A Love That Never Tires (40 page)

“Welcome back.”

Linley blew out her breath, feeling groggy and nauseous. The nurse held a white metal basin up to her mouth, and Linley vomited.

“Where…am…I?”

“In a missionary hospital,” the nurse said. “In India.”

Linley licked her lips. “Where is the monastery?”

“I don’t know.”

She did not understand. “Where is my father?”

“In the north. I’ve heard the river is up. He probably can’t get across.”

“Then who brought me here?”

The nurse patted Linley’s head with a cool, damp flannel. “Your friends brought you here,” she explained. “They carried you from very far away, and it is nothing short of a miracle that you survived.”

“What was wrong with me?”

“Typhoid, I’m afraid.”

Linley blinked. Typhoid? Wasn’t that terribly deadly?

The nurse saw the fear slashed across her face. “You’ve come through the worst of it, praise the Lord,” she said. “Now you have only to rest and get your strength back.”

“Am…am I contagious? Is that why you all wear masks?”

“This is the contagious ward,” the nurse told her. “You must be kept separate so you don’t infect the other patients, but you won’t stay here forever. Soon the disease will pass out of your system and you’ll be free to come and go as you like.”

“I should like to visit my friends,” Linley said.

“They’ve been quarantined, too. Just as a precaution. And no one can come and go within the contagious ward without written permission from the doctor.”

“But they are well, aren’t they? I didn’t get them sick?”

The nurse laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We expect each of you to make a full recovery.”

“What do you mean, a full recovery? What are they recovering from?”

“Oh, dear,” she said, rising from her chair and smoothing her white apron. “Now I’ve upset you.”

Linley struggled to sit up. “What happened to them? Are they hurt?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“No, you don’t understand!”

“Lower your voice or I will have to call the head nurse.”

Linley reached out and pulled on the woman’s sleeve. “Please. Tell me.”

“All you need to know is that they are fine. Your friends are resting and recovering just like you. And they’re anxious to see you get better.” The nurse removed Linley’s grip from her arm. “You don’t want to disappoint them do you?”

“No.”

She walked to the screened door of Linley’s sickroom. “If you’re feeling well enough to eat, I’ll bring you some soup. Would you like that?”

Linley did not care about any damned soup. Her friends risked their lives to save her, and she couldn’t rest knowing they were hurt or sick for her sake. And who was it who put their life on the line to help her—was it Archie and Reginald, or perhaps Schoville? Or, was it someone completely different?

“The men who brought me here,” she said, “Was one of them Lord Kyre?”

“Who?”

“Lord Kyre,” Linley repeated.

“I’m sorry. I am afraid there’s no one here by that name.”

***

Aside from the routine visits from the doctor and the nurses, Linley had very little to do to pass the time. She slept a lot, but there were only so many hours in a day one could waste like that. After a while, even sleeping grew boring.

The nurses suggested she pray, thanking God for delivering her through her trials and tribulations. And Linley did, for she was truly grateful, but her mind had always been one to fester without some form of activity or stimulation.

And since she was denied any of that, Linley had nothing to do but think.

She thought about Patrick a great deal. Obviously, he was not in the camp. Perhaps he stayed behind with her father. Patrick never was one to undertake such a dangerous journey, and the Indian wilderness in monsoon season was as dangerous as they come.

But she could not help but remember all the times she awoke to find him at her bedside. He said such sweet things to her, and he had rubbed her feet. Linley found it hard to believe that Patrick would choose to stay with her father. If he were a
real
man, he would have made the journey.

…Unless he was not a real man at all.

Linley remembered a great many things from when she had been sick. And some things she could not remember at all. Her mind was like a puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Or two puzzles all in the same box that one has to pick through and sort out before it can even be put together.

The funny thing about delirium is that one never knows what is real and what is false. What has been made up. Created.

