by Kresley Cole
The hospital entrance was guarded, though only by two soldiers—but then, no one was expected to want in, and no one was expected to be able to exit. Ethan barely slowed to meet the guards head-on. He lunged in between them, swinging punches wildly, knocking them both out.
The inside of the hospital was a den of chaos, with useless smoke and incense oozing thickly throughout. The space teemed with patients; hysterical screams shrilled; huddled figures wept everywhere he turned.
He found a harried nun behind a desk that was filled with scattered papers and bags of tagged personal belongings. "I'm lookin' for my wife," Ethan quickly said. "Madeleine MacCarrick."
"How did you get in?" she asked, eyeing his unshaven, scarred face with suspicion. She had marked circles around her eyes and sweat beading her brow and above her upper lip.Already infected. He swung his gaze around—most of the nuns were.
"Special diplomatic dispensation," he somehow thought to say. He would have to get Maddy out of France tonight—or they could be pursued after he'd assaulted the guards and then stolen her from here.
The nun frowned at his answer, but she did drag a weighty, leather-bound ledger across her desk. After scanning some pages, she said, "There's no one here by that name."
"Maddy, then," Ethan snapped, but she still shook her head. "Last name of Van Rowen."
The nun scanned her ledger once more, then gazed up, her face pale. Ethan began to shake.
"Tell me where she is," Ethan demanded, his tone low. When she hesitated, he just stopped himself from reaching across the desk and throttling her.
"I'm sorry,monsieur . You're too late."
Forty-four
Ethan swallowed, unable to speak. Finally, he choked out, "She is no'…there's been a mistake…."
Over the roaring in his ears, he dimly perceived her saying, "She was given last rites at sunrise and not expected to make it past the morning."
Ethan must have appeared as crazed as he felt, because the woman cowered. "Then she's not…?" Ethan couldn't say the word.
"She's in thedernière chambre ." Her gaze flickered in the direction of a darkened back ward. "But,monsieur , once they go in—"
Ethan was already loping for the room. Inside, he swung his head back and forth. So many goddamned beds in this squalid, chill room. Children screamed in terror over the deaths of their parents, showing signs of illness themselves. The idea of his Maddy in here alone…
No, he couldn't think like that….Need to focus…stay clear, think .
He began bellowing her name, stopping at beds and drawing sheets back from covered bodies, greeted by one macabre expression after another—sunken faces, glaring dark circles like bruises radiating out from the glazed eyes.
Ethan spied a small figure under a sheet in a corner cot—curled into a tight ball.Maddy? They wouldn't cover her face unless…So help him God, she couldn't have died, alone here, in that goddamned position.
But she could have; how many blows could she defend against?
As he ran, she grew indistinct until he swiped his sleeve over his face. He kept wiping his eyes, and they kept blurring. At the bed, he swallowed, then drew back the sheet.
He fell to his knees."Ah, God, Maddy." Her lips and face were white but for the shadows around her closed eyes.
She lay motionless.She can't be…
He buried his face against her neck.She's warm. He felt her wrist—and didn't breathe until he found her pulse."Aingeal , wake up." He pulled her to his chest, but her body was limp.
Blood was stark on the sheet and the back of her gown.
Maddy had been oddly sentient since she'd fallen sick. She'd been aware of everything that had happened to her, never finding oblivion in the fever that had wracked her for hour after hour.
She knew Bea had died, and the grief was overwhelming. Again and again, Maddy saw her friend's once beautiful visage frozen in a grimace of pain.
She knew Corrine had fought to keep the soldiers from taking Maddy when she'd grown ill. Recalling Corrine's screams and fierce struggles, Maddy feared Corrine had been injured or arrested.
And Maddy knew that no matter what had happened, she missed Ethan desperately.
As if her thoughts conjured him, she dreamed he was here for her now. After being lucid for so long, Maddy wondered that she now imagined he knelt beside her. In dreams, she felt him rub his unshaven face against her neck, felt startling wetness from his eyes. The backs of his fingers glanced over her forehead.
