In His Eyes(52)

A monstrous shadow loomed. She opened her mouth to scream….

“Cease, Ella! It is only me.”

The cry died in her throat. Her breath hitched. “Major…?”

He grunted. “Who else would it be?”

Confusion flittered in her chest. “Why…why are you in here?”

He leaned closer, his face practically indistinguishable from the shadows. Hadn’t she had a lamp? What had happened to the light?

“I heard noises. I came to see if you were all right.”

All right? She was anything but. “I am fine.”

He reached out and his fingers bushed the edge of her jaw, moving soaked tresses from where they clung to her skin. “I think you speak falsely.”

“I…” she wanted to deny it, but the pain in her chest would not let her. “I am sorely afraid.”

His hand cupped her face, and the gentle gesture let forth another heaving sob.



Miss Whitaker shook, her body appearing desperate to hold in a grief that sought just as desperately to free itself. He ran his hand down her hair, gently stroking. “Easy, Ella.”

She shuddered, as though the sound of her name affected her as much as it did him. He stroked her hair, uttering words of comfort until his leg began to ache. Still, she strangled sobs in her throat and would not let them free. He shifted his weight and moved to go around the other side of the bed so that he might sit without pressing up against her.

Her hand flew out and grasped his sleeve. “Please….don’t go.”

So much fear in her voice. He placed his hand over hers, her small fingers cold beneath his own. “I meant only to go to the other side of the bed. I will stay, if you wish it.”

Could she possibly want for him, the one she’d called a devil, to stay with her? Her grief must be deep, indeed, if she would seek comfort from one such as him.

Her hand slipped from beneath his and he wondered if she decided against her request. He used the bed posts as support and walked to the other side. He glanced at the door to his own room, which he’d left open—it had proven to be too much of a temptation. Slipping through it, rather than coming to the door at the hall, had seemed much more intimate. Something done between husband and wife, as the rooms were designed for. But he was no husband, and she no wife. And, thus, he trespassed.

He sat on the bed, his gaze traveling over the babe and to the woman who wrapped herself around the child. Her display of protectiveness sparked the same in him, and he wondered at the fervent urge to wrap himself around her as she did the baby.

“I am sorry.” Soft words, so quiet he almost missed them, drifted across the great expanse of the bed. An arm’s length only, but it seemed a great ocean separated them. An ocean he had the strangest desire to sail.

“You need not be.” He would not have her apologize for the pain that claimed her. Unable to resist, he reached over the babe and allowed his hand to feel her face once more. She turned her cheek into him, and his world shifted. Unnerved by the sensation that burned within him, he removed his hand.

“I should not have called you such things,” she whispered in the dark.

Westley tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling he could not see. “You had every right. I sense that this war has done things to you…as it has to me.” That last part he had not meant to say, yet it clung to the end of his sentence and would not remain within the privacy of his head.

She made a strangled sound, and despite his better judgment, Westley turned and laid himself out on the bed. On the pillow across from him, she shifted, though to get closer or farther away, he could not tell. “It is all right to let the feelings out sometimes.”

She gulped, and then sniffled. “I do not wish to be further marred by weakness.” Bitterness tainted the words, and he wondered at the source. “Yet, as much as I try to hold them back, these boggin tears—” she jerked to a stop.

Westley chuckled. “What is that word?”

She turned her face away. “One of my papa’s. ’Tis not a nice one, I’m afraid. And not befitting a lady.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But then, since I’m not one, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

Lee coughed a deep and ragged sound that sliced through Westley’s contemplation of her statement.

“Oh, wee one,” Ella cried, pulling the baby closer to her. “This is my fault.”

The jagged pain in her voice tore at him, and he reached across to touch her once again. “You must not say such things. You are not at fault for a sickness.”

“But I…”

“No,” he said firmly. “You went out in the weather, yes. But you were not there for long, and even then only because I provoked you.”

Another sob, this one let free. He rolled closer, trying to see her in the tiny droplets of moonlight.

“Hear me, Ella. You cannot blame yourself.”

“Say it again.”

He rubbed her shoulder. “It is not your fault.”

“No, the other.”

He frowned, then set his jaw. Of course she would want to hear again that he was the one to blame. She deserved it, even if only for the sake that his claim would ease her suffering and give her someone other than herself to fling her loathing upon. “I provoked you. If you need one to blame, then I shall shoulder it.”