Captive Of Sin Part 7

"Please let me get Tulliver." The girl swam toward him through murky water. At the last minute, he realized she meant to rap on the roof and stop the coach.

"No!" The word emerged as a croak.

Speech was so d.a.m.ned difficult. He wished he was alone. But what couldn't be cured must be endured. The old aphorism, his nurse's favorite, helped him to cobble together an explanation. Even if every word cut his throat like broken gla.s.s.

"Tulliver will give...laudanum."

Opium hurled him into whirling oblivion. The dreams the drug brought threatened to send him mad indeed.

She frowned. "If it eases you..."

"No!" he all but screamed.

The girl recoiled. Good G.o.d, let him muster some control. He s.n.a.t.c.hed another breath and fought to calm the frantic gallop of his heart.

She stared at him out of great, wide, terrified eyes. He loathed it when his personal...idiosyncrasies inconvenienced others.

Vaguely he told himself to a.s.sure her she shouldn't be afraid. He wasn't dangerous in this state. Unless she touched him. Thank Christ, after that first tentative attempt to offer comfort, she'd kept her hands to herself.

What had he meant to say? Thought was elusive and fleeting as wisps of mist.

That's right. Tulliver. He set his jaw and spoke in a low, harsh tone. Quickly, before will failed.

"There's nothing anyone can do. The best..." He stopped to fight back the caterwauling devils. "Please ignore me."

"That won't help." Even through swirling chaos, he heard the firmness in her voice.

Every joint tensed into quivering spasms. His stomach heaved like a stormy sea. Waves of hot and cold washed over him. He lashed his arms around his chest, but nothing eased the agonizing cramps. This attack was one of the crippling ones.

On his own, he'd bear the pain until it pa.s.sed. But he couldn't distress the chit by vomiting all over her.

He'd have to accept opium's poisonous boon.

"Can you stop the coach?" he managed to force through chattering teeth.

Mercifully, she didn't question his change of mind. She banged hard on the roof. The carriage lurched to a halt. The abrupt movement set off jangling cymbals in his head, dimmed his sight.

The door wrenched open. Voices were a buzz in his ears. Tulliver pa.s.sed in a tin basin.

"It's a bad one this time, lad," he said impa.s.sively, as Gideon's shaking hands curled around the dish.

Gideon's gut tangled into knots. He was seconds from losing control. He managed to snarl, "Take the girl."

His world turned to violent black as he began to retch. He was lost on a hideous sea, lit by brief crimson flashes where pain flared into agony.

He had no idea how long it was before awareness returned. Opening bleary eyes, he realized someone else's hands held the basin steady.

His mouth tasted foul. A hundred mallets battered his skull. Just the simple act of breathing threatened to split his chest in two.

Efficient hands removed the disgusting bowl. The same hands, soft and gentle, pressed a damp cloth to his burning forehead. He closed his eyes and groaned at the bliss of that coolness on his burning skin.

His belly was still rebellious. He concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

"Akash?" he rasped across a raw throat. Although he knew the hands didn't belong to his friend.

"He's back in Portsmouth."

The girl. Miss Watson. Sarah.

With difficulty, Gideon cracked his eyes open. His blinding headache built with every second. Soon, he wouldn't be able to sit upright.

His clothes were rank and dripping with sweat. Acrid shame for his animal filth a.s.sailed him. "I told Tulliver to take you outside."

Her smile was dry as the deserts of Rajasthan. She knelt on the bench at his side. Her surprisingly competent hands supported his head. He was so sick and weak, her touch didn't make his skin crawl with familiar revulsion. He had a vague thought that helping him couldn't be easy with her sprained wrist, but the notion drifted off like a will-o'-the-wisp.

"Tulliver had his hands full." Her voice softened into compa.s.sion. "Are you feeling better?"

"He'll have the devil's own headache. He always does after one of his takings," Tulliver said calmly.

Gideon hadn't seen anything beyond the girl. Now he looked past her to where Tulliver waited, holding the bowl.

"He has these attacks often?" The girl's clear gaze rested on him with curiosity and concern.

Even in this state, his pride revolted at her pity. "I'm not an ailing puppy, Miss Watson. I can speak for myself."