Linley remembered things she knew never happened. She’d never been to Kyre, never seen Wolford Abbey, yet she could see it in her own head as clear as day. And she could recall going swimming, but that was impossible, she had been unconscious for weeks. And the thousands of places she and Patrick made love. In her mind, they were as real and as tangible as the hair on her arms or the feel of the crisp, white cotton bed sheets against skin.

But she knew none of that had ever happened.

Had she even made love to him at all? Could the nurses tell if she was no longer a virgin? Could the doctor?

Linley remembered saying goodbye to Patrick in London. That much she knew was factual. And she recalled him arriving so unexpectedly in India, in the most remote train station, at just the right moment to run into her. Was that memory real? Or had her mind created the encounter? It was all too perfect to have actually happened…

Maybe Patrick never existed at all.

Was she the kind of woman who invented men inside her head and then fantasized about them? Made love to them over, and over, and over.

Linley had to know for sure.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. After more than a week of rest, she’d grown much stronger, but it still felt awkward to be moving on her own two feet. Linley held onto the wall for support, making her way one step at a time out of her room and down the covered walkway separating the ‘actually contagious’ patients from the ‘probably contagious’ ones.

Rain pounded on the roof, running down the eaves, and splashing into the ankle deep puddles threatening to spill over onto the wooden walkway. Wind whipped her thin cotton nightshirt, and Linley clenched the fabric to her legs to keep it from exposing all of her to the elements.

By the time she made it to the next row of rooms, she was exhausted. While trying to be as discreet as possible, Linley peeked in each doorway as she walked down the open corridor. The first room was occupied by an Indian man, and the second sat empty. The third room was also empty, but the bedcovers were turned back, and it looked like someone had been sleeping there.

At the fourth doorway, Linley paused. She saw Patrick sitting up in the narrow metal bed. It took him a moment to look up, but when he did, he smiled.

So he was real.

Her mind was a little more reliable than she thought it was.

“May I come in?” she asked. Her voice wavered—from the illness? Or was it nerves?

“Please do.” Patrick scooted over and patted the empty spot on the bed.

Linley walked across the room, suddenly feeling much weaker than before. She sat down beside him, trembling.

“The hem of your nightgown is soaked,” he told her. “You ought to know better than to come out in this weather.”

“I—I wanted to see you.”

Patrick moved closer to the wall, giving her more room on the bed. “Get under the covers.” When Linley moved to slip under the warm blankets, he winced. “Be careful of my feet. They are still very sensitive.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“I went too long in wet boots and socks,” he explained. “Almost caused my feet to rot off. The doctor wanted to amputate three toes, but I said to hell with him.”

“Patrick!”

He laughed. “Otherwise, I’ve been a model patient. I eat when they tell me to, sleep when they tell me to, use the pot when they tell me to…I feel like a child in the nursery again. But this,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Is a very welcome surprise.”

“What is?”

“You, here, up and about on your own. Really, just seeing your face with a little life behind it is…well, let’s just say there were many times I thought I’d never see that again.”

Linley thought about how she must look to him. Her hair was dull and lifeless, and fell out in chunks. She was thin to the point of emaciation. To say that her face had life in it was a gross exaggeration. She looked like she’d crawled up from the grave.

“Patrick, when I think of all the things you’ve endured for my sake, I am humiliated,” she said. “You have seen me at my absolute worst.”

“It’s true, I have.” He tried to crack a smile. “I am on very intimate terms with your inner workings. I know your body as surely as I know my own. You have no secrets from me now, darling.”

Linley put her head in her hands. How could she ever face him again?

“I didn’t say that to embarrass you,” he said, pulling her hands down and turning her chin up to him. “I want you to know how honored I am, knowing that I was the one there for you when you needed someone the most. I felt useful. I felt…needed.”

“Oh, Patrick. Of course I need you. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Then I suppose I have a confession to make.” It was time. He needed to tell her what he’d done. What he was willing to do. “I told you that I sold Kyre House, but I did not tell you what I plan to do with the money. I have talked it over with your father, and he has agreed to take me on as a sort of partner. I will invest the money into your expeditions, and in exchange, I will be allowed to come along on any trips I choose.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll tolerate me a little longer. At least until the money runs out.”

