Verity never remembered how she got from Neil's room to the one she woke in later that day, but she when she did wake it was to find herself sprawled, still in her travelling gown, over a four-poster bed in a completely alien room.
Without waiting to change her clothes or find a meal, she wrapped the shawl around herself and headed for the door. Outside was the same hallway that led to Neil's room, so she was relieved the anxiety of wandering the manor. When she walked in, he was sitting up, and Mrs Roper, eyes darkly creased with exhaustion, was helping him drink from a mug of beef tea.
The sight was such a relief that Verity barely managed to make it to her seat. She smiled wanly at Neil.
"Do you feel better?"
Neil wiped beef tea from his chin with a weak hand and frowned at her. "Perhaps." His voice was slow and full of effort.
It was the frown that told Verity he did not recognize her. Not this morning. She did not explain herself, but wiped his chin with a towel, and rearranged his pillows.
"If you are tired, you should go back to sleep," she suggested.
"If I sleep, I'll miss Giulia."
Mrs Roper's eyes met Verity's in warning.
"Who is Julia?" Verity asked guilelessly.
"She is..." His eyes clouded over. "Do you know.... I can't... be sure."
"When she comes," Verity said kindly, "I will wake you up. I won't let you miss her."
"You will?" He looked at her with the trust of a child. "I thought she was here before â but she wasn't. It wasn't her. It was..." He frowned. "It was you, wasn't it?"
"Yes." She took his hand gently. "I was here all night. But Julia did not come. When she does, I will take her to you."
Neil nodded slowly. "I feel that I can trust you â I must have known you... from a while back."
"It was a lifetime ago, but we were very good friends â we still are."
There was an element in this of pacifying her drunken father. She knew not to contradict the reality he had constructed for himself, but to allay his fears, and perhaps it worked, for his eyelids closed slowly and a moment later he was asleep.
"You should eat something, love," Mrs Roper said, and yawned. "He's been dosed with laudanum just now. He'll sleep for some time. You needn't stay."
"If he's sleeping, then you should go to bed too. You haven't been up all night, have you?"
"I had a nap or two. But it's harder than it used to be." Mrs Roper squeezed her shoulder as she passed. "I think you're right. I'll go."
She left, and Verity was alone with him again. The frantic fever of last night as long gone. There was nothing left but a confused exhaustion. She kissed him on the cheek, and whispered that she loved him, and went to find somebody who would give her breakfast.
Downstairs, she found herself by Lord Albroke's office, and entered. He was behind the desk, writing. He looked up and scowled.
"He's not dead," Verity said. "Can I assume our deal from last night stands?"
"It stands." He dropped his pen on the desk. "Your bedroom is the one you woke in. You shall stay there until the baby is born. We have no women's maids in this household, but the chambermaids shall serve you."
"I should like to eat something."
"The servants will do as you tell them. Stay out of my sight, as long as there is nothing of business to talk about."
Verity curtsied. "Good day, My Lord."
She waylaid a footman, and arranged for a meal to be brought to Neil's room, and while that was cooking, rang the bell in her room and had a maid help her change into fresh clothing. Someone's foresight â she suspected Richard's more than Lord Albroke's but never found out â had had her belongings brought up the night before.
It was a quiet and uneventful meal, and quiet afterwards too, when she sat by Neil's side and watched him and waited, but she was not bored. She had much to think about. She had to process every potential horror and every potential joy that lay before her. And the twin of every joy was horror. But for the first time in months, she felt at peace with her circumstances. She was not so self-unaware that she did not realize it had a lot to do with the man who lay sleeping by her side.
The old nurse came in at some point in the afternoon, and checked Neil's temperature. He woke. He had more beef tea. He was quieter then, and asked no questions of Giulia or anybody else. For some time he sat awake in the quiet. Verity made no attempt at conversation, and nor did he. Again, he fell asleep.
Mid-afternoon, Richard returned. His hair had been brushed and oiled back over his head and he had shaved, but he was dressed in the same suit as yesterday â now, significantly more creased. He sent away the nurse, and sat down with Verity.
"What do you plan on doing?" He asked, in a low voice. "If you had stayed away... it would be safer."
