Page 24 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

“Do not stop,” she said.

“I will not. I like to hear you speak of Bombay, and of your mother.”

He reached past her to place another log on the fire. His shoulder brushed hers, and neither moved away.

Sometimes Adrian spoke of his own upbringing, no longer arranging every hurt as a joke. Sometimes she answered. Sometimes they sat together and allowed the truth to require nothing more of either of them.

The happiness might have continued in that quiet fashion until the thaw if word had not come from the Pritchard cottage.

Their youngest boy had taken a fever.

Lady Elise had nursed the valley’s sick for years, but she was herself confined to bed with a chill she refused to acknowledge. There was no doctor inside the valley, and the snow remained too deep for one to enter.

“I will go,” Ophelia said.

She had grown up watching her mother nurse both family and servants. She knew how to cool a fevered child, how to coax water between unwilling lips, and how to sit through the long hours when there was little to be done except watch and wait.

Adrian fetched the basket Miss Pettibone had packed for them, muttering a great deal of confused instructions as he collected it.

“I am coming with you.”

“You need not.”

“I know. That is what makes the gesture so affecting.”

She gave him a look.

His smile faded into seriousness.

“The path will be difficult. You will need someone to carry the basket, break the ice at the well, and keep the fire fed. I can do those things, and more if you show me how.”

He had not announced that he would protect her. He had told her what use he might be and left the decision with her.

“Very well,” she said, wondering how long he would last.

They spent a night and the long day that followed in the Pritchards’ cramped cottage, the air thick with tallow smoke and the sourness of fever-sweat.

Ophelia directed the nursing. She measured willow bark into tea and persuaded the child to drink it a spoonful at a time, watching for every change in his breathing. Mrs. Pritchard sat with her when fear allowed and slept when it did not.

Adrian did whatever was required.

He split wood in the yard, broke the ice on the well, kept the fire low and steady, and carried water without being asked. When the boy grew restless and frightened in the night, Adrian walked him slowly around the room while Ophelia prepared another drink.

The child clung to his neck and demanded the rhyme from the wren hunt.

“I do not know it.”

“Yes, you do,” the boy mumbled.

“I assure you, I do not.”

“You heard us.”

“That does not mean I understood a word. I don’t speak Welsh.”

The child supplied one line. Adrian repeated it badly. The boy corrected him. They continued in this fashion until Adrian was repeating something resembling the rhyme and the child had fallen asleep against his shoulder.

Ophelia watched from beside the fire.