Page 79 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“I think it wise if you get some sleep, Miss Byrne,” Adam suggested carefully. “You have not slept much for two days now.”
“I will not leave him.” Orla mopped Horace’s brow again. As she looked down at him, her heart thundered in her chest.
I will save him from this. I must!
“You will be no good to him dead on your feet,” Adam reminded her, a gentleness in his voice. “Colm, you can mop his brow for a while, can’t you?”
“Yes, yes.” Colm stepped forward and snatched the cloth from Orla’s hand before she could complain. “Adam is right. You take some sleep, Orla, then I shall sleep too.” He took her place, though her gut curdled to see him sat where she had been.
It is my place beside him.
“Come, Miss Byrne,” Adam pleaded. “You must rest.”
Reluctantly, she jerked her head in a sharp nod and left the room. Adam walked alongside her as they trailed through the house.
“I’ve asked the kitchens to make you a supper downstairs,” he said as he looked through the letters in his grasp.
“I should be with him. Can’t I eat beside him?”
“Orla, if I didn’t persuade you out of that room, then Horace would be furious with me when he wakes up. He’ll be mad that I didn’t insist on you taking care of yourself as well as him.” It was testament to Adam’s feelings on this matter that he had used her Christian name.
She nodded once again, reluctantly walking alongside him. When they reached the ground floor, he hissed at something under his breath and dropped the letters at his side.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” She glanced at those letters.
“Horace’s business associates. They’re all writing like mad, wanting word of him. Mr. Patterson is perhaps the most insistent to have news. Perhaps he fears he will not buy his share of the company before…”
Orla halted at his side. She couldn’t bear to hear Adam talking about Horace’s death like it was an assumed thing.
“He will not,” she said with vigor. Adam stopped a few steps in front of her and turned back.
“By God, I hope you are right,” he murmured, his voice revealing the extent of strain he was feeling. He threw the letters onto the nearest windowsill and leaned against the wood, staring out at the chilly evening. “Lavinia writes to me daily. She threatens to keep coming, though I do not know what good it would do. I can offer her no words of encouragement or assurance. I cannot promise her that he will live, even if it’s all I long for.”
Seeing the love that Adam had for his cousin, Orla neared him. She raised her hand and laid it on his arm, a silent act of comfort. He inclined his head toward her in acknowledgement of her comfort.
“I am sorry you have to see this,” he whispered.
“I am used to sickness, sir.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I would have had to be a blind man not to see the care that you and my cousin have for one another.”
She gulped, wondering if he knew how much she and Horace had transgressed together, or if he had just put it down to an affection of the heart.
I love him. Do not tell me it is wrong, and that it is not something I should have ever indulged in. My heart attached itself to him, anyway.
“You shouldn’t have to see a man you love fighting death,” he whispered.
Orla spluttered, shaking her head.
“I–I do not remember saying–”
“Please, don’t deny it. It only makes it worse.”
All fell silent between them.
“I’m sorry to see you like this,” Orla whispered. “I’m surprised that Mr. Gladstone does not visit as you do.”
“Are you?” Adam shook his head and jerked a thumb down to the letters. “He hasn’t even written. I’m not shocked, not at all.”
