His Californian Countess

He shook his head. “No, I’m not in the least hungry. What I am is worried for my daughter.”

So he was married. That should make caring for him easier. She set to bathing his face and neck to lessen the fever. “What is your daughter’s name?” she asked, needing to learn as much as possible about him in case a letter had to be written to his kin.

“Meara,” he said quietly. “She’s only seven years old. I’ve raised her here with the help of my old nurse.”

“Do mothers in England not help raise their children?”

“She died a few months after Meara’s birth.”

“I am so sorry. I understand your worry for your child. But have you no family to care for her? Not that I think you will not survive,” she added quickly.

“I became the earl at a tender age. My uncle was my guardian and he made my life miserable. If I die, Meara would have him as her guardian and he will succeed me. What if I die of this?” He grasped her arm in a steely grip and gazed up at her with fever-bright eyes. “I can’t die!”

Before Amber could respond, he started to breathe oddly. Almost panting. After a minute or so between breaths he said, “Oh. God. Chamber pot. Hurry.”

She got the pot to him before he was violently sick, losing all the medicine she’d fought to get into him. She stood there, feeling inadequate and embarrassed for him.

When he was finished, he nearly pitched out of the narrow bed from weakness. Amber made a grab for both his shoulder and the pot. She pushed him to the pillow, then took the foul-smelling pot to the porthole and dumped it. The sea air smelled so refreshing she left it open.

When she looked back at him he was no longer awake, lying so still it frightened her till she saw his chest rise with a breath. Her worry over treating him as a patient, after the sensual dreams she’d had, vanished. She hesitantly laid her hand over his heart. And wished she hadn’t, for his heart didn’t beat at the same rate as hers. It fluttered in so quick a rhythm she could scarcely count the beats.

His skin beneath her hand was dry and burning to the touch. His neck, shoulders and most of his torso were bright red with the rash. And her only weapons in the battle were a cool cloth, the powders Dr. Bennet had given her and the herbal teas she’d concocted.

She worked at it hour upon hour. Sometimes she wiped him down and, occasionally, when her arms and legs grew too tired to work, she covered his torso, limbs and forehead with wet cloths. That respite gave her the strength to begin all over again.

Twice more through the night she spooned the powders mixed with water into his mouth. She constantly tried to get him to drink the tea. He was often like a little bird, taking what was offered, but with his eyes shut. Other times he shook his head, refusing anything nourishing.

He developed a rattling cough about the noon hour the next day. She looked in her book, but neither there nor in the doctor’s instructions was a cough mentioned. Exhausted, with little sleep since the first night aboard, Amber sat next to his bed, put her head back and slept.

In her dreams Lord Adair visited. Manly, healthy and hungry—for her. Now that she knew his name she moaned it aloud as he kissed her. “Jamie.”

Chapter Three

Jamie woke, his skin on fire. His bed pitched and tilted, making his head swim. “Stop!” he yelled and was immediately sorry. He took a gasping breath past a throat that must have been sliced to ribbons by some fiend with a knife. Then someone raked fire across his chest. But the fire was cold. He shivered. Cold should feel good, but it made his skin burn all the more.

“I’m so sorry,” a sweet voice crooned. “I’m trying to keep your fever down. Maybe if I just laid the cloth on your chest. Would that feel better? I’m sorry I didn’t know this hurt you so.”

The voice. He knew that voice. He forced his eyes open. “Pixie? Is it you?”

“My name is Amber. I do believe thinking of me as Helena is less annoying than this fixation you have with pixies. Why do you persist in this?”

What a foolish question, he thought. “You look … like a pixie,” he gasped. “Tiny.”

“I’m quite capable.” His pixie grew somehow, then seemed to float over him, frowning down at him. Her frown wasn’t the least threatening, though. It was quite the most adorable frown he’d ever seen. He smiled 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. Please don’t! No! Damn you to hell for hurting her!” Jamie called out, tossing on the narrow bed.

Amber grabbed his shoulders while trying to hold on to him. The stool she stood on rocked under her feet. “Jamie! Calm down,” she ordered in her schoolroom voice.

He stilled instantly and opened his eyes. His voice rawer for his shouting, he rasped out, “You can’t … let it happen. She’s sweet and innocent. He … he’s a monster.”

“All I can do is keep taking care of you.”

“Marry me. Be Meara’s mother. She needs you. You don’t know what he’d do. He’d break her. Nearly broke me, but I had Mimm and Alex. She’d love you, Pixie.”

He knew her again. He knew who he was asking—begging to marry him before it was too late to help his child. Could she do it? Could she marry him and care for the child he spoke of with such love? She’d wanted children for as long as she could remember. But she’d buried that dream with Joseph.

“Don’t think it … to death.” He chuckled, but it was a heartbreaking sound.

Amber wanted to remember the man on deck, handsome and smiling and kind. Not this hollow-eyed near-corpse. She forced her thoughts to his strange proposal. “I’m all alone, Jamie. How could I care for a child?”

