.”
“I thought we were pushing on.” Schoville noticed the worried look on Patrick’s face. “I don’t think we have much farther to go. Even taking the weather into account, we’re still traveling faster downhill than we did coming up. If we make good use of the daylight left, I think we can make it to the bottom before dark.”
Without another word, they resumed their slow crawl down into the valley. The rain beat Patrick’s head and stung his face. He felt as if he were ripping down the country road through Kyre—the one that led to the gates of Wolford Abbey—in a hailstorm with no windscreen and nothing on but motoring goggles.
Schoville felt his own feet dragging. “Not much further now,” he said, giving all the encouragement he could muster. “I think I see treetops.”
“Bloody hell, you do,” Patrick spat back. “You’ve been saying that for the past hour.”
“I mean it this time. Look.”
Patrick opened his eyes as wide as he could against the rain. He could see trees—or shadows that looked somewhat like trees. Or what trees would look like if they’d been painted by Picasso.
But they were trees. Valley floor trees! Soon he and Schoville would be off that wretched mountain and back onto safe, flat ground.
A Love That Never Tires (Linley & Patrick Book 1) Page 29