“Just how much money are we talking about here?”

Patrick grinned. “Thirty thousand, give or take.”

“Thirty thousand pounds?” she cried. “Are you mad? People don’t just give away money like that! You could live like a king for the rest of your life on thirty thousand!”

“That is stretching it a bit, but yes, I could live nicely. Alone. At Wolford Abbey, sitting at my great big dining room table. Heating a hundred rooms that will never be used,” he explained. “Or
we
could live nicely. Sleeping in tents in the desert. Driving dog sleds in the Antarctic. Together.”

They could be together. He was the stupidest, most foolish man alive, but they could be together!

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Not even I think I’m worth thirty thousand pounds, and I have an awfully high opinion of myself.”

Patrick laughed. “You’re worth every penny. And more, if I had it.”

“But couldn’t we split it? Fifteen for you and fifteen for my father?” she asked. “I feel like you’re being cheated. You’re not very good with money, and in a few months you’ll wish you had a little something left to pay your own bills.”

“Your father and I have an agreement, and it wouldn’t be right to go back on the terms. I am a gentleman, you know.”

Linley shook her head and laughed. “Being a gentleman almost got you killed. It seems silly to abide by such a ridiculous code of honor. Don’t you ever want to behave badly once in a while?”

“I have been known to misbehave.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mean when you were a child and your cook said you could have one sweet, but you took two. I mean something really naughty.”

“Ah, well, perhaps you have me there.”

“Don’t worry,” Linley said. “Stick with me and I’ll get you into all sorts of mischief. Before long, you’ll be begging my father to let you out of your agreement.”

Linley leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her lips to his neck, sliding them up to his ear, and across his freshly shaven jaw. With one hand, she ran her fingers through his hair, pulling just hard enough to tilt his head back. With the other, she began to unfasten the buttons of his pajama shirt.

There was no doubt in her mind they’d find themselves in all sorts of sticky situations. And—if she had anything to do with it—the sooner the better.

“Linley, I don’t think that is such a good idea.” Patrick tried to untangle himself from her arms, but Linley held him tight.

“Of course it isn’t a good idea,” she said. “It wasn’t a good idea the first time, but that did not seem to stop us.”

He shook his head. “I knew there would be consequences for what we did, and I ignored them. I put your health and happiness in jeopardy.”

“None of this was your fault,” Linley explained, running her fingers through his dark hair.

“I should have shown some self-restraint.”

“Not with me, Patrick,” she said. “Never with me.” Linley slipped her hand into the waistband of his white cotton pajamas. She felt him grow hard in her hand. “I love how I can make that happen.”

“It is a natural reaction to stimulation,” he replied. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Linley refused to take no for an answer. “You always say that. And you’re always lying. I know what it means. It means you want me.”

“Of course I want you.”

She stroked him. “You could have me.”

Patrick shook his head. “We are practically in a church.”

She did not even bother to argue that, at least to the monks, the monastery had been a church, too. But there was no use splitting hairs.

Linley was relentless with her stroking. She watched as Patrick quit fighting her and closed his eyes. Tipped his head back. Parted his mouth.

And just when she knew he was close, she dropped her hand.

Patrick’s eyes shot open.

Linley smiled. “I think we can both agree I am going to get what I want.”

“I feel like a cad to want you so badly after your illness,” He rolled her onto her back, hiking her nightshirt up to her waist.
“But I promise I will be gentle.”

“I don’t want gentle,” she said. “I just want you.”

Linley wrapped her legs around him, hardly giving Patrick time to pull his pajamas down.

“I’ve missed you,” he said as he pushed into her. “God, I’ve missed you.”

His hands and his mouth were all over her, sometimes feather-soft, sometimes with enough force to make her hiss.