But it wasn’t bad. After a few hours during which Gabby alternately giggled and yawned, she fell into a deep sleep.
Quill sat by the bed, utterly discouraged. How could they have come to this pass? What kind of marriage did they have, when his stubbornness had led her to deceive him, and then their quarrel had such terrible consequences?
Why was he such an utter idiot about the matter? Why hadn’t he thrown his arms around Gabby and made love to her all day to celebrate his cure?
He kept looking at his wife. She hardly stirred, but lay like a statue on the bed. Surely she would be all right. He looked at the clock yet again. Only four hours had passed since Gabby took the medicine, and she had said twenty-four would pass before the effects wore off.
He was still sitting there when an elderly Indian man pushed open the bedchamber door.
“Lord Dewland,” he said quietly.
Quill started and then stood up, not letting go of Gabby’s hand. “Sir—” He stopped. It was impossible to explain the foolish argument that had led to this situation.
But Sudhakar seemed to expect no details. He walked over to the bed and took Gabby’s wrist in his hand. Quill’s heart sank when he saw how limp her little hand looked.
“How long has she been sleeping?”
“For around four—almost five hours,” Quill said.
Sudhakar said nothing, but it seemed to Quill that his jaw tightened.
“Is that a bad sign?”
Their eyes met.
“No!” Quill almost shouted it.
Sudhakar bent his head. “I doubt she will survive. This medicine is a potent poison. I told her so. She has taken too much for a person of her size and then fallen asleep too soon.”
“I don’t understand,” Quill said numbly. “Why would that matter?”
“The medicine is made from the poison of a tree frog,” Sudhakar explained. “The frog puts its prey into a deep sleep before eating them. That deep sleep is invariably fatal for humans.”
“Wake her up!” Quill brushed Sudhakar aside and took Gabby’s shoulders. Ignoring Sudhakar’s protest, he shook her—but she shook like a wet rag, and her head listed awkwardly to one side.
“Give her something,” he commanded. “A remedy.”
“There is no remedy for this poison,” Sudhakar said. “You must live with the consequences. As must I.”
“Then why did you let her have it?” Quill said savagely. “You knew she was impulsive. You should have guessed she might take it herself!”
Sudhakar looked at him. “Now, why would that occur to me? I saw a young woman consumed with anxiety for her husband, prepared to ruin her marriage in order to save him further suffering. I saw nothing self-destructive about her.”
“She thought it was harmless,” Quill whispered harshly. “She had no idea. You shouldn’t have given it to her.”
“Do you think she is a child? She is a grown woman. Her rash actions are her own.”
It was only when Quill fixed him with a brutal gaze that he realized that Sudhakar was also suffering. “We must do something,” he said desperately.
Sudhakar turned away. “It is beyond my skill.” The words were wrung from deep in his chest. “I have loved two children in my life. And now Gabrielle will join Johore in death. I failed each of them.”
Quill looked up at him. “She told me you were an expert with poisons.”
“But this is not an Indian poison,” Sudhakar said. “If there is a cure, I do not know it. I am a stupid old man, unable to cure my loved ones.”
Quill barely stopped himself from leaping at the old man’s throat. “Think,” he insisted. “Why do the patients die? Gabby looks as if she is merely sleeping.”
“I am not certain,” Sudhakar admitted. “They live for a few days, sleeping all the while, and they do not wake up. I have never seen it myself. But the man who gave me the poison warned of its consequences. Stimulants are not effective in waking the patient.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sleeping,” Quill said uncertainly. “A person could sleep for a week without harm, could he not?”
Sudhakar frowned. “If he had water—” He stopped. “Perhaps the patients die not because of the poison but because they lack water.”
“Fine,” Quill said. “We’ll give Gabby water.” He took a glass by the bed and held up her head, but the water poured back out of her mouth.
“It’s no good,” Sudhakar moaned. “She cannot swallow. No, I am doomed to watch both of my children die. My Johore died in pain. At least little Gabrielle will go in peace.”
