and hovering as if she wanted to do something but couldn’t figure out what. “Are you in very much pain? Do you require anything? Please don’t fret. Pru and Morley will be here in…” She checked the silver watch she kept on a chain in the pocket of a velvet cobalt vest. “Four minutes ago.” Her dark gold brows drew together. “Odd, it’s not like them to be late.”
As was often the case, Felicity followed in Mercy’s wake, though she hung back, clutching a book to her chest as if it could shield her from conversations with people.
“Traffic on the bridge is insufferable this time of day,” she managed helpfully before flushing scarlet when she noticed Mercy, Titus, Nora, and Nurse Higgins all turned to listen to what she’d said.
As Felicity held the sheet aside with one hand, Nora was able to see past her to what she noticed was only one rather large but ramshackle room. A waiting area consisted of six chairs in a circle, one of which was just vacated by a roughshod woman who was helping the man with his arm in a sling out the door.
The proximity to the windows told her she might occupy one of two or three beds in the entire place.
She blinked back to Titus, who lingered at the foot of her bed, having made room for her sisters to stand opposite Nurse Higgins.
It distressed Nora to find him in such a dilapidated clinic. With his brilliance, he could have secured a dignified position anywhere in the Empire. He’d such dreams when they were young, such ambitions. To alleviate suffering. To fight disease. To advance scientific medicine.
Well, they were neither of them young anymore.
She’d always hoped that life had been kinder to him, because of what she’d done.
And now, it seemed, even that hope was dashed.
Hot tears stung her eyes and, for the first time since she’d awoken, she was glad he wouldn’t look directly at her.
Apparently interpreting her expression incorrectly, Mercy repeated, “Are you in very much pain?” She looked imploringly up at Titus. “Should we give her something?”
Nora was in enormous pain, but it had less to do with her shoulder than the aching heart beneath it. “I-I’m all right, Mercy.” She managed, with great effort, to lift her cheeks into the weak semblance of a smile. “I’d like to clear my head a little, I think.”
“I agree that’s best,” Titus addressed Mercy rather than her, directly, as if her vivid sister could act as a conduit between them. “Though if the pain becomes untenable, I’ve found it can hinder healing.”
“So, don’t you suffer needlessly,” Mercy ordered, stroking a lace glove over her hair.
Oh no. Her hair. Nora swallowed a pained groan. She couldn’t bear to imagine what she looked like, and with her first love looming over her like some disheveled Adonis.
It shouldn’t matter. But it did.
“Can you believe this is the Titus Conleith who used to work at Cresthaven?” Mercy presented him with the ease of someone who’d become well acquainted whilst she was asleep. “He saved your life not once but twice! Surely you remember, Nora? He and Felicity used to exchange books, and sometimes he’d carry our things out on picnics and shopping.”
Nora’s stomach turned abruptly sour at the words. Even as they’d carried on together, she’d treated him like the servant he was. He’d saddled her horses and carried her parcels, and she’d taken the assistance for granted.
“I remember everything,” she whispered, hoping the hollow note in her voice didn’t reveal her.
His expression never changed, though the hand that had been resting on the iron footboard of her bed now tightened.
Felicity, dressed in a more subdued blue gown than her twin, adjusted her spectacles before reaching down to brush tentative fingers over Nora’s hand. “Do you remember what happened before you were…injured?”
A dreadful gravity washed her in pinpricks of pain, starting at her scalp and trickling down her spine to land in her gut. “William…”
She couldn’t force any more words around the growing lump of emotion in her throat.
If her father was the architect of her misery, then William was the engineer. For over a decade, he’d hurt, manipulated, and humiliated her. He had killed five men because Nora had allowed them to touch her.
Thank God he hadn’t known about Titus. Thank God. Thank God.
“They cremated your late husband’s remains,” Felicity said gently, “and I took the liberty of having them interred at the family cemetery in Shropshire, without much ado.”