He felt so real, she squinted open her eyes, but even the dim light hurt. She was hallucinating anyway, because surely Ethan could not be in this dank cholera ward. "Dream?" she whispered.
"No, Maddy"—his voice broke—"I'm here with you."
Oh, God, itwas Ethan, though he looked altered. His face was haggard, his eyes burning with some emotion she'd never seen in him before.
He couldn't truly have followed her intothis place? Especially when she was already dying? He would have to know better. She gasped in air. "You have…to leave—"
"No' without you. I'm takin' you from here tonight."
"Go…please. They'llshoot you. You can't…come here again."
"Understand me," he said in a low, seething tone, "I'm still your husband, and if I can die to save you from this, then that's my goddamned right!"
Definitely not a dream…Her rough-around-the-
edges Scot was behaving like a hero and still cursing like a sailor. "But, Ethan, I'm dy—"
"You will no' die!" He reached for her, clutching her nape. "You hold on!"
She whispered, "I think…it's too late."
He grasped her chin, forcing her to face him. He was pale and staring at her with a crazed expression. "It's no'! Damn you, Maddy MacCarrick, we're goin' tae be together. Believe me." His eyes were wet, his lashes spiking. "Lass, I could no' love you this much for nothing."
A tear slipped down her cheek, and he brushed it away. She felt the smallest tinge of hope.
"Hold on, for me." Two arms slipped beneath her, gingerly lifting. But where did Ethan think he could take her? "Just stay with me, Maddy girl." She felt warmth enveloped in his scent as he wrapped his coat around her. In the cocoon of his arms, the constant screams finally dimmed, the cries dulled.
As Ethan carried her, hastening his long strides, Maddy heard one of the nuns cry, "You cannot take a contagious patient past the perimeter!"
We made it to the perimeter?She squinted her eyes open again and found them at a doorway, so close to being outside in the night—
"You might kill her by moving her!" another said.
But if Ethan thought he could get her free, then Maddy wanted to leave this place. How fervently she wished not to die here—not to be burned on a pile of bodies.
"Step aside," Ethan said. As if in a daze, she saw him draw a pistol and cock it. "I'll kill anyone who gets in my way. And I'll do it gladly."
Then…she was kissed by the coolness of the night air.
"We're goin' home, lass," he murmured down to her. "I'm takin' you home."
As soon as Ethan carried her across the threshold of that hell, blackness beckoned and she promptly passed out.
Forty-five
As Ethan ran a damp cloth over Maddy's body, he could hear Fiona speaking in low tones with the doctors in the next room.
Two days had passed since Ethan had brought Madeleine here. Ethan had told Quin to make sure his house in Grosvenor was empty by the time he was due to return, but Fiona had refused to go, browbeating Quin into telling all. Then she'd set about assembling an army of physicians in London for a wife that Ethan had "neglected to mention to her."
Even after two days, and all those doctors working, Maddy was still so pale, as if all the blood had left her body. She tossed in restless sleep, her breathing labored. Tonight she burned with fever again.
"I'm going tae get her well," Ethan had declared to the physicians, but he knew what they'd deemed Maddy's chances.
Yet they simply di
dn't knowher as he did. They only saw her size and felt her weak pulse. And after Ethan told them about her possible pregnancy and then of finding blood on the back of her nightgown in the infirmary, they'd informed him that she'd lost the baby and would be further weakened.
Fiona had said, "Doona worry, son, she'll have more bairns once she gets—"
"Do you think I give a damn about that?" he'd snapped.
"But the look on your face when you realized…I just thought…"
His reaction hadn't been from learning that she'd lost the babe; it had been from knowing she'd lost it in that hellhole.
By herself.
Maddy's body had received his seed and had been ready to give them a babe. But his countless lies had driven her away, straight into danger, putting her in this grueling struggle for life.
When he'd first feared that they'd lost their bairn, his mind had whispered,It could be the curse once more….
Yet Ethan knew none of this was about the curse—no matter how easy it would be to assign blame to it. No,his actions had precipitated all this, and he fully accepted all the fault.
