Until You

9

With his hand on the ornate brass door handle, Dr. Whitticomb paused before entering his patient's bedchambers. Turning to Stephen, he lowered his voice and issued some last-minute warnings and instructions: "Head wounds are very unpredictable. Don't be alarmed if she doesn't remember speaking to me a few hours ago. On the other hand, she may have already regained her memory completely. Yesterday, I spoke with a colleague of mine who's had more experience with serious head injuries than I, and we both felt it would be a mistake to give her laudanum no matter how severe her headache might become. Even though it would help her pain, laudanum will put her to sleep, and we both think it's imperative to keep her conscious and talking."

Stephen nodded, but Whitticomb wasn't finished. "Earlier today, she grew very anxious and frightened when she couldn't remember anything, so do not, under any circumstances, say or do anything to add to her anxiety. When we go in there, try to make her feel calm and reassured, and make certain any servant who enters this bedchamber is under the same orders. As I said, head wounds are very dangerous and very unpredictable, and we wouldn't want to lose her." Satisfied that he'd covered everything, he turned the handle.

Sheridan sensed the presence of people in the darkened room as she floated in a comforting gray mist, drifting in and out of sleep, her mind registering neither fear nor concern, only mild confusion. She clung to that blissful state, because it allowed her to escape the nameless fears and haunting questions nagging at the back of her mind.

"Miss Lancaster?"

The voice was very near her ear, kind but insistent and vaguely familiar.

"Miss Lancaster?"

He was speaking to her. She forced her eyes open and blinked, trying to focus, but her vision was strangely blurry and she saw two of everything, each object superimposed over the other.

"Miss Lancaster?"

She blinked again, and the images separated into two men, one of them middle-aged and gray-haired, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a neat mustache. He looked kindly and confident, just as he sounded. The other man was much younger. Handsome. Not so kindly. Not so confident, either. Worried.

The older man was smiling at her and speaking. "Do you remember me, Miss Lancaster?"

Sheridan started to nod, but movement made her head hurt so horribly that spontaneous tears burned her eyes.

"Miss Lancaster, do you remember me? Do you know who I am?"

Careful not to move her head when she spoke, she answered his question: "Doctor." Her lips felt dry and cracked, but talking didn't seem to make her headache more intense. The moment she realized that, her own questions began to rush in on her. "Where am I?"

"You're safe."

"Where?" she persisted.

"You're in England. You sailed here from America."

For some reason, that made her feel uneasy, depressed. "Why?"

The two men exchanged a glance, then the doctor said reassuringly, "That will all come back to you in due time. Don't concern yourself with anything right now."

"I… want to know," she insisted, her whisper hoarse with tension.

"Very well, child," he agreed at once, patting her arm. After a slight hesitation he smiled as if he were giving her happy news and said, "You came here to join your fiance."

A fiance. Evidently, she was betrothed… to the other man, she decided, because he was the one who'd looked the most worried about her. Worried and exhausted. She shifted her gaze to the younger man and gave him a wan, reassuring smile, but he was frowning at the physician, who was shaking his head at him in some sort of warning. That frown bothered her for some reason, and so did the physician's warning look, but she didn't know why. It was incongruous, but at that moment, when she knew not who she was or where she'd been or how she came to be here, the only thing she did seem to know for certain was that one must always apologize for causing unhappiness to another. She knew that rule of courtesy as if it were deeply ingrained in her-instinctive, imperative, urgent.

Sherry surrendered to the overwhelming compulsion, and in a faint, thready voice, she waited until her fiance was looking at her and said, "I'm sorry."

He winced as if her words had hurt him, and then for the first time in her recollection, she heard his voice-deep, confident, and incredibly soothing. "Don't apologize. Everything is going to be fine. All you need is a little time and some rest."

The act of speaking was beginning to require more effort than she could make. Exhausted and bewildered, Sherry closed her eyes, then she heard the men move as if to leave. "Wait…" she managed. Suddenly and irrationally terrified of being alone, of sinking back into the dark void that was tugging at her and never being able to surface again, she looked at both men, then settled her imploring gaze on her fiance. He was the stronger of the two, younger, more vital-he would keep the demons in her brain at bay, with sheer force of will, if they came back to torment her. "Stay," she said in a faint whisper that was draining the last of her strength. "Please." When he hesitated and looked at the doctor, Sheridan wet her cracked lips and, drawing a labored breath, she framed into one feeble word all the thoughts and emotions that were warring inside her. "Afraid."

Her eyelids felt like lead weights, and they closed against her will, shutting her away from the world of the living. Panic set in, pressing her down, making her fight for air… And then she heard the sharp scrape of chair legs on the polished wood floor as a heavy chair was pulled up beside the bed. "There's nothing to fear," her fiance said.

Sheridan moved her hand an inch forward on the coverlet, a child blindly seeking reassurance from a parent she couldn't even remember. Long masculine fingers closed over her palm and held it in a reassuring grip. "Hate… afraid," she mumbled.

"I won't leave you. I promise."

Sheridan clung to his hand, and his voice, and his promise, and she took all three with her into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Guilt and fear made Stephen's chest ache as he watched her drifting deeper and deeper into slumber. Her head was swathed in bandages and her face was ghostly pale, but what struck him forcibly was how small she looked in that bed, swallowed up by pillows and bedcovers.

She had apologized, when he was entirely to blame, not only for the death of her fiance and her dreams, but for this calamity as well. He knew the dangers on a dock, and yet he'd positioned himself, and her, directly in the path of a winch. On top of that, he'd been so preoccupied with her reaction to Burleton's death that he'd failed to see the loaded cargo net swinging toward her, and then he'd failed to react in time to the stevedore's warning shout. And if she hadn't been in such a state of shock over what Stephen had told her, and the blunt, clumsy way he'd told her, then she might have been able to react in time to save herself.

As it was, he had put her in the path of danger, failed to protect her, and then made it all but impossible for her to protect herself. If she died, the fault would be entirely his, and he knew he'd never be able to live with that on his conscience. He already carried enough of a burden over young Burleton's death to torment his nights and haunt his days.

Her breathing changed suddenly, and fear clawed at him. He held his own breath until her chest rose and fell in what seemed like a reasonably steady rhythm, then he exhaled and looked down at the hand resting trustingly in his palm. Her fingers were long and graceful and smooth, but her nails were trimmed very short-an aristocratic hand belonging to a prim and proper young lady with an obvious penchant for tidiness and practicality, he decided.

He lifted his gaze to her face, and if he hadn't been half crazed with fear and half dead from exhaustion, he would have smiled as he wondered how she felt about that face of hers, given her prim and practical streak. There was certainly nothing prim about those soft, generous lips, and nothing practical about those incredibly long, curly lashes that lay like lush crescents against her cheeks. He had no idea what color her hair or eyes were, but her cheekbones were delicately molded, her ivory skin almost translucent. In contrast to all her other features that seemed to exemplify fragile femininity, there was a firmness to that small chin of hers that hinted of willfulness. No, Stephen corrected himself, it more likely hinted of courage. She hadn't wept with pain or fear; she'd said she hated being afraid, which implied she preferred to fight that debilitating emotion, rather than succumb to it.

She undoubtedly had courage, he decided, and kindness as well-enough to try to apologize for worrying him. Courage and gentleness, a remarkable combination in any woman, but particularly in one so young.

And so vulnerable, he realized with a fresh surge of panic as her chest rose and fell in fitful little gasps. Tightening his grip on her hand, he watched her seem to struggle for air while a lump of pure terror swelled in his throat. God! She was dying! "Don't!" he whispered fiercely. "Don't die!"