Chapter Thirty-One
Time went in and out like the flickering of a candle. Tha?s lost track of the hours, the days, the nights. All she knew was that when she was awake, Alastair was with her. He brushed out her hair for her and braided it. He wiped the sweat from her brow with cool cloths soaked in orange water. He made her drink cold liquids when she was hot and warm ones when she was cold. He did not let the doctor draw her blood again.
She felt guilty for wasting the time that he had paid so much for. Terrible that she was too feverish to drill him on his pleasures.
But she also felt contented, like a cat. Because having his attention and his kindness trained on her was among the nicest things she’d ever felt. No man had ever treated her this way. Her friends had nursed her lovingly through illnesses, but it hadn’t felt like this. Like Eden’s entire being was trained on her every comfort. Like her sickroom was the only place in an exceedingly small world made up of just the two of them.
It had felt that way since the night before she’d gotten ill. Since that moment she’d let down her guard and admitted—if only to herself—the way she really felt for him.
She was so stupid to let herself be so besotted, and so sick she didn’t care.
When she asked him to, Alastair lay in bed with her and rubbed her aching muscles. He squeezed her tight against him to warm her shivering body. Even through the discomfort of her fever, it brought her pleasure and well-being.
She found herself confessing things to him. Secrets only Elinor, Cornelia, and Seraphina knew. She told him about her childhood, cleaning and serving in the brothel. About how terrified she’d been when she realized the patrons her elders fucked and flattered would eventually become hers too. How she’d hated when her breasts came in because she felt like a price tag had been placed upon her head, and it got fatter with every expanding inch of her bust.
She told him of the first man who had taken her, how she’d trained for months and been prepared for pain, but he’d been kind. That she was lucky—so very, very lucky. She told him how she’d hated those few years when she’d been kept as a mistress. How she felt that her time was never hers, that her body was on loan. How she liked it better to perform for a single night, then say farewell forever. How her skill at that work, and her ability to make a name for herself, delighted her.
She told him about the girls she helped and how she longed to keep them safe and healthy. How sometimes it wasn’t enough. How girls like her could suffer and how guilty she sometimes felt for her good fortune. She’d been found beautiful enough for special treatment. Fallen into the right hands. Met Elinor and the girls, who had shaped her into a woman who could traverse many kinds of worlds.
He listened and listened and listened. He listened to her like she was the most fascinating person in the land. He asked all sorts of questions about her life. The things she’d seen, the men she’d known, the good nights and the bad.
He asked her what her dreams were, and she was ill enough to tell him. Three children, maybe four. A brood, the older ones doting on the babies.
“You’ll be such a wonderful mother,” Eden had whispered, filling her with warmth.
“I worry I won’t, having no ma myself,” she confessed.
“You’ll love your babies,” he’d replied. “That’s what matters.”
“I’ll love them more than life itself.”
“Can I ask who would be their father?” he’d murmured. “Is someone... waiting for you, back in London?”
“No chance of that,” she’d whispered.
That he thought there might be made her want to cry. She told him how she sometimes dreamed of a man of her own. Just one. Someone who didn’t mind her past and would love her like any other woman. Who desired her body but her soul moreover.
“You’ll find him,” Eden had said tenderly. “And he’ll be such a lucky man.”
She was not so feverish she told him that in her visions the man had come to look like him. Tall and olive-skinned with the kindest eyes she’d ever seen.
Instead, she reached for him and told him that she wanted him.
She wanted him to kiss her throat and rub his hands down her body. To hold her in the dark. To enter her and claim her.
They spent the night tangled in each other’s limbs. She prayed he would not catch her illness, but she could not bear to let him go. She wanted his mouth and hands on her, his cock inside her. She let herself give way to it. To disappear in him. To be known, in her mind and in her body.
She cried when it was over, and he brushed away her tears and asked why she was sad.
She would not—could not—tell him.
She woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick for all that she’d revealed.
Stupid, stupid girl, treating a trick like he was her soulmate.
Letting herself believe, even if only for a night, that the man lying beside her thought her better than she was.
And then it was the morning, and she woke up to the crowing of the cocks.
Her skin was cool, her eyes were clear, and Eden was no longer in her bed.
Which was for the better.
She only had three days before she’d have to give him up for good.
He’d be ready to go back to London and marry some prim young thing, some milk-fresh girl who’d fall in love with him on sight, because who wouldn’t? He’d be ready to be a caring husband and a most attentive lover. Just the kind of man he’d paid her to help him become.
And foulmouthed harridan or not, it broke her heart.