Someone knocked at the door. I squeezed the strange latch, expecting Father or Montgomery or one of the natives.
But it was Edward.
“Oh.” The one word was all I could manage. Seeing him brought back the dream with a powerful rush. I bunched my hands in the soft fabric of my skirt to remind myself I was dressed. This wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t some shifting specter. I closed my eyes and leaned in the doorway, dizzy.
“Juliet? Are you well?” Concern crinkled the skin around his eyes. He took my arm and led me to the desk. He poured water from a pitcher into a glazed glass. “Sit down. Have some water.”
I took the glass with shaking fingers.
“I came to see if you were awake. You’ve been asleep nearly eighteen hours.”
“My carpetbag. In the corner. Bring it here, please.”
He picked up the ragged thing and set it on the desk without question. I dug through it for the stamped wooden box that held my medication. I opened it and removed one of the glass vials and the syringe. His eyebrows raised, curious.
“It’s a chronic illness,” I said. “A glycogen deficiency. I have to take a daily injection or . . . I get dizzy.” I left out the part about the coma. Edward had his secrets. I could keep a few of my own.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
I set the tip of the needle against the vial’s opening. “It’s rare.”
He watched, fascinated, as I punctured the vial lid and drew in twenty-five milligrams of the treatment. My hands knew the movement by habit, but I’d never injected myself with someone watching.
I concentrated on the needle. When it was full, I set it aside and unbuttoned my shirt cuff, rolling it slightly past my inner elbow. Edward shifted closer. I cleared my throat, the dream still too fresh.
I pressed the tip of the needle to my elbow, above the ghostly blue vein just below the skin. I slid it past the surface, barely flinching, and pierced the vein. My thumb depressed the lever, and the treatment melted into my blood. I let out a sigh.
Edward watched from the corner of his eye. I withdrew the needle, wiped it carefully, and put it back in the box.
The sunlight flickered over the walls. Clouds were forming.
“You spoke with Father yesterday,” I said. “What did he say?”
The flecks in Edward’s eyes glowed. He didn’t answer.
“Did he apologize for nearly drowning you at least?”
His gaze drifted, cataloging every item in my room. “He strikes me as the sort who’s never apologized for anything.”
“You are perceptive.”
“We worked out a bit of an . . . arrangement. I don’t think he has any intention of murdering me in my sleep, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I rolled down my sleeve and fastened the button. The treatment was already making me clearheaded. I peered at Edward, the flesh-and-blood young man in my room, not the dream specter. Whatever he and Father had spoken of, he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Well, I’m sorry. If I’d known that’s how he would react—”
“Don’t. It’s hardly your fault.”
I ran my fingers around the worn box edge. “I suppose you’re going to tell me your suspicions were right. That only a madman would live out here.”
His fingers traced circles on the desk. “It’s not just him, Juliet. They carry an arsenal just to step outside. What are they so afraid of?”
I drummed my fingers on the box nervously. Remembering how in my dream the light from the swinging kerosene lamp lit his face as his hands traced over my na**d skin.
“Did you undress me last night?” I asked bluntly.
He couldn’t hide his surprise. He ran his hand over the tangled hair on the back of his neck. “Undress you?”
I squeezed the box, feeling foolish, like I had tested a theory too early. “Never mind,” I said quickly.
“Why would you think . . . ?”
“I woke up in a nightdress I didn’t put on.”
For a moment his eyes searched mine, trying to peer into my head. Studying the sound of our silence. His lips parted, asking a question without ever saying a word.
Would you want me to undress you?
He’d hinted at his interest, but how could he expect me to think about such things at a time like this, when I’d just met my father after years apart? And there was Montgomery to consider, and that near kiss, and Edward didn