shirt, hoping to buff some of the dirt off like an apple before trying the latch and peering around the door.
Titus loved that—unlike the rest of her family—Honoria slept with all her drapes tied open and the window nearest the honeysuckle vines cracked to allow the scent of the gardens to waft inside. It didn’t seem to matter the season or the weather, he’d look up to her window to find it thusly open.
Sometimes he would sing while he worked outside. If he were lucky, the sound would draw her to the window, or at least he fancied it did, when she gazed out over the gardens.
Like the sun, he couldn’t look at her for too long.
And she barely ever glanced at him.
Titus told himself if she closed the casement against the sound, he’d never utter another note.
But she hadn’t.
It was as if she couldn’t bear to be completely shut in. As if she couldn’t bring herself to draw the drapes and close the world out.
On this morning, the November chill matched the slate grey of the predawn skies visible through her corner windows. Fingers of ice stole through his vest and thin shirt, prompting him to hurry and warm the room for her.
Shivering inside, he held his breath as he eased the door closed behind him, taking extra care against waking her as she’d been drawn and quiet for a few days and often complained of headaches.
In the dimness, she was little more than a slim outline beneath a mountain of arabesque silk bedclothes, curled with her back to him. Her braid an inky swath against the clean white pillow.
She occupied the second grandest bedroom, her being the eldest and all. The ceiling was tall enough to boast a crystal chandelier that matched the smaller sconces flanking her headboard. More than one wardrobe stood sentinel against the white wainscoting, containing her plethora of garments and gowns, each to be worn at different times of the day or for varied soirees, teas, and other such events unimaginable to someone like him.
She favored gem-bright hues over pastels, and silks over cottons and velvets. With her wealth of ebony hair and eyes so dark it was hard to distinguish pupil from iris, every cut and color flattered her endlessly.
But Titus knew red was her favorite. She wore it most often in every conceivable shade.
In the stillness of the morning, he could hear that her breaths were erratic and uneven, as if she were running in a dream, or struggling with some unseen foe.
On carpets as plush as hers, his feet made no sound as he tiptoed past the foot of a bed so cavernous that it would have swallowed his humble cot in the loft above the mews, three times over.
Was she having a nightmare?
Would it be a kindness to wake her?
Perhaps. But he’d expect to be summarily dismissed for even presuming to do such a thing.
He dawdled over the fire, laying the most perfect blaze ever constructed. Once the flames crackled and popped cheerfully in the hearth, he lingered still, content to simply share the air she breathed.
“Is it burning?”
Her hoarse words nearly startled him out of his own skin.
Titus jumped to his feet, upsetting his kindling basket, and dropping the poker on the stones with a thunderous clatter.
“The—the fire, miss? Aye. It’s burning proper now. It’ll warm your bones and no mistake.” Compared to her high-born dialect, his Yorkshire accent sounded like ripe gibberish, even to his own ears.
“It’s burning me,” she complained tightly, the words terse and graveled as if her throat closed over them.
“Miss?” His heart pounded as he approached her side of the bed, then sank at what he found.
Her braid was a tangle, escaped tendrils matted to her slick forehead and temples as if she’d done battle with it all night. Lines of pain crimped her brow and pinched the skin beside her lips thin and white.
She wasn’t simply curled against the cold but, more accurately, around herself. As if to protect her torso from pain. Though beads of sweat gathered at her hairline and her upper lip, she shivered intermittently.
It was her eyes, though, that terrified him. Open, but fixed on nothing, not even noting his approach.
“Miss Goode?” he whispered. “Can you—can you hear me?”
Suddenly her limbs became restless as she arched and flailed weakly, shoving her bedcovers away from her body, revealing that she’d clawed her nightdress off sometime during the night.
Honoria Goode was pale in the most normal of circumstances, but her lithe