His Californian Countess. Kate Welsh

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СКАЧАТЬ at that. Although he felt like death, she lightened his spirits. “Ever met … a pixie?” he challenged. “Wily … creatures. Eire’s full of … the little people.”

      “But we’re in America. Well, not exactly there just now, as we’re on the high seas, but this is an American ship. It’s even called the Young America.”

      He struggled to grasp that. “On a ship? Why am I … on a ship?”

      “You were searching for Helena Conwell and mistook me for her,” his pixie explained.

      He was looking for Helena? Oh, yes. He had to make sure she was safe. And he’d left Meara in New York recuperating. He swallowed. Oh, God. He was sick. He wasn’t supposed to get sick. Not like this. What if he died and left Meara to the mercy of Uncle Oswald? She wasn’t safe.

      Tears blinded him and he closed his eyes to hide the depth of his emotions. “Meara,” he said, wanting to explain why his lovely nursemaid had to make sure he lived, but the name came out sounding as if he were crying. He kept his eyes closed, feeling the tears he couldn’t stop run into his hair. Embarrassed and desperate, he decided to hide in the sleep that called to him. He’d hidden the real him for years and done a good job of it. He could do it again.

      The next time he woke it was night and a lantern lit the room. He lay, watching the lantern swing to the same rhythm as the rocking of the room. Why would a room move? he asked himself. Earthquake? He’d felt minor tremors in California, but those never made the room rock this way. He closed his eyes, dizziness swamping him, and groaned.

      “Jamie?”

      It was the pixie calling softly to him. She laid a cool cloth over his forehead. He opened his eyes again. Bathed in the light from overhead, he saw her. “You’ve returned,” he said, then winced at how painful his throat was.

      “I didn’t leave. You fell asleep. You must try to stay with me this time. Could you eat some fresh broth?”

      He shook his head. He hated to disappoint her, but he couldn’t imagine eating anything with the room swaying as it was.

      “We could talk,” she said hopefully.

      He winced. “Hurts.”

      “Then I’ll talk.”

      And talk she did. She told him about her adventures. About her visit to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she’d worn her Easter finery on their famous boardwalk by the sea. She told amusing stories about the students she’d taught, and about going to college and the wealthy girls who’d been kind and shared their clothes and family holidays with her.

      He fell asleep again to the sound of her sweet voice and she followed him into his dreams. But worry followed him, too. He was suddenly young again and Pixie was his teacher. Uncle Oswald was there and Jamie was under his uncle’s control again.

      Then Meara was in the house.

      And it changed. It was wrong. Now the object of his uncle’s ire was Meara. And as a young boy Jamie tried to protect her, but had no power to do so. He screamed her name as the blows fell on her and he cursed his uncle to hell.

      His eyes flew open to find his magical pixie staring down at him with concerned eyes. “You shouted. Are you all right? Can I help?” she asked and took the hot cloth off his head.

      “I’m worse,” he whispered and grabbed her wrist after she set the cooled cloth back on his forehead. “You know I am.”

      She covered his hand with her free one. “You’re warmer. I’m trying everything I know.”

      He let go of her. “I know you are … Pixie.”

      “My name is Amber. I’m not magic,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes and voice. “If I were, you’d be on the mend.”

      “How long?”

      “Don’t talk like that. You have to get better for your Meara.”

      “Not till … I die. How long … have I … been sick?”

      She wiped her pert nose on a dainty handkerchief. “It’s been a week.”

      “And you’re … so tired … else you wouldn’t … be crying … over me.” Her image wavered and he tried to see her more clearly, but to no avail. “Don’t even like me,” he muttered. “Never have.”

      Amber frowned and pushed an annoying stray hair off her forehead. What was going through that fevered mind of his? “It isn’t true that I don’t like you. I hardly knew you before needing to care for you. If I didn’t like you, I’d have told the doctor to go hang.”

      He narrowed his eyes as if trying to puzzle something out. “Would you marry me, Helena?”

      Disappointment pressed in on Amber. He’d seemed to know her. And now he didn’t. He’d closed his eyes again. Amber called softly to him, but she knew it was futile. She’d lost him again.

      As long as she didn’t lose him altogether. He was so worried about his poor motherless daughter. It was poignant, but confusing. Why was he not with her? Would he neglect the child he loved because this obsession of his with Helena was so all consuming? Sadly it seemed to be. He’d just asked the woman to marry him, hadn’t he?

      It made her a bit cross with him. He had a child who relied on him. What she wouldn’t give for the chance to be a parent. Nothing would be more important to her than her child. She knew what it was like to be orphaned. The loneliness and grief had nearly torn her apart on that long train ride east. But she’d been lucky enough to have her aunt and uncle meet her and envelope her in loving arms. Even though Aunty had been sick for so long before she was gone, too, Amber had been secure in the love of the adults in her life even when it was only her and Uncle Charles.

      It wasn’t long after Aunty died that he began talking of her going to a two-year boarding school where she’d be further educated with the idea that she would advance from there to Vassar. It wasn’t merely the education he’d wanted for her, though. He’d wanted her away from the coal patch. And away from men like Joseph. Men who were miners. Men who could go to work one day and never return. He’d wanted more for her than pain and loss. So he’d sent her away where someone else could see she met the right people.

      But as soon as the ink was dry on her prestigious diploma, she’d moved back to the coal patch, to a town where the mine owner wanted to educate the children of his miners. And there she’d met and fallen in love with Joseph—a miner. Then, just after the banns were read the third time, Joseph died.

      She’d continued to teach, but the heart had gone out of her. In the state she was in, she’d nearly let Joseph’s mother push her on her other son. She’d woken up one day, looked around at the soot and death and seen Uncle Charles’s wisdom. And that had put her right where she was now.

      Coming to care too much for a man she was beginning to fear was about to die.

      Amber shook her head and went back to bathing him, careful of the rash he’d said hurt when she ran the wet cloths over it. She’d checked her grandmother’s book and sure enough, it mentioned that the rash was painful and burned.

      “No, Uncle Oswald. СКАЧАТЬ