He turned to her. Diantha’s throat closed. Light glinted off the weapon dangling from his fingers.

“Wh-Wha—” she tried, but her words died again as he came toward her, her heartbeats filling her throat now, her gaze locked on the pistol.

He halted before her, so close she could see the dark circles beneath his eyes.

“What are you going to do with that?” she whispered.

He grasped her hand, pressed the pistol against her palm, and curled her fingers around it. The metal was heavy and cold, his large hand around hers scalding.

“Hide this.” His voice was very low, laced with tension.

She nodded, little jerks of her head. He reached into his coat pocket and upturned her other hand. Bullets jingled into her cupped palm.

“And these. But not together.” He released her. “And do remember where you have hidden them, Miss Lucas. I shall be needing them again.”

“Do you think,” she said shakily, “that given all, you might call me Diantha?”

“Remember where you have hidden them, Diantha. Now . . .” He drew a hard breath, fever glinting in his darkened eyes. “Leave me. And if by chance I should come for you and am not entirely myself . . . run.”

Her heart stopped. “I won’t.”

His hand flexed into a fist at his side. “Diantha, I pray you.”

She left, but she sent Owen to him. Then she went to the stable where the cow lowed a sad soliloquy. Stroking Galahad’s ebony and white nose, she leaned into him and allowed all the fear and confusion and strange, pressing need to ripple through her. Then she returned to the house and Mrs. Polley in the kitchen, where she might be of use.

Day was torment, an endless search for activities that would engage his mind sufficient to distract him from the craving and dysfunction of his body. Day offered him light by which to read. Day gave him Owen’s prattling company when the boy was not busy elsewhere. Day allowed him to imagine Diantha moving about the house, making it home just as she made every fallen log a throne and every cast-off soul a bosom bow.

Day lasted for many more hours than the sun was high, it seemed, sending him searching through cupboards in the library and drawing room in desperation to find cards, a chessboard, anything that he could pore over, sweating blood with every labored breath, knowing in the frenzied fog that only by keeping his mind engaged would he see this through. As he had conquered pain inflicted by others so many years ago, his mind could conquer this as well.

Day was torture.

But night was hell.

Night never ended. Night came on claws, tearing at his insides and whispering that he could end it, until he was deaf with it. Night persisted, hour after hour of darkness. He went to the stable, but even Galahad’s presence did not calm the panic. So he went again into the rain that teased with its scent and natural ease, climbed to the sheepcote and upon a ridge slept. But sleeping was merely another variety of torturous waking, his body shaking and bones burning and the agony in his head making him blind. But worse were the visions of people he had long since abandoned and places he had left behind years ago. In the dark he went to his knees and drank water from the stream, arising with a thirst he could not slake.

At moments he recognized that he was in a fever. Delirium. When Owen came and Wyn forced himself to speak, tried to restrain the trembling of his limbs, he saw himself as though at a distance. But he did not allow the boy to remain long, and the darkness descended again eagerly.

Yet the darkness was not alone. Deep beyond it, in a place he could see only at moments, relief dwelled.

Relief, kind and sweet like the touch of a lady’s berry smile.

Relief that—finally—it was over.

By the end of the third day Diantha could bear it no longer.

“I am going up.” She wiped her hands on a towel tied around her waist and pulled it off.

Mrs. Polley frowned as she scrubbed a pan. “He told you not to. Seeing as it’s the most gentlemanlike thing he’s done yet, you should listen to him.”

“That is not true, Mrs. Polley.” Diantha arranged a tray with a cup, saucer, and pot beside a plate of oat biscuits. She reached for the kettle. “Owen said he ate nothing today.”

Mrs. Polley shook her head. “I’ll go up with you.”

“No. Finish cleaning up then go to bed. Your cough persists and you need the sleep.” She poured boiling water into the pot and affixed the lid.

“And you, a fine miss running about dusting and sweeping.”

“I need the activity.” Rather, distraction. But it was perfectly silly that she was even trying to distract herself from thinking of him. “Now I will take this up and then I will turn in too. Good night, Mrs. Polley.”