“How can you not? I’m dying. You know it. I know it. There’s money. You wouldn’t have to worry about means. That old pile in Ireland would go to Oswald and he can have it along with the title he’s wanted my whole life. But please don’t let him have Meara. You have to promise to protect her.”

“He’s powerful. He’d take all the money, Jamie. I couldn’t fight him. I’m going to be a governess in California. What kind of life would that be for a little girl who should have been wealthy?”

He frowned, looking thoughtful. “I’ll write a codicil,” he said at last.

“You could barely hold a pen.”

“Then you write it. I’ll sign it. Make Captain Baker witness it. Figure it out. Save her, damn it. Please. At least let me rest in peace.”

“Stop it! I’m not letting you die! Then you’d be stuck with me when all this turns out okay. I’m not countess material no matter where I spent the years I was at college.”

Again that thoughtful look entered his eyes. “Then, if I live, when the voyage ends, we’ll annul it.”

Amber bit her lip. A child. A little girl who’d be all alone but for a man her father clearly loathed. He said there’d be money so Meara would never want for anything. There was little she could do but agree and that made it just a bit vexing. Everyone else’s problems kept forcing her into doing outrageous things.

“All right,” she said, annoyed. “I’ll call out to the young man assigned to us. He can see if the captain will do what you want about the codicil and if the minister I met will marry us. He’s very afraid of becoming ill, so he may refuse. He most likely should.”

“So fierce, Pixie.” He reached up and traced her jawline.

She shivered at his touch.

“And fierce is what I need just now. Protect my princess.”

“You most likely won’t remember all this when you wake up again, but I’ll ask.”

Amber knocked on the door and asked the cabin boy to fetch Captain Baker and the reverend. Then she went back to the bed with her notebook. “Are you still with me?”

“Aye. Write this. To the firm of Bootey and Fowler, New York, New York. This is a codicil to my last will and testament. I hereby appoint my wife …” He waved his hand weakly toward her notebook and swallowed. After a breath and a long pause he said, “Put your whole name there, Pixie, and … uh … add the date … my wife as guardian … to my Meara … Reynolds, my daughter.”

He stopped talking, closed his eyes, then, just when she thought that was all he wanted to say, he blinked his eyes open and added, “She is to administer the trust set up at the Brooklyn Trust Company. The rest of my financial estate shall pass into her ownership. Under no circumstances should any other individual lay claim to any part of my estate or to the guardianship of the child, Meara Reynolds.

“That ought to do it,” he said. “Where the hell is Baker? And that minister.”

A knock sounded on the door and Amber hurried to it. “Captain E. C. Baker, ma’am. What can be done to assist you?”

“The earl wishes to—to—” The words stuck in her throat. “He wishes to marry me for the sake of his daughter. He fears he will perish and leave her orphaned.”

Reverend Willis had apparently accompanied Captain Baker and he shouted through the door, “You wish me to perform a marriage ceremony?”

This bellowing through the door was just stupid. It had been a week and a day and she had not sickened. She flung the door open and was surprised to see a well turned-out officer standing next to a tall, thin man in unrelieved black. Captain Baker had tightly curling salt-and-pepper hair and a full closely trimmed beard to match. After her meeting with Dr. Bennet and his smelly liquor breath, she’d not known what to expect of another ship’s officer. “No, he does,” she said. “I think this an absurd idea, but there is his motherless child to consider, though I have assured him he will live through this sickness.”

“I am sorry Dr. Bennet has caused you so much trouble. He should have quarantined you in your cabin and cared for the man himself. Unfortunately, the best doctors do not accept positions on sailing ships.”

“We are well past that point now, sir.”

“The will,” Jamie rasped from the bed.

“What was that?” Captain Baker demanded, frowning.

Of course, he had not heard. It had been said much too softly to have been heard even the seven or eight feet to the door. “The earl has dictated a change to his will. He wants you to witness it.”

“My dear young woman, this is unconscionable. You are clearly taking advantage. I do not think this is wise, milord,” E. C. Baker called into the room.

“My … idea,” Jamie rasped back louder than before, then took a gasping breath.

“I’ve disputed this,” Amber told the captain. “He is resolute. And this arguing is sapping his strength.”

The captain pursed his lips and stroked his beard as he thought over the problem. “Very well. Has he signed this codicil to his will?”

“I thought it would be better if you sign before he touches the page. I have a health book that says objects the sick person touches can carry infection.”

Baker raised an eyebrow and stared as if considering her. Then he nodded. “Fine. We will do the ceremony first,” Baker said to Reverend Willis.

Willis nodded back. “I’ll need the names.”

“The man taken ill is Lord Jamie Reynolds, Earl of Adair, and this is Miss Helena Conwell.”

“Excuse me,” Amber interrupted. “My name is Amber Dodd. I am merely traveling in Helena’s stead. We traded places in our accommodations.”

“So you truly didn’t know the earl?” Captain Baker asked.

“I didn’t. It was a bit of a mistaken identity,” she said. “Helena failed to inform the earl of the change in her travel plans.” She glanced at the bed. “Jamie, are you still with us?”