Quill ignored him. He was trying to think. Finally he rang the bell and demanded a spoon from Codswallop. When he had the spoon, he held Gabby’s head up and spooned water into her mouth. It ran out the side. He tried again, and again, and again, until her night rail was drenched.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Tired eyes met his. “It’s no use,” Sudhakar said gently. “She cannot swallow.”
“No!” Quill bellowed.
“I felt the same way when Johore worsened, just before he died,” Sudhakar said. “We were isolated—no one in the village would even come to the door because of the cholera. But Gabrielle came. She came down from the big house, and she brought me English medicine. She cared more for Johore than for her own safety.”
Quill looked at his drenched wife. He put a hand on her cheek. “She would do that,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Sudhakar agreed. “She will do anything for the people she loves. And she loves you, Viscount Dewland. You are a lucky man. She loved you too much to see you in pain. And I believe that she would not begrudge what has happened.”
“You don’t know,” Quill said hoarsely. “The things I said—”
The hand on his shoulder tightened. “I imagine you quarreled and Gabrielle took the medicine when she was in a temper. She always had a temper to match her heart, that one. But she loved you, and she would be happy to know that your headaches are cured. For you are cured, aren’t you?”
Quill couldn’t even look up; his vision was blurred by tears. “What does it matter?” he said hoarsely. “Without Gabby …”
The hand on his shoulder disappeared. “I will not stay to see her die. I have served my time by the bedside of a dying child. I am afraid that it is your karma this time, my lord.”
Quill stood up. His throat was tight, but he forced the words. “Are you certain, absolutely certain, that there is nothing you can do?”
“I am certain. My only suggestion would be that you continue to try to give her water,” Sudhakar said. “Perhaps a drop will enter her throat. Perhaps that drop will save her. But it is more likely that nothing can save her.”
Quill gritted his teeth. There was nothing to be earned by slaying an elderly Indian gentleman, after all.
He bowed. “I will write to you when Gabby wakes up,” Quill said.
Sudhakar bowed as well, and his voice was kind. “I will await your missive.”
By a short time later, Quill had established a routine. Every hour, on the dot, he wrapped a towel around Gabby’s neck and spooned water into her open mouth. He had discovered that if he held her head just so, some of the water didn’t pour back out. At least he thought that was the case.
He was exhausted by midnight and turned the task over to Margaret. He threw himself on his bed and slept fitfully. Two hours later he woke with a start and peered toward the adjoining door to Gabby’s chamber. It was the coldest, darkest part of the night. Had he heard something? Perhaps Gabby was awake?
But one glance through the adjoining door showed him that nothing had changed. Margaret had Gabby propped on her arm, and his wife’s head was lolling to the side. The maid turned to him, face white with fatigue.
“My lord,” she said hopelessly.
“Go to bed,” Quill said. “And ask Codswallop to attend me at dawn.” He tucked a towel under Gabby’s neck again.
Early in the morning he sent a footman out to fetch th
e best doctor in London, one among the many Quill had consulted regarding his migraines.
Dr. Winn was a thin and angular man, with a sloping jaw and bright blue eyes. “Interesting,” he said, looking at the small bottle. “A very interesting case, my lord. Tree-frog poison, did you say?” He took Gabby’s pulse and listened to her heart. “She appears to be in a deep sleep. Have you tried to give her any coffee? I have had some success at waking patients with coffee or a very strong tea.”
Quill spent the next two hours watching ugly brown coffee spill out of his wife’s lax mouth and stain the white towel. There was no change.
Dr. Winn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “These Eastern poisons are the very devil,” he said frankly. “I know little about them. I am afraid that there is nothing I can do that wouldn’t smack of the experimental, my lord.” Dr. Winn’s caution was precisely the reason that Quill had approved of him years ago. Winn had not handed him concoctions of mashed wasp or Indian hemp. He had advised him to live with the headaches.
