Chapter 19 #3
There was a soft clunk behind me, as something fell to the floor.
A moment later, a second sound followed, and the bed dipped behind me.
I barely had time to register that the sound I’d heard had been David’s boots before one of his arms went around my middle, and he pulled me into him.
He was on top of the blankets, but his warmth radiated through me.
My back settled into his chest, and his legs tucked in behind mine.
Almost immediately, my shivering stopped, and my whole body seemed to exhale in the relief of someone cradling me.
His chin rested on top of my head, and when he spoke, it tousled my hair. “I told you.” His voice was only just above a whisper. “I never take ill.”
I nestled deeper into him. I was sick and chilled, and it was perfectly legitimate of me to want someone—anyone—to hold me. The fact that it was David made no difference. Or rather, it certainly did, but I hoped he didn’t think much of it. “But what if you do?”
His arm lifted from my waist, the comforting weight of it gone.
I thought perhaps he’d changed his mind, he didn’t want to risk being sick, or he felt as though someone else should be caring for me.
Instead, his fingers came to the crown of my head, and he gingerly lifted it, sliding his other arm under my cheek like a pillow.
When his arm returned to my waist, it felt so much like coming home after a long trip away I almost forgot I was sick.
“If I do,” he said, his voice firm, “then I expect you to come into my room and return this favor.”
My shoulders shook, but it wasn’t a chill. It was a sad attempt at laughter. “That seems like a very bad bargain.”
“Perhaps for you,” he whispered.
I shook my head. David was ridiculous. He was also very kind.
He was, in fact, everything I could have ever wanted in a husband or a friend.
I was fortunate to call him both, even if one of those titles would only ever be temporary.
With the shaking gone and David and the blankets keeping me warm, the muscles in my body finally calmed.
“Stay with me?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied. I couldn’t help but wish he’d said something more permanent.
Something to let me know it would always be this way.
But that was a promise he wouldn’t make, and although I knew a lot of that blame was to be set at his father’s feet, I wished I were tempting enough to make him change his mind.
For now, though, I let myself pretend this wasn’t the only time David would be in my bed and that whenever I fell sick in the future, he would be the one to comfort me.
I let my mind wander to what spending the rest of my life with him might look like.
It looked a lot like this moment, stretched into infinite possibilities.
My breathing eased and deepened, and in the comfort of the arms of a man who cared fiercely for me, I sank into a quiet oblivion.
When I awoke later to complete darkness, stifling heat, and night sweats, David was there, his forearm under my neck and his chest pressed up against my back.
My hair was damp and cold—David had bathed it sometime during the night—but instead of giving me the chills like it would have hours ago, in the cool night air, it was a relief against the climbing heat spreading throughout my body.
I lifted my head and instantly regretted it. I didn’t wake David, but my headache returned fiercely. I rested it back down on David’s arm and lifted the blankets away from my chest instead. Cool relief rushed over my skin, but David started at my movement.
The hand at my waist lifted, and I could tell from the way the bed dipped that he’d sat up. I turned on my back and kicked off more of the blankets.
His hand went to my cheek, his fingers probing my temple and brushing aside some of my damp hair. “Your fever’s broken,” he said.
All I could do was nod. It was too dark for him to see my movements, but with his hands on my face, I knew he could feel it. I swallowed hard as memories of his gentle care came flooding back.
Headache or no, waking up wrapped in the arms of one’s husband was an experience I’d not be likely to forget.
He stood. “I’ll find you some water.”
I put a hand on my neck, taking long, steady breaths, thankful David couldn’t see me with my hair completely in tangles, spread out on the pillows, my skin covered in a cold sweat.
I could sense him moving about in the room.
He was close enough for me to hear his breathing and sense where he stood.
Clinking sounds came from my night table, and I glanced up to where he must be, catching only the slightest silhouette of his form against the softest seam of light coming from underneath the door.
Light flared impossibly bright, and my hands flew to my eyes as I squeezed them shut against the flash. He must have lit a match. I stretched out on the bed, waiting for my eyes to accustom themselves to the idea of opening.
“How are y—” David started, his voice soft, but then he paused.
I cracked an eye open to find a blurred David half sitting against my dressing table in his shirtsleeves, as if he’d fallen back on it after lighting the lamp.
When he caught my gaze on him, he turned his head, looking instead out of the window.
His shirt was untucked from his breeches, and he wore no cravat. Several of his buttons must have come undone, for under the flickering light of the oil lamp, I could see almost half of his torso. It was covered in strange circular marks.
I blinked, unable to take my eyes off the sight of him. He was still staring at the window. I knew I should pull the linens back over my chemise, but I was incapable of tearing my gaze from the indented white marks on his skin. I’d seen a mark like that before, once. High on Julia’s arm.
“David . . .” My voice traveled to him like a puff of smoke, weak and floating, but he turned nonetheless. I couldn’t lift my eyes to his and didn’t see his expression, but I heard his curse.