"I know. But I can't leave him. I just can't. I told him he's got to keep fighting, and it's no good telling somebody such a thing unless you're willing to be there with them. And if he... then, I should be here for him then too. And afterwards, eventually, you will help me, won't you?" She gestured to her belly. "With this?"
"Yes. I made that stupid vow to you. I'll never revoke it."
She gave him an uncomfortable smile. "I'm not sure how it's going to work out. If Neil dies, I will quite definitely need your help. If he gets better, then I can only imagine he will protect me himself. But I can't think that far. I can only think that he needs me here, so I can't go."
"He does need you." Richard stood, and looked over at his sleeping brother. "I hope he doesn't die. But-"
He didn't finish it. Instead, he nodded his head at Verity, and limped away.
The days that followed were much like the first. Verity would stay by Neil's side, and hold his hand, and reply to his nonsensical questions, while Mrs Roper and the old nurse did the real nursing. She wondered how Neil had ever had the resources to be so sane and strong as in the convent. Most days, he woke into a patchwork of reality, in which past and present had been cut up into pieces, and put back together all wrong, with most of the pieces missing. One day, when he was comparatively sane, and knew her name, they had a conversation that sent chills down Verity's spine.
"You must eat," she began, coaxingly.
"I don't want to," he refused. He was in one of his most brutish moods: childish, and stubborn, and angry.
"If you don't eat, you won't get better." She held the barley soup temptingly before him.
"I don't want to get better."
"You mean, you wish to stay in bed forever?"
"No." He pushed the soup away. "I don't mean that."
It took her a moment to realize what he meant. "You want to die."
He glowered at her silently. Mrs Roper had just taken a break, and they were alone in the room.
"I want you to live, Neil," Verity said faintly. "I very much want you to live. Why don't you?"
"This isn't life." He pointed dismissively at the soup, the nurse's table of medications, the bed. "This is death's doorstep, carpeted in silk, and scented with flowers."
She put the tray down on the bed, and wrapped her fingers around his bony wrist. "You frighten me," she said softly. "You are too thin. If your body gets stronger, what is wrong in your mind may get better too... so, you must eat."
He pulled his wrist from her grasp. "My mind isn't broken when I say I want to stop fighting."
"Then it's your heart." She looked away. "The woman who broke it is dead. You know that right now, don't you? You won't find her by dying. But you know that too. You want to go where nothing can be found. If you don't eat, I shall call the footmen to hold you down and force it down your throat."
It was the only time she truly opposed his wills, that day, and in the end, she made good on her promise. Her reasoning was that, if he remembered, she would never have to subject him to more than the threat of it again. During the days when he was sane, he did remember, and even held a grudge for it. But the nights when he lay awake, half-conscious, fretting, and she held his hand and whispered back to him â he trusted her more then, when he did not know who she was.
She thought perhaps there would be some improvement, with time, but he neither got better nor worse, merely through brief bad and brief sane spells. Her triumph was that he did gain weight, on a diet composed of beef tea, and barley soup, and gruel and soft-boiled eggs. In May, buttered toast was added to the menu at his request: he desired something to chew. She thought it was a very good sign.
After that, even, he was allowed to sit up in the chair by the fire, or by the window, and look out, and she would sit with him. One day they were sitting there during one of his bad spells, and she coaxed him through the realization that Giulia was not coming. He thought he was strong enough to leave and go to her instead, and when he rose to try, she had to drag him back to the chair. During the scuffle, he elbowed her in the waist, and she gave a little gasp, and sat down on the bed.
"Oh â Oh, I did not mean â Have I hurt you?" He was instantly the gentleman she knew, contrite, concerned, kind.
"It was just a surprise." She put a hand to the spot. The baby seemed to be kicking in indignation. "I shall bruise â but there is no harm done."
He was red with contrition and sat down with her. "I'm very sorry â but I so urgently want to find my wife."
"I understand, Mr Armiger," She said quietly, for this was one of the days when he found it disturbing to be addressed as Neil, "But you are not well, and you must wait until you are better to go to her."
"I did not harm you?"
"No." She smiled. "The baby is kicking me quite as ferociously most of the day anyway. I am pleased to learn that you have grown such strength."