But now Quill felt quite different. “Then do your experiment,” he said shortly.
Dr. Winn hesitated. “If we give her a stronger stimulant than coffee—you realize that we are in effect fighting a poison with a poison?”
Quill clenched his teeth. “She must wake up. I do not know how much water has made it down her throat.”
“You are quite right,” Winn said. “She may die of dehydration.”
Quill picked up the spoon, but his hand shook and the water didn’t even reach Gabby’s mouth. “Do something,” he said.
Winn sat down and steepled his fingers. “I need your full attention, my lord. We are presented with two options.”
Quill took Gabby’s limp hand in his.
“A stimulant is the most obvious solution,” Winn noted. “But I must say that given your wife’s utter lack of response to coffee, I am not convinced that stronger stimulants will be efficacious.”
“The danger?”
“Her heart may fail,” Winn said bluntly.
Quill clutched Gabby’s hand.
“The second option is far more experimental, but I believe it would be my choice. I would suggest that we give her a small dose of laudanum. Laudanum is an interesting drug,” he said meditatively, “soporific in small doses and poisonous in large doses. And highly addictive, of course,” he added.
“What would be the good of administering a soporific? She’s already asleep.”
“A soporific sometimes counters a sleep-inducing poison. We do not understand the mechanism behind it.”
“And the danger?”
“No danger, really,” Winn said. “But if it doesn’t work, the stimulants certainly will not. She will fall into a deeper sleep, if possible. And a sleep so deep…I will leave you to make a choice, my lord.”
“No,” Quill said, his voice harsh. “I’ve made my choice. Give her the laudanum.”
“You do understand that the chances of the medicine being effective are very small?”
Quill simply nodded, and Winn opened up his small bag. Quill watched silently as the doctor gave his wife a dose of laudanum.
“When will we know?”
“Quite soon,” Winn said placidly. “May I suggest that you give your wife some more water, my lord?”
Quill spooned the water into Gabby’s mouth, suspecting that the doctor was merely keeping him occupied.
An hour passed. Quill sat by the bedside watching Gabby’s face for any change in color, for any sign that she was waking up. A heavy sense of doom was sinking into his heart.
Slowly it dawned on him that she wasn’t entirely there. Her body had become a shell, discarded by the beautiful self that was Gabby.
“My wife is dead,” he said hoarsely, after two hours.
Winn shook his head. He was standing at the foot of the bed. “She is not dead, my lord.”
But Quill hardly heard him. “I should like you to leave now,” he said numbly. “The laudanum has been ineffective. I would like to…to be alone with her for the little time we have left together.”
Winn opened his mouth and then thought better of it. “I shall wait downstairs,” he said. “Please call me if you require any assistance.”
Quill sat numbly, in total silence, for a long time…how long he had no idea. He stopped watching Gabby, except when he spooned water into her mouth. It was too painful to see the vacancy in her face. Instead, he thought about Gabby with her halo, Gabby with golden light around her body. It should be a comforting thought, he told himself. She had slipped through his fingers like the rosy light that had surrounded her—except…except …
A harsh sound burst from his throat. “Don’t, don’t! Don’t become an angel, Gabby. I need you here.”
Silence answered him. And shame came with it. Could a servant have heard his outburst?
He looked back at Gabby, and he didn’t care if the entire household was listening outside the door. She was gone—she was gone. She had left him. So quickly, in the breath between a quarrel and a laugh, she had left him.
“No!” He screamed it now. Quill had never shown pain, but he had never encountered a pain that could not be silenced. “You must not leave, Gabby. You must come back. Please, please, don’t leave. Life”—the words caught in his throat, twisted, came forth unintelligibly from the heart—“life is nothing without you. I love you.”
All pride was gone. “Without you, I have nothing to say to anyone, Gabby. No one ever made me smile the way you do. There is no color—” But his voice failed him. He stretched out next to her on the bed, putting his head on her chest. He could hear a faint, comforting heartbeat.
