Lord Harry by Catherine Coulter

The downstairs clock chimed six deep, resounding strokes. He saw her eyelashes flutter open. There was no awareness in her eyes this time. She stared unseeing at him. A low, aching moan came from deep in her throat. In a jerking motion, she brought her hand up to press against the swollen bruise on her temple, then with another gasp of pain, she dropped her hand and hugged her side.

He laid a damp strip of linen on her forehead, for he could not risk more laudanum so soon. He hoped, without much optimism, that it would relieve the pain in her head. He lowered himself gently down beside her. He pulled her arms away from her side, fearful that her frantic clutching would cause the wound to start bleeding again. She fought against him with surprising strength, but he tightened his grip until she lay still, moaning helplessly.

“Hetty,” he said against her ear. “You must try to lie still. I don’t want the bleeding to start again. Can you understand me?”

She tried to twist away from him. His arms began to ache with holding her down. Then he simply couldn’t stand her pain any longer. He measured a lesser dose of laudanum into a glass of water and forced it down her throat. She choked, doubling forward in a paroxysm of coughing. He pulled her against his chest and held her close, rubbing his hand on her back, until the racking shudders subsided. He began to rock her gently, until finally, he felt the tension in her gradually ease.

The laudanum was beginning to blunt the edges of her pain. She was seized by a sudden sense of urgency. She lurched up, saying, “Millie, where are you? What time is it? Please, we must hurry. Father will wonder where I am. I can’t let him suspect. Millie. Oh, hurry.” Millie didn’t come to her, but there was someone else near to her. A low, soothing voice. “Is that you Signore Bertioli? The vendetta, Signore. I mustn’t fail. I am nothing if I fail. You must help me, Signore, please, you must teach me. But it’s over, isn’t it? I was a fool, Signore. I went into battle with naught but a prayer and a foil. No pistols for me, just that damned foil.”

A soft shimmering light was shining in her eyes. A dark face was staring at her, dark eyes, deep and fathomless. “My God, it that you, Damien? Please forgive me. I tried so hard and I did win, but I failed because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him.”

Dry heat consumed her. She was burning, waves of scalding heat swelling deep inside her. There was suffocating material choking her, tightening about her throat, yet she wasn’t strong enough to pull it away. She ripped at the material about her neck. Fingers were closing over hers, pulling them away from her throat. There was a sudden lightness of her body, then the touch of warm air caressing her skin. Still it wasn’t enough. Her fingers clawed at the mounting waves of drenching heat. The dark eyes were again close to her face. “Please, I’m so hot, so very hot. Please stop the heat.”

“Yes, I will.” A cool wet cloth smoothed over her face, like a light summer’s rain upon a sunbaked earth. Cooling drops of liquid rolled down her face onto her neck, cutting a trail of prickly cold in their wake. The damp coolness floated over her shoulders and breasts, down to her belly, quenching an unbearable heat that burned her legs. She was being slowly lifted, the cooling liquid cleansing away the ghastly burning from her back. The flames of heat in her body surged with new intensity as the cool damp soaked in again and again. Finally the burning was lessening, withdrawing from her. The burning was dying away as would embers doused over and over until they steamed away the last of their existence, hissing and spurting until at last they lay cold and lifeless.

Was that a woman’s voice sounding softly near to her? “Louisa, Louisa, is that you? Have you come to curse me? So many lies, Louisa. Too many. I can’t bear that Jack must now risk his life because I failed. Please don’t hate me, Louisa. I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t finish it. It was all lies, I lived nothing but lies.”

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