He set the lamp down roughly, pulled the edges of his shirt together, and took two long strides toward me, roughly throwing the lightest of the linens back over my body.
I grabbed his hand as it lifted away. I was so weak it would have taken no effort on his part to pull away from me, but he didn’t. Instead, he met my eyes.
His were blazing, and not from the lamp. “Anna, I . . .” He moved to stand, but my fingers tightened around his wrist, and he paused again, half bent over my bed. We stared at each other, my eyes searching his, but he didn’t offer any explanation to what I’d just seen.
I lifted my fingers one by one off his wrist, and he stayed, hovering over me.
Instead of dropping my hand, I slid it up his arm, lifting the cuff of his sleeve as I went.
The lifted bump I’d felt just the day before came into view.
The beginnings of a small circle, no larger than the pad of my thumb, sat upon his otherwise perfect skin.
I slid my fingers higher underneath his shirt.
More bumps and indentations rose to meet my fingertips.
David closed his eyes, let go of his shirt, and let it fall open again. “You were never supposed to see me like this,” he said, a hard edge to his voice.
I removed my hand from underneath his sleeve and brought a fingertip to a circle sitting just above where his heart lay beneath his ribcage.
The moment my skin touched his, he hissed and sprang away. “Don’t touch them.”
“Do they hurt?”
His eyebrows furrowed, making shadows of his eyes in the lamplight. “What? No.” He shook his head.
“But you don’t want me to touch them?”
His face was hard as he pulled his shirt closed. “Never.”
“But . . .” But what? Did I think because he’d offered to be my husband in order for me to receive an inheritance, it gave me some right to this part of him? The part he hid from everyone. “Has Dr. Clarke seen them?”
“Yes, and his father has as well.”
“Is there nothing that can be done?” I didn’t even know what the marks were. I’d seen men pockmarked from disease, but those marks looked nothing like David’s.
“Everything that can be done has been done. It was an affliction I suffered as a child, and I’m not a child anymore.”
He was definitely not. I made certain to keep my eyes on his face. “Something like smallpox?” I asked.
“No. It wasn’t a solitary disease. It was a recurring ailment, but I’ve outgrown it.” He turned and strode away from my bed. “I’ll go fetch Mrs. Ward and Maren. I think it might be better if they care for you for the next little while. I’m glad to see you feeling better.”
His hand went to the door.
“David?”
He stopped, clenched his fist around the doorknob, and slowly turned around. All the fire from earlier was gone from his eyes. Instead, I saw only sadness, a deep sorrow he’d hidden from me all along.
“How long has it been since . . . ?” I didn’t even know how to finish asking that question. Was it an episode he would have? A sickness with blisters or boils? Were those marks part of the reason he’d been so unkempt the summer I’d been here? Had he been ill?
My thoughts went back to our time together then. Usually, he was perfectly capable of keeping up with me. He’d climbed trees even better than I had. But he’d also had days I’d had to slow for him and days he would lift his arms to climb a tree, then wince and change his mind.
He had been sick. He’d been terribly sick all along.
And for some of those days, at least, I’d managed to help him forget that.
We’d found others in need and delivered food to them.
We’d climbed trees and left the world below us.
I’d laughed with him like I wouldn’t laugh again for years—not until I’d met him again and we’d sung so badly together and flirted in ways I had hoped he wouldn’t understand were real.
He’d been the very last part of my childhood, a memory of what I’d had before I’d been forced to grow up too quickly.
And apparently, I’d been the brightest part of his childhood.
He’d been trying to tell me all along, and I’d never managed to listen.
David’s spine stiffened as if he were trying to convince himself of his own strength. His strength was nothing I needed convincing of. “It’s been years.”
“Good.”
“Please don’t worry about me. They don’t bother me anymore.”
My eyes met his. We both knew he was lying.
If I’d brought light to him in the past, I’d happily do that for him again. And I could see that more than anything, he wanted this conversation to be over. I smiled and sighed, hoping he wouldn’t think those marks would haunt me. “That’s good, then.”
He nodded as if we were agreeing about the prospect of bad weather. His hand went back to the doorknob.
“David?”
He took a deep breath, steeling himself for more questions. “Yes?”
“Thank you,” I said softly.
A corner of his mouth lifted, and the deep line between his eyebrows softened. “You’re welcome, Anna.”
And then he left.
Only after he’d been gone several minutes did I realize it was the first time he’d allowed me to thank him without telling me he was the one in my debt. Even our marriage had been difficult for him to accept thanks for.
But caring for me through the night and showing me those marks had cost him.
More even than entering into a marriage for my sake.
It had taken enough from him that, perhaps, at last, he could place us on equal footing.
For when he looked at me before he left, it wasn’t as a man who saw only the girl who’d given of herself, tirelessly, to a broken boy—but as one who had come to see me as a woman, capable of reaching into his soul and taking something as well.
And despite everything we’d already been through together, it felt like a beginning.