God help Linley if she were to become an invalid. Patrick shuddered at the thought of her spending the rest of her life in a nursing home. The indignities she would face there…
No. If it came to that, he would see to it she had a private nurse. A team of private nurses, all caring for her around the clock in one of the unused bedrooms at Wolford Abbey. Surely, Bedford would not object to that. Not if he knew what horrors awaited her in a nursing home.
“Every day, you dress her, and bathe her, and change her,” Schoville said. “And you almost look happy to do it.”
“I don’t think ‘happy’ is quite the word for it,” Patrick replied. “But, until she comes out of this stupor she’s in, I owe it to her to see that she is clean and properly cared for.”
Schoville poked at the fire some more. He started to open his mouth, but then shut it. It took him two or three more tries to get what he wanted to say out. “You’ve slept with her.”
It wasn’t a question. Patrick knew that much. “I don’t see how it is any of your business.”
“It’s not my business. But I’m not asking out of loyalty to Linley, or any personal dislike for you. I’m asking because she’s a woman and you’re a man, and she needs someone to make sure you are held accountable.”
Patrick chewed on that for a minute, but he still did not answer.
“You’d better be glad it was me who found out and not Reginald or Archie,” Schoville said, refusing to let the other man off so easily. “Or, God forbid, Bedford. It would kill him.”
Patrick cleared his throat and spoke up. “I’m not too worried about Bedford. He and I seem to have come to an understanding.”
There was another long silence.
Again, Schoville poked the fire. “Will you marry her?”
“Linley doesn’t want to marry me,” Patrick said. “I have nothing to offer her. Nothing she would want.” He looked across the fire at the other man. “Besides, marriage would ruin everything that is free about her. It would snuff it right out.”
“You don’t have a very high regard for the institution, do you?”
He sighed as if the confession was torn out of him. “The truth is, I couldn’t marry her even if she would have me. I am desperate for money. And the only way I can get it is if I whore myself out to an heiress. Grit my teeth and bed a girl for her money, when what I really want to do is…” And then it hit him—the undeniable truth. “…when what I really want to do is be with Linley.”
At that moment, Schoville did something he never thought he would do. He felt sorry for the man. And worst of all, he felt sorry for Linley. “Does she know all that?”
“I’ve explained it to her, and she seems fine with it. But, to be honest, I really don’t know if she understands what it will mean.”
They both looked over at Linley.
“I hate it for her,” Schoville said. “Even though she’d never admit it, I know she is lonely. But Linley will never leave Bedford. He’s all she’s got.”
***
The choking heat of early morning drove Patrick out of the tent not long after dawn. Outside, the little campfire had long been snuffed out by the rain, but the ground and the trees still steamed from the wet, hot air.
Schoville was nowhere to be found.
Fighting down gnashing hunger pangs, Patrick dragged Linley out of the tent and went about tearing down the campsite. He could already tell the day would be a hot one, and they couldn’t afford to waste any time, wherever Schoville might be.
But as Patrick moved around the camp, the pains in his stomach were not the only ones racking is body—his feet hurt, as well.
The redness and swelling had not gone down overnight, even though he made sure to sleep with his socks off to air his feet out. And blisters were a common enough occurrence over the past few weeks, but he’d never seen any quite as…oozy…as the ones between his toes that morning.
Perhaps he should not have picked at them so much the night before.
“That talcum powder would come in nicely right about now,” Patrick said to Linley as he slipped on his boots. What a shame he used it all on the way to the monastery. The thought of conserving any of it for the trip back never occurred to him.
How na?ve the old Patrick was. Never thinking ahead. Always taking everything for granted. Now he understood just how precious a tin of powder and clean, dry socks really were.
He digested that thought as Schoville came staggering from the woods, covered in dirt and leaves.
“By God!” Patrick said, “Where did you get to?”
The man picked a few of the fallen leaves from his shirt and then wiped a sleeve across his damp brow. “I’ve had a bit of an upset stomach.”
Patrick kicked up an eyebrow, but said nothing. He did not want to know the details. What a man did alone in the wilderness was his own business.