And finally, in the depths of utter exhaustion and despair, he slept, ear pressed to that distant heartbeat, to the bit of Gabby left in this world.
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN HOURS LATER, or it might have been minutes. Dream Gabby’s voice called to him. “I knew you’d come to me,” he mumbled. “I knew I would see you again, once again.”
He couldn’t hear her response. He tried to open his eyes, but he was so tired, so very tired, that he couldn’t do it.
“My wife is dead,” he told her. “The real Gabby has left me, and now there’s no one but you, an angel, I suppose.” His voice caught and then steadied. “You have to go away, Dream Gabby. If I can’t have my wife, I don’t want you. My Gabby is the only one I love.”
Dream Gabby sounded a bit irritated.
In his dream Quill shook his head. “I don’t want you,” he repeated. “Go away.”
“Hmmph,” said his dream wife. But she sounded rather amused.
Quill supposed that he had better make an effort. He opened his eyes. For a moment he stared, puzzled, at the hand before him. It was a familiar hand, with slender, intelligent fingers.
Without daring to breathe, he looked up.
“Good morning, husband,” said a voice. That was his wife’s voice. And those were Gabby’s warm eyes laughing at him.
“Oh, God,” Quill said. It was a prayer and a thank-you.
His wife raised an eyebrow. “What happened to ‘Good morning, Gabby. Did you sleep well?’ Have you forgotten all the instructions I’ve given you?”
“Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely.
“No,” she said, dropping her teasing tone. “I’ve been a fool, Quill, and I need to make an apology. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I woke up. I should never have lied to you. And I should never have let my temper govern my actions like that. Why, Sudhakar’s medicine could have had serious consequences!”
Quill stared at her. “It did, Gabby.”
“The medicine?”
“Sudhakar said you were going to die. That we couldn’t save you.”
“You found him before he sailed?”
“Yes. He said—”
Gabby shrugged. “He’s ever the naysayer, Sudhakar. I’m just fine, Quill. Or at least I would be if you would move off the coverlet so that I can rise out of bed.”
&n
bsp; Her husband stared at her, not moving an inch. “I may never let you out of bed,” he said tenderly. “Oh Gabby, I love you so much.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I can’t live without you, do you know that?”
She smiled at him. “So you’re in love with me now, are you?”
“I should never have lied to you about it. But I’m glad I did, because I maneuvered you into marrying me,” he said, kissing her.
“You didn’t lie to me,” she said gently.
Quill stopped, his mouth just a breath from hers.
“You were in love with me. You just didn’t know it. Remember?” She whispered, “I burn, I pine, I perish.”
And Quill remembered his burning wish to marry his brother’s fiancée, the way in which he breached every code of gentlemanly behavior in order to do so. He groaned. “I suppose you are right, oh, uncomfortably intelligent wife. But”—and his lips grazed hers, very gently—“how I loved you from the first moment I saw you on the dock has no resemblance to how many fathoms deep I am in love with you now.”
“Oh, Quill,” Gabby said, before he stole her breath and sank into a kiss. But she pulled away after a few moments. “Now I have to rise from this bed,” she said with renewed vigor.
But Quill had other plans. “You cured me,” he said. “My beloved wife cured me, and now I am going to make love to her all day, and all night, and all tomorrow as well.”
Gabby stilled. Her eyes shone. “I’m in love with you as well, do you know that? I think only someone I loved as much as you could make me behave like such an idiot.”
He grinned. “Of course, I’m removing all poisons from the house. I think all heavy objects will have to go, too. My wife has a fierce temper. And”—he whispered against her lips—“I’m terrified that our children might inherit it.” He shifted his weight, bearing her backward against the pillows.
“Quill! Let me go! I have to get out of bed.”
“I want you to stay here with me.” His voice had a devilishly sensuous lilt.
“I can’t,” Gabby said.