It was an awkward little silence. When Neil did not recognize her as his wife or lover, he accepted her as having the rightness to belong, but did not seem to place her as relative or servant. She wondered how he explained her advanced pregnancy in his mind. Perhaps that was what embarrassed him.
But she saw, by the growing flush and confusion on his face, that he was once more coming to. He knew who she was, and why she was pregnant.
"What do you need?" she asked gently.
"I feel so ashamed," he muttered, and said nothing further the rest of the day. That night was one of his bad spells again. Verity waited up until the early hours of the morning with him, while he sweated under a fever and went through quick intervals of knowing who he was, or not understanding. Lord Albroke even stayed in the room for some time before midnight when he was perfectly sane, if broken under the hot fever. Breaking away from the poultice for a moment, Neil stared at Verity.
"I married you."
"Yes," she said calmly. "Here, let me wipe your face." She wiped away the sweat on his brow. "Are you warm? Cold?"
"Very cold." He shivered, and she drew the blankets deeper over, a movement that made him shudder with pain. "Then you're my wife."
"Yes," she said calmly. "Do you know my name?"
"I must." What he mumbled next was lost. He shut his eyes, and may have slipped into unconsciousness that was neither sleep nor faint, but some grey horror between.
"Is he remembering before the accident?" Lord Albroke said musingly. "Mr Linfield said he would remember no more."
"I don't know. Perhaps." She had no doubt in her mind that Neil was referring to the nunnery. Thankfully, the physician spoke up, keen to defend his theory:
"He may be quite mad at this moment. I do not believe these are memories."
As though in confirmation, Neil opened his eyes, and stared earnestly at Verity. "Do you know it's not fighting spirit, but valour. Well I've got none of it."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure!" He jerked up in bed for a moment, sending a poultice and the bedclothes flying, and grabbed her shoulders. "Well that's my other sin! Uncertainty!"
His hands were burningly hot against her flesh. His fingers were twisted through the fringe of her shawl, which pulled painfully at the back of her neck. For a moment, she was stunned, and thought perhaps he was mad. But there was nothing of madness in his eyes just now.
"I shouldn't say my other," he mumbled, "Because I've got so many, but it's one of them. I never know one way or the other. I can't come and I can't go. Other people have convictions. I wish I had a conviction. All I have is questions. And no one to ask that isn't a liar."
"I'm not a liar." She pried his hands carefully from her shoulder, and pushed him gently back.
"But that's exactly what a liar would say." A hurt expression entered his eyes for a moment, then they folded shut, and he fell back amongst the pillows. He was not sleeping, not quite yet. He turned and fretted in the grey semi-consciousness.
Mr Linfield came forward, and laid a hand lightly on Neil's chest and wrist for a few moments. "It is time for the laudanum."
Verity watched, heart thumping, as the nurse dosed Neil with the tincture of laudanum. Some time later, Neil stilled, and seemed to be sleeping.
It hurt her, to see him dosed like this. And the times when the physician urged them to resort to drugs, and not let him sleep naturally, seemed to be increasing.
On the way back to her room that night, Richard followed her down the hall.
"I've been thinking," he said softly, when they stopped outside her door. "He has asked about Jane once or twice. She is living in her own home, not very far from here. It might do him good to see her, on a day when he is otherwise well."
"And you ask me for permission?" She tried to smile, but she was tired, and could only think how passionately she hated Jane.
It must have showed on her face. "No. Your opinion. Which I can see is not favourable."
She breathed out slowly. Her feelings did not matter. Neil would have forgotten the kiss, along with everything else. And Jane was fun, when she wasn't being awful. Verity did not hate her so much to have forgotten that.
"It might lift his spirits," she said slowly. "I don't think I'm much good at that."
Richard tilted his head to one side and examined her through half-closed eyes. "Not when your own spirits need lifting. That why I thought of Jane. You can't keep her down. She's incorrigible."
"But she keeps me down," Verity admitted wryly. "When he has a good morning, bring her. But warn me first. I'd like to keep out of her way."
~~
A/N: the next five or so chapters, including this one, have a lot of editing in them, which I may or may not have half-assed today. Was I supposed to put a chapter up today or tomorrow? Can't remember here it is anyway.