Hour after hour, Ethan watched over her, staring at each rise and fall of her chest, willing her to keep fighting…one more breath in…one more breath exhaled….
In between fevered dreams, for what felt like days, she'd heard Ethan speaking to her.
With his voice growing thick, he'd pleaded, "Maddy lass, doona leave me." Other times, he'd threatened her. "You'll never be rid of me," he'd snapped; then, as if he worked to calm his tone, he'd added, "so you'd best…you'd best stay with me."
And he'd railed at her, his voice booming so loud the bed had seemed to shake. "You canna do this—take my goddamned heart and then leave me! You think I will no' follow?"
She knew he was constantly there, was aware of his movements and comprehended his words, but she couldn't seem to open her heavy eyelids or speak.
At night, he would wrap his body around hers, keeping her warm, whispering against her hair, "You enjoy being contrary. Then prove them all wrong and get better." He'd clutched her hip, then balled his fist there. "Ah, lass, they canna understand how strong you are."
Sometimes she heard other voices, doctors, she thought, and occasionally an older woman with a Scottish accent. The woman spoke now: "Ethan, these physicians are doing their best."
"It's no' good enough!" he roared in answer, then cursed the unseen doctors in some of the vilest language Maddy had ever heard. Directly after he kicked them out of the room, a door slammed, and a cool breeze whistled over her from the impact.
Finally, her eyelids didn't feel too heavy to open. She blinked against the light for several moments. She perceived his form standing near the bed and waited as her vision began to focus.
He raked his fingers through his disheveled hair as a pretty red-haired lady frowned up at him.
"She'll wake soon, Ethan. The fever has broken."
"They said thatyesterday . And still she has no'."
"If she did right now," the woman said, "you would scare the poor girl to death. You've no' shaved or changed your clothes in days. And you look half-mad."
"You ken Iam half-mad, well on the verge."
When he began pacing, she said, "You must calm yourself. Your anger with the physicians will no' help your wife"—her gaze flickered over Maddy and away, then returned immediately—"but slamming the door like that just might wake her."
"What do you—?" His shoulders tensed. He rasped, "Are you sayin' she's…?"
"You dinna tell me she has such pretty blue eyes. Look behind you, son."
He whirled around, seeming to loom over the bed. Maddy stared up in shock. His eyes were red and wild, his beard growing. His clothes were wrinkled, his sleeves rolled. He looked as if he wanted to launch himself at her.
The woman said something in Gaelic that made Ethan scowl and his hand shoot up to hisbeard ? He froze, and his brows drew together.
How long had he been with her?
Ethan looked at her with such yearning, but he seemed to force himself to back away from her. "You need tae drink," he suddenly said, dashing to a nearby pitcher. When he poured, Maddy could hear the pitcher clanking against the glass.
The woman raised her eyebrows at Ethan, then told Maddy, "I'm Lady Fiona, your mother-in-law, and I'm verra pleased to be meeting you this morning."
When Ethan returned to the bed with a glass of water, Maddy asked, "Where am I?"
He lifted Maddy's head and helped her drink. "You're in London, in our town house." Maddy couldn't seem to drink it fast enough. "Easy, then," he murmured.
When he took the nearly empty glass away, Maddy asked, "C-Corrine?"
"I could no' find her, but I have men searching in Paris," he said. "Maddy, I doona believe she'd been sick."
Maddy closed her eyes with worry, then quickly opened them, afraid to go to sleep again.
He ran his hand over the back of his neck. "But Bea—"
"No," she whispered. "I know."
Lady Fiona said something in Gaelic, then in English added, "Ethan, why don't you go get cleaned up now while I visit with my new daughter-in-law?"
He hesitated, then the two of them seemed to share a look. Before he turned to the door, Ethan gruffly said to Maddy, "Verra glad you're better, lass." As he trudged from the room, she thought she saw him swiping a sleeve over his eyes.Oh, Ethan.
Once he'd left, Lady Fiona said, "He's been worried about you, to say the least." She sat on the edge of the bed. "Now, I know you must have many questions…."
"I didn't get anyone sick here, did I?"