Her lips turned down at his childish response. Which he regretted as soon as it emerged. Helping him couldn't have been pleasant. She deserved grat.i.tude, not pique.

The pounding in his head made rational, connected thought increasingly difficult. He closed his eyes and stifled renewed nausea.

"I'll get the laudanum, lad." Tulliver's voice came from a long way off, masked by the painful throb of Gideon's blood.

"The sickness has pa.s.sed," he forced out.

"The laudanum makes you sleep. You know sleep is all that brings you through. Do you want to stop at an inn? A bed might be better than rattling around in this rig."

A bed. Cool sheets. Quiet. A cessation of movement. All beckoned like the promise of heaven.

He hesitated. He had to reach Penrhyn. Something urgent.

He opened his eyes and saw the girl's worried face above him in the gloomy carriage interior. Of course. If they stopped, she might run.

They had to keep going. He'd have to accept the despised laudanum. And endure the harrowing visions.

"No...inn." He shook his head. Even so much movement made his stomach revolt. "Get the laudanum, Tulliver."

"Aye, guvnor."

As the coach rattled on through the day and into the night, Sir Gideon slept like the dead.

At first his unconsciousness perturbed Charis. His illness had been so violent, she'd feared for his life.

He stretched awkwardly over a bench that was too short for his height. She studied his face, pale, drawn, handsome still. The muscles around his eyes were tight, and his mouth was white with strain. The certainty built that while he might lie motionless as a stone effigy, his dreams brought no peace.

She turned away and stared unseeingly out into the darkness. Who were these men she'd cast her lot with? Tulliver, who faced trouble with such stoic competence. Akash, clever, enigmatic like a strange foreign idol.

Sir Gideon...

She commanded her wayward heart not to flutter at the thought of her rescuer. It was like telling the sun not to rise. Every moment she spent with him only drew the net of fascination tighter.

He was famous, a celebrity. The crowd in Portsmouth had pressed about him, bristling with excitement. They'd hailed him as the Hero of somewhere called Rangapindhi. Was he home after some daring patriotic action overseas?

Her stepbrothers had kept her isolated for months. She hadn't seen a newspaper or received any letters. Recent events in the wider world were a complete mystery.

If Sir Gideon was newly returned from India, it suggested a few explanations to things that puzzled her. His tan. Akash. Even his illness. Perhaps some tropical disease attacked him.

His horrific sufferings had cut her to the quick. Gideon Trevithick, her only bulwark against her stepbrothers, was unquestionably ill. But the nature of his sickness was an enigma. What ailment turned a man so quickly from invincible avenging angel to shivering wreck?

At dawn, Sir Gideon stirred from his deathlike sleep. The movement was slight but enough to disturb Charis's restless doze. She opened bleary eyes, excruciatingly aware of her own aches and exhaustion. The carriage's endless jolting had punctuated her erratic dreams. She'd checked him periodically through the night, but his sickness hadn't returned.

Without looking at her, he groaned and swung his feet to the floor as he sat up. He rubbed his hands across his face in a weary gesture. Granting him a moment's privacy, she opened the blinds and looked out the window onto a wild and unpopulated world. There was a charged intimacy in sharing this tiny s.p.a.ce after she'd seen him at his extremity. It made her nervy, shy, unsure.

The view didn't help to restore her courage. They'd abandoned civilization miles past. The lonely, windswept scene was depressing, frightening to a woman with only strangers to rely upon. Staunchly, she reminded herself that her stepbrothers would have difficulty tracking her through this wasteland.

She wondered how much farther Sir Gideon meant to go. Since they'd left Portsmouth, the only punctuation to eternal travel was stopping to change horses. Hurried, efficient movement, a flare of torches, Tulliver rebinding her arm if the bandage had loosened, a hot drink shoved into her hands. Then away they went again. The beef broth from the last stop, a poor place in the middle of desolate moorland, had left a nasty taste in her mouth. Luckily, she had a cast-iron stomach.

She turned back to her companion, and an involuntary gasp escaped. "You look awful."

He gave a surprised grunt of laughter and sc.r.a.ped his hand across the stubble darkening his angular jaw. "Thank you."

She blushed. "I'm sorry. I had no right..."

"No harm done. I'm sure your observation, if not polite, was accurate." He sounded like the man who had found her in the stable. Ironic. Distant. In command of himself.

