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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“ I do not love him and I will not marry him!”

Rolfe vaulted from the chair where he’d fallen asleep and was at the side of the bed in a moment.

Cassia was sat upright, her body rigid, her eyes wide. She stared at him, and her voice had taken on an eerie calm.

“You cannot force me to wed him, Father.”

Rolfe realized that she was caught in a sort of dream and was not really seeing him. Instead, she was seeing her father.

Suddenly, she flinched as if she’d been struck.

“Please, no ...”

She began to keen then, holding up her arms in effort to fend off the bastard’s invisible blows.

Each frightened cry tore through Rolfe as each imaginary blow struck her.

He reached for her, trying to take her into his arms and somehow shield her from her nightmare foe, to protect her from the obviously hellish scene being played out in her mind’s eye.

“It is all right, Cassia,” he murmured to her and pulled her against the wall of his chest.

He tucked her head beneath his chin. She huddled against him, grabbing onto his shirtfront as if she wanted to crawl inside. She began shivering violently. “He is so angry with me this time. I’m frightened. I’ve never seen him so angry like this.”

Rolfe stroked her hair. “Shh. It is all right. He is not here. He cannot hurt you any longer.”

“No. You are wrong. He is coming back, and now he has his walking stick. He’s raising it up ...”

“Shh,” Rolfe whispered into her hair and tightened his arms around her. “I will not let him hurt you again.”

Cassia jerked in his arms and if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the bastard had just hit her. And then, suddenly, her whole body went slack.

“Cassia?”

Silence.

“Cassia, can you hear me?”

He felt her move just slightly. Her voice was quiet now, muffled against his chest, sounding more like a child’s. He could barely hear her.

“My head, it hurts. It’s dark. So very dark. Please—please bring a light. I so hate the dark ...”

Rolfe moved the candle on the bedside table nearer to them. “Where is your father, Cassia? Is he gone now?”

“No, I can hear him. He is still so very angry with me.”

“What is he doing?”

“He is just standing there. He isn’t saying anything. But I can hear him breathing. He hates me. I can feel it. But, wait. There is someone else in the room. They are arguing. Something about a note, a letter, I think. Whoever it is wants it from my father.”

“Who is it, Cassia? Who is there with your father? Can you see him?”

“No, it is too dark. I cannot see anything. My head hurts. But it is a familiar voice. It sounds like ...”

Her voice dropped off, then, and her body fell limply against him.

Rolfe tilted back Cassia’s head to peer down at her face. Her eyes were closed. “Cassia?”

She did not answer him, but he could see that she was breathing, her chest rising and falling slowly. Finally, she looked peaceful. He held her there for several minutes, waiting to see if she would awaken into the dream again.

When she didn’t, he finally laid her back on the bed, cradling her until her head reached the softness of the pillow.

The moment his hands left her body, Cassia curled into herself, forming herself into a tight ball.

Rolfe frowned, filled with a mute rage. She looked so damned vulnerable, so damned defenseless, and so damned frightened.

He slid onto the bed beside her, pulled her against the length of his body. He closed his eyes, trying to banish what he’d just witnessed, trying to quell the rage he felt at knowing firsthand the horror Cassia had lived through.

What sort of bastard would have done to her what her father had?

Why would he have wanted to hurt her, his daughter, his only child, like that?

There was no reason, no excuse for ever striking a woman.

His father had taught him that ethos as a lad, and it was a wisdom Rolfe had never forgotten.

Women were to be protected. Cassia was Seagrave’s daughter, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood.

Rolfe could find no reasonable answer to explain the madness the man had shown in abusing her like he had.

The only thing Rolfe did know was that it was fortunate for him that Cassia’s father was already dead, for had he still been among the living, Rolfe might have seen to it that it wasn’t for very long.

He thought back then over Cassia’s words when she’d been locked in the dream.

It was obvious she had been describing that night to him in her sleep, the night her father had been murdered.

And it seems, while she had been lying there senseless from his blows, she had somehow heard another voice in the room.

She had said it was a man’s voice.

But whose?