“What’s holding … this back?”

She looked toward the men in the doorway. “Captain? Reverend?”

Reverend Willis cleared his throat and motioned Amber back to the bed. “I don’t know how to address a man of English peerage so we’ll just go with both his names. Make sure this is all legal and binding. Jamie Reynolds, Earl of Adair,” he said in a loud voice, “do you take this woman, Amber Dodd, for your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do, Pixie,” Jamie rasped and smiled sadly.

The minister went on, unaware of the poignant moment. “And do you, Amber Dodd, take Jamie Reynolds, Earl of Adair, for your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do,” she said.

Amber was grateful he had dispensed with all the promises they’d likely never be called on to test. And he certainly needn’t mention that death would part them. It was standing in the room, a dark witness, ready to claim him.

Captain Baker then read aloud the codicil and signed it at Jamie’s nod. Then Jamie scrawled his signature upon it. She returned to the door. “I will pray for his life, ma’am,” the captain said.

“And I will continue to do the same,” Reverend Willis added. “I will also write up the marriage papers and give them into the captain’s keeping.”

She nodded her thanks, then closed the door.

“It is done then?” Jamie asked.

“It is, but the entire affair was unnecessary. You’re going to get well. I’ve promised, haven’t I? I never break a promise.”

His energy spent, he nodded slightly, smiled sadly, then took a ring off his little finger and slid it on hers. It fit. She wondered if that was prophetic. And if it was a prophecy, what did it mean? Was she destined to wear it as his widow or, queer thought that it was, did it mean they were destined for each other? Whichever it was, while she stared at her left hand, he fell back to sleep.

Amber stored the codicil in her trunk and resumed bathing him, fighting the fever ravaging his body. She wanted him to live, but the longer he hung on, hovering between life and death, the more she cared about him. She prayed that if he were to die God would take him before she cared even more for him. But then she quickly revised her thought because the truth was … she already cared for him too much.

And now she was married to him.

This adventure had become her worst nightmare come true.

Chapter Four

Jamie opened his eyes and found her standing over him. He’d never have thought such selflessness would be part of her character. And the plainness of her dress and even plainer hairstyle surprised him, too. He hadn’t thought Helena, an upper-class princess, would own a garment so worn and simple. “Oh, you’re back again,” she said in that sweet voice. It lured him from sleep time and again even though pain awaited.

“And you’re still here,” he quipped, scarcely recognizing the hoarse sound of his own voice.

“I promised you I’d be here. Will you try to take some broth and tea? I think my grandmother’s recipe is keeping your fever down a bit.”

Just then sunlight flooded through the skylight and illuminated her lovely face. It wasn’t Helena. It was Pixie. He struggled to gather a name from his fevered brain. She was Amber. He’d thought she must be part of a dream, but she was real. So he had met her on deck.

Jamie nodded to her question about the broth and tea. He didn’t feel up to eating or drinking, but he didn’t want to disappoint her. She was taking care of him. The least he could do was cooperate and help himself.

Her lovely smile made the agony of swallowing worth the pain. He didn’t feel the same way when he tasted the bitter liquid he’d watched her mix with water and the contents of an envelope. “That last … quite disgusting,” he complained.

She laughed and laid a cool cloth on his forehead. “Your opinion of the doctor notwithstanding, we need to do everything we can to get you well. Meara is counting on us.”

Us? Jamie frowned as a fog rose between them and he felt his mind begin to descend into chaos. He fought to hold on to clarity, but could feel it slipping away. “Meara? You know my wee one?”

The pixie frowned. “No, you told me of her nearly a week ago. It’s easy to see how much you love her.”

Meara. His sweet trusting little angel. He shouldn’t have left. “Been … away … too much,” he tried to explain. He wanted to hide in his mind. He forced his eyes open and beheld captivating Helena. She floated next to his bed. Seeing her there made no sense. She hated him. But she needed protection. He had to make her see reason. “I gave … my word.” Speaking had grown agonizing, but she had to understand. “His blood … on my hands. Promised … Least … I can do. Died to save me.”

Amber sighed. So she was Helena again. Why did that bother her so much? She stared down at Jamie’s tortured expression and forgot her own upset. She knew the story of Harry Conwell’s murder and it clearly haunted Jamie.

He stared up at her, now engulfed in delirium. She decided to play along. What difference did it make if a delirious man thought she was someone else?

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him. “It was someone angry over his mining interests.”

“Not sure,” Jamie whispered. “Gowery said … but … I wonder—” His eyelids slid closed.

He was gone again, but he had been lucid for a longer time than he’d been in nearly a week. Since the day he’d pushed her to marry him.

Amber plunked down on the stool next to the bed. Lord above! She’d married him. She’d come to care for him. And he could still die. His fever kept spiking toward sundown. She wanted to believe he’d live so badly, but even his recovery posed a huge problem for her—for her heart. While he’d been lost in delusions and delirium, she’d seen the honorable man his unguarded mind revealed him to be. And more and more she became ensnared and enthralled by a pair of fevered violet eyes.