"None of us. No' at all. To be on the safe side, I'm staying in this house for a week." She added dryly, "I hope you like cards."
Biting her bottom lip, Maddy said, "I…Lady Fiona, I lost the baby, didn't I?"
Fiona brushed Maddy's hair back from her forehead. "Aye, but a slew of doctors all agree you'll be able to have more."
She'd known she'd miscarried, but still, hearing the news made sadness sweep over her, sharp and heavy. "But Ethan's not…well?"
"He does no' look it, but he's no' in ill health. I doona think he's slept in a week." She raised her brows as she said, "He loves you quite, well,fiercely . I'm just happy you'll be able to be together and start anew."
Maddy's eyes began to grow heavy again. "Lady Fiona, I don't know what you've been told—"
"Lass, I know everything. But understand, he's changed. Speaking no' as his mother but one woman to another…when a man like Ethan finally learns to love, it's forever."
"Bloody hell!"
He'd nicked himself again. His hands were shaking so badly, yet Fiona expected him to shave and clean up? Said he'd frightened his own wife with his appearance.
He probably had as he'd battled the nigh overwhelming urge to squeeze her in his arms. Maddy's eyes had been wide in her pale face as she stared up at him.
It had been everything he could do to force himself to leave that room—but earlier his mother had suggested she speak with Maddy alone once she woke. Fiona had told him there was a small chance Maddy might not even have known about the baby.
He clung to that.
When he nicked himself again, he threw the razor down. He rested his hands on the basin and hung his head.Please, doona let her have known. With Bea's death and his betrayal and Corrine's disappearance, he didn't know how much more his lass could take….
How long did his mother want with Maddy?
Ethan couldn't stay away any longer. He hastily dressed, then returned. As he strode in, Maddy's eyes were heavy-lidded, as if she was struggling to stay awake.
When he hurried to sit beside her, she weakly lifted her hand to graze her fingertips over a nick on his jaw. He took her small hand in his, kissing her palm, but she'd already closed her eyes. Just as he felt a surge of panic, Fiona said, "She's just sleeping now, Ethan."
"Did she know about the babe?"Say no….
"Aye, she did. But she's a strong one
, I can tell. She'll heal from all this if you help her."
Maddy might not want his help—or want anything to do with him. "Did she say anythin' about me?" he asked, sounding as desperate as he was. "About what I did?"
"She broached it. But she's in love with you, son. I can tell. You will be able to win her back."
Never again would he feel anger toward Fiona for what she'd said and done in the hours after his father's death.If Maddy had… He shuddered and squeezed his eyes closed. "I need you tae leave."
Without a word, she hastened from the room.
Just before he lost all control of his emotions.
Forty-six
Over the last five nights, Ethan had silently crept into her room to sleep with her, easing away each morning. Her fierce Highlander craving to sleep with her made her heart soften, but then she grew exasperated.
Every time she'd tried to talk to him about what had happened, he'd shied away, clearly thinking she was not strong enough to handle his confessions after only six days of recovery. But she was healing rapidly now that she'd turned the corner. Today, she'd been able to sit up for a good part of the afternoon to play cards with Lady Fiona, who was scheduled to return to Scotland the next day.
She truly liked Fiona, enjoying that she still scolded Ethan. He grumbled, but Maddy sensed that whatever conflict between them had finally been resolved.
Maddy needed to get something resolved with him as well, settled for good or ill, just so she could begin to make sense of all that had transpired.
That night, she made herself stay awake, waiting for him to steal into the room. He came directly after midnight and quietly undressed. When he slowly pulled back the cover, about to ease in and join her, she said, "Ethan, don't you think it's time we discussed what happened?"
He exhaled. "Aye, I suppose it is." He slung on his trousers without energy, then turned up the bedroom lamp. After placing pillows behind her and helping her sit up in bed, he pulled a chair beside her. "How did you find out?"
"I'd written the land agent at Iveley about visiting the property because I'd wanted you to see where I grew up. But apparently, you had not only been to Iveley Hall—you'd owned it for years. Since my father died."