He remembered Cassia telling him earlier when he’d first questioned her about that night that she had been unconscious, that she had only awoken to find her father dead.

She had said that no one else had been there, that the door had still been locked.

She had told him she’d had no idea who could have come into the room.

Still, she’d been so certain of there being another man’s voice there just now.

Could it be that while she’d been lying there on the floor, her body unmoving from her father’s beating, her mind had played witness to what her eyes could not see? Had Cassia actually heard her father being murdered?

All through the rest of that night, Rolfe tried to think of how he could somehow free that information from her subconscious.

The more he remembered what she’d said, the more he began to believe that Cassia was the key.

She knew who the real murderer was, whether she realized it or not, only it was locked up tightly in her mind.

He just had to find some way to release it.

He remained there with her, holding her as she slept a deep and peaceful sleep, now seemingly free of her demon dreams. It was at just a little before the dawn, when the first inklings of sunlight began making their way through the windows across the room, that the fever came upon her.

“So hot ...” she murmured, and then she rolled away from him. She started to push at the bedcovers that were tangled around her legs.

“Please ... thirsty ...”

Rolfe rose from the bed and pulled back the coverlet.

He placed a hand against the side of her cheek.

She felt warm, though not overly so. At first he thought that perhaps the room was a little too confined, so he unlatched the window and pushed it open a bit.

He went to fetch her a glass of water from the pitcher by the door.

By the time he’d returned to her, she was moaning, and her head started to thrash back and forth on the pillow.

Her hair was growing damp, sticking to her forehead. Rolfe felt her cheek again. Her skin was now burning.

He lifted Cassia’s head from the pillow and touched the cup of water to her lips. He only managed to dribble a small amount of it into her mouth before she began twisting away from him.

“No ...”

A maid came into the room then, carrying a stack of fresh linens. She stopped when she saw him bent over the bed, holding Cassia. “Milord?”

“I will need a bowl of cold water and a cloth. As cold as you can get it. Go to the ice house. Lady Cassia is burning with fever. Go!”

It seemed to take the girl too long to return when in fact, it was only a handful of minutes. Mara, Hadrian’s wife, came in with the maid, pulling on her night wrap. The maid had obviously awoken her for her hair was hanging loose around her shoulders. “What is it, Rolfe? What’s happened?”

He was already pressing the wet cloth to Cassia’s forehead. “She’s feverish. I can’t get her to drink any water.”

Mara placed the back of her hand on Cassia’s forehead. Her expression grew instantly concerned. “Keep cooling her skin. I’ll be back shortly.”

Rolfe barely heard her. He was completely focused on Cassia, trying desperately to bring her temperature down.

He’d seen the effects of fever before, on the battlefield, and knew what it could do.

How many men had he watched die before his very eyes once the fever had come to claim them?

He told himself he mustn’t dwell on that.

Mara reappeared at the other side of the bed, removing the cork on a small glass bottle. “Lift her head. We must try to get her to swallow this.”

Rolfe did not think to question what Mara had brought.

He was well-acquainted with her knowledge of herbs and their healing powers and trusted her to know what was right.

He slid onto the bed behind Cassia and cradled her head against his lap.

“Cassia, if you can hear me, try to swallow some of this.”

Rolfe took Cassia’s chin and parted her lips, allowing Mara to give her the potion. The minute the liquid entered her mouth, Cassia tried to turn her head away, but Rolfe held her still. “Just a little bit, Cassia. That’s it.”

Mara set the bottle on the table. “I think we managed to get enough of it into her mouth, but it will depend now on how far the fever has gone. Only time will tell. I would wager you did not get very much sleep last night. You look exhausted. Would you like me to stay with Cassia while you get some rest?”

Rolfe did not look up from Cassia when he answered. “I’m not going anywhere. I will call out if I need anything else.”

He didn’t even hear her leave.

It was now two hours later, and Cassia was still burning with the fever.

When soaking her forehead with the water did not seem to be doing any good, Rolfe went to the door, threw it open, and barked at the maid who’d been posted in the hallway there.

“A tub of water. Now. Don’t bother heating the water.”