She climbed the stairs with the stub of a candle on the tray to guide her steps. Dust rose as she went. The house was so large that it would take her weeks to clean it completely. Weeks she did not have. Her fortnight was slipping away and she was no closer to Calais, lost in the wilds of Wales.

At the door to his bedchamber she knocked. No response came. She knocked again, louder.

The door opened and her heart fell over. In shirtsleeves that clung to his arms with sweat, he was drawn, cheekbones prominent, the black centers of his eyes overcoming the gray.

“I told you to stay away.”

“Good evening to you too, sir.” She pushed past him and he allowed it, falling back a step to lean against the door lintel. She went across the room and set the tray on the dressing table, bending to stroke Ramses’ brow. “You didn’t tell me to stay away. You told me to run if you approached me. But you don’t look well enough to chase a turtle.” Taking up the candle, she plucked a taper from the mantel and held it to the flame then bent and lit the peat block in the hearth. “Why is the window open?” She moved to shut it. “You will catch your death.”

He tilted his head against the wall and his eyes closed. “Entirely possible I’m already dead.”

“Not quite yet.”

“Fires of Purgatory and all that, with you, my Beatrice, beckoning from Paradise.”

“But you are certainly delirious and will probably be dead soon if you don’t eat.”

“Rather be at present.” The words were barely a whisper.

Diantha’s heart beat so hard she could hear it in the silence. “No doubt.” She crossed to him, every nerve in her body ridiculously aware that she was alone in a gentleman’s bedchamber with him. “I have brought tea and Mrs. Polley’s biscuits.”

His eyes opened, reflecting the firelight’s golden heat. “Leave.”

“No.”

His hands darted out and his fingers bit into her shoulders. He dragged her close. The planes of his face as he looked down at her were harsh, his eyes glittering with fever and the ravenous intent of the predator.

“Please.” The sound came from so deep in his chest she barely understood the word.

She struggled for breath, squaring her shoulders in his hold. “Why did you make me hide the pistol when you were planning to starve yourself to death anyway?”

“You”—his voice grated—“are”—each word was forced—“a difficult girl.”

“I am not a girl, and I am trying to help. But you must allow me.”

For an instant something she recognized flickered in his eyes. Then, as though it cost him great effort, he released her. With deliberate steps he crossed the chamber and took up the teapot. It clinked against the cup, steam twining in the cold air.

“Take care. It will still be quite h—” Her warning died upon her tongue. He swallowed the scalding tea, then poured another cup and drank it as well.

“The biscuits too,” she said.

“Go.” He spoke with his back to her.

“No.”

“While I still allow you to.”

“I thought the remedies we purchased at the herbalist’s shop were intended to—”

“They require time to take effect.”

Her gaze darted to the brown bottle on the writing table. “You haven’t taken the laudanum yet, have you?”

His head bowed. “Makes a man insensible.”

“I should think insensibility and life preferable to sharp senses and death.”

“Six of one . . .” His fingertips pressed onto the surface of the dressing table, white with strain, and she realized he was holding himself up thus. She had the most powerful urge to go to him, wrap her arms about him and let him use her as a crutch.

“Wyn,” she whispered, “I think you should sit down before you topple over.”

“Not . . . in the . . . presence of a—”

“Don’t be silly. Oh!”

He wavered. She flew toward him and threw her arms around him as she’d imagined, dreamed, but not quickly enough and she was not strong enough. He went to his knees, and she with him.

“You are the foolish one,” she uttered against his shoulder, damp fabric against her cheek covering hard muscle. His body shook. He burned. “Quite a foolish man, Mr. Yale.”

His trembling hand clutched hers against his chest. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder, her fingers crushed within his grasp, her body wedged against his, and kissed him. Her lips brushed fine linen and his suffering became part of her.

“You will probably not remember this,” she whispered, and kissed his shoulder again. “That is a consolation.” She could not stop herself. Need she had never imagined beset her, need to be with him, to touch him and fill her senses with him.

And then she did stop, because it was not about what she needed now. He needed her. She did not have weeks for this delay, or even days now. But she would give him her days and weeks if necessary.

“You know,” she said, resting her cheek against his broad back, the quick, shallow beat of his heart beneath her hand, “you mustn’t die, or even continue in this state for much longer.”