Page 37 of Exile's Return

‘Agnes?”

She smiled and set the candle down. ‘I’m here.’

‘Where am I … are we?’

He tried to sit up but she firmly pushed him back onto the bolsters.

‘Seven Ways, the home of Sir Jonathan Thornton. You brought us here — remember?’

He had a brief, shaming memory of collapsing on the doorstep. Not quite the impression he would have wished to make on his brother’s old friend.

He reached up and touched her cheek, soft as his mother’s satin dress.

‘Did I tell you that I like your freckles?’ he said.

She frowned. ‘My freckles?’

He traced the scatter across her nose. ‘I’ll count them. One…two…’

She should have batted his hand away and told him to stop being foolish; instead, she caught it and held it against her cheek for a long moment.

‘I thought you were going to die,’ she said, her voice uneven.

He extricated his hand from her grasp and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘After all the times in my life I could have died, it would be very annoying to die in a comfortable bed in England,’ he said, adding, ‘But unfortunately for me, the worst is yet to come.’

‘But your fever is down,’ she said.

‘In an hour or so the ague will be back.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath as he lay back on the bolsters. ‘In the West Indies, at a certain time of the year, they have terrible stormsthat rage and destroy all in their wake, and suddenly it is calm and the sun comes out. That is the worst time of all because you know the storm will return, worse than before. The fever is like that.’

She swallowed. ‘Ellen said to give you the infusion of Jesuit Bark when you woke.’

He nodded and she turned away. Liquid sloshed from a jug and she returned to the bed with a horn beaker. Sliding her arm beneath his shoulders, she lifted his head and he grimaced at the familiar taste of Jesuit Bark. Without it, he would have died years ago.

He swallowed the last of the bitter brew and asked for water. She refilled the beaker and he insisted on taking it from her, controlling his shaking hand with a supreme effort. It galled him to be physically weakened and reliant on this woman, of all women.

‘I have some broth. It will take but a moment to warm it.’

He nodded and she turned away from him, busying herself beside the fireplace, where a cheerful glow lit the old, darkened timbers of the ceiling.

‘So you’ve had this fever before?’ She had her back to him as she stirred a pot on the fire.

‘Several times. It is the legacy of my time in the West Indies.’

‘But you’ve come through it?’

He shrugged. ‘The attacks are further apart and not so severe,’ he said. ‘They get it in the Low Countries from where I have just come. That and the soaking of the last few days…’

She returned to stand by the bed, holding a wooden bowl in her hand. All trace of humour had gone from her face.

‘It’s not your only legacy of Barbados,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen your back, Daniel.’

The breath caught in his throat. No choice but to bluster his way out of it.

‘Not pretty, is it?’

‘Lady Thornton says you should have died.’

‘I nearly did.’