Except now she knew his composure was a veneer.

He might sound like master of all he surveyed. But he didn't look much better than he had last night when he'd shivered in her arms. Dark circles surrounded sunken, dull eyes. His tan held a sickly hue in the pale sunlight penetrating the windows. He badly needed a shave, and his hair was a tousled mess.

His eyes sharpened on her. With every moment, he looked more alert. "How is your arm, Miss Watson?"

She didn't immediately recognize her false ident.i.ty. Dear Lord, let him not notice her hesitation. She needed to remember the danger she faced if he discovered who she was. Difficult when the last day had only built the affinity she'd so quickly felt for him.

Carefully she flexed her fingers. Hardly a twinge. "Much better, thank you." She studied him as he sprawled against the worn leather upholstery. His long legs extended across the well between the two seats. The shabby carriage wasn't built for a man of his height. "How are you?"

He stretched and winced, then leaned his head back. "It was just a pa.s.sing inconvenience."

His expression indicated movement was painful. After lying still for so long, he'd be stiff as a board. The continual rolling and jolting of the vehicle must be agonizing. She ignored his unconvincing lie and dropped to her knees on the rocking floor.

"Let me take your boots off and rub your legs. I nursed my father in his last illness. This helped him when he'd had a bad night."

She'd forgotten no decent young lady offered to touch a gentleman who wasn't a close relative. She remembered only when he tensed, and his dark eyes flashed with horror. "Miss Watson, please return to your seat. I a.s.sure you my slight troubles don't warrant your concern."

Clumsily, her cheeks flaming with mortification, she scrambled back onto her seat. "I'm...I'm not usually so rag-mannered."

Yesterday he'd suffered her touch. He'd turned his face into her hand as she'd wiped his brow. But yesterday he'd been victim to his mysterious illness.

"It was a generous offer," he said kindly.

She hated his kindness. Because clearly it wasn't based on anything personal, like regard or respect. She hated owing her safety to that disinterested kindness.

Hiding a wince as the movement tested her sore arm, she fumbled to open a flask of water Tulliver had given her last night. "Are you thirsty?"

"Dry as sand." He accepted the flask without touching her fingers.

Charis berated herself for noticing. And minding. Did she want to fend off a Lothario? She should commend Sir Gideon as a man of honor.

Sourly, she recognized her hypocrisy.

Fascinated, she watched the movement of his powerful throat as he tipped his head to drink. Nor did she miss the tightness around his eyes as he returned the flask and subsided against the upholstery.

"Does your head hurt?" she asked before she reminded herself he wouldn't appreciate her solicitude.

A fleeting smile curved his lips. "Like the very devil." He sighed heavily. "All of this must frighten you. I'm sorry."

"I don't frighten easily," she said flatly.

He didn't argue although he must know she'd been terrified in Winchester. More of his cursed kindness. She wouldn't resent it nearly so much if he didn't use it as defense against her curiosity.

"Your face seems better this morning," he said.

"Oh." She'd forgotten what a horror she must look. She raised a tentative hand to her sore jaw. It didn't feel as distended. Speaking was certainly easier. Whatever heathen potions Akash had slathered on her, they'd worked. "Yes."

Sir Gideon's regard was steady as it rested upon her. Steady and implacable. "Will you trust me with the truth now? You have no aunt in Portsmouth. You're on the run from someone. Someone who threatens your very life if the state I found you in is any indication."

She stiffened under his probing gaze. Briefly she considered persisting with her lies. But as she looked into his face, she knew denial was useless. She sucked in a breath that contained a heady mixture of relief and uncertainty. "How long have you known?"

"From the beginning."

He sat up carefully and stared at her. If his face had held an ounce of anger or censure, she'd have kept silent. But he looked interested, calm, capable. He looked like a man she could trust with her life.

She shifted uncomfortably, her conscience flinching at the lies she'd told. "I don't see why you want to help. I've caused nothing but trouble. You should consign me to perdition."

Another of those faint smiles. "True."

"Well?"

He shrugged. "I've been alone against the world in my time. I'd hate you to come to grief because you had no champion."

Again, she thought of a medieval knight. A lonely, gallant figure on an impossible quest. "What happened to you?"