Selina felt the helpless guilt, the potent desire for freedom. She felt desperation for them to be happy.
Her teeth began to chatter, and a cold sweat broke out on her brow.
She couldn’t hold on any longer.
Her vision began to dim, but the noises all around her suddenly came into sharp focus, and she could hear Agnes furiously telling Philip to stay back.
In contrast, Timothy’s cries came to an abrupt stop.
He took one long, shuddering breath and fixed an intense stare on Selina. But it wasn’t Timothy. It was Charlotte.
“Help me,” he whispered, the sound rattling and sending ice through her veins. “Help them.”
Then his body slumped as though every ounce of strength had left him.
Selina released him, and he fell back against the pillows.
“Agnes,” she managed to rasp. “The sleeping draught.”
As Agnes ran forward, so, too, did Philip. And while the old lady pressed the vial into Selina’s shaking hands, Philip knelt beside her, his arm pressing into her legs as he ran frantic hands over Timmy’s face.
Selina could barely see past the pain in her head, and she worried that she’d cast up her accounts right there in front of Philip and the servants. She could feel them watching her from behind.
She uncorked the vial and tipped the contents into Timothy’s mouth.
His skin was cool and clammy, just like hers, she’d imagine. But he was breathing deeply and seemed at peace.
The draught would ensure that he stayed thus.
A riot of thoughts were stampeding through Selina’s head.
Charlotte was trapped by her feelings for Timothy and Philip. She knew that made her uneasy, but she felt so ill that she couldn’t even form a coherent thought about it.
“He’s well,” she mumbled, closing her eyes against the onslaught of pain and her wild emotions. “He’ll sleep now.”
Suddenly, she felt a smooth, warm hand touch her cheek, and she opened her eyes to see Philip’s gaze trained on her, roving her face with concern.
“And you?” he asked softly. “Are you well?”
Looking into his eyes, Selina remembered the surge of sadness and guilt that had washed over her when she’d been trying to communicate with Charlotte and that, coupled with her own growing feelings for the earl, served to make her even more confused and uneasy.
“I’m fine,” she answered dismissively, coming to her feet.
But as soon as she stood, she knew she’d made a mistake.
The room tilted alarmingly and the pain in her head intensified enough to take her breath away.
Stumbling on legs that couldn’t support her, Selina reached out to try to gain purchase.
“Selina!”
Just as Philip’s alarmed cry sounded in her head, blackness descended and the pain in her head, the memories of Charlotte’s terror, Timothy’s cries, they all disappeared into a blissfully silent abyss.
Philip caught Selina as she fell, lifting her into his arms and turning toward Agnes in alarm.
The fear that he’d felt when he’d heard Timothy’s cries, then to come in and see his distress, had been awful. Having to stand there and not be able to comfort his own child had been worse.
But though he would have easily been able to break Mrs. Healy’s hold on his arm, he’d listened to her urgent mumblings.
“Let them be,” Mrs. Healy had implored over and over. “Let her help. Don’t break the connection.”
Philip had had no idea what connection she spoke of.
Was it Selina’s hands on Timothy’s face or something deeper? Something he couldn’t see?
When Timothy’s voice had sounded so tormented, so filled with sorrow, Philip’s knees had almost buckled.
Help me, he’d said and then, far more ominously, help them.
Philip had watched in helpless despair as both Timothy and Selina had grown weaker and weaker before his eyes.
His heart had pounded painfully as he’d desperately checked Timothy over, but Selina had spoken the truth. The boy lay in peaceful repose even now.
But Selina.
His eyes darted between Mrs. Healy and Selina’s shockingly pale complexion.
The last time she’d done this, she’d been drawn and her head had ached, he knew.
But this? This was so much worse. There wasn’t so much as a flutter from the eyelashes that lay long and dark against her pale cheeks.
He was worried sick about her, yet a small part of him was shocked by how right she felt in his arms. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Perhaps he’d be able to mull that over if he wasn’t so scared for her.
“What’s wrong with her?” he demanded now of Mrs. Healy, who reached out and placed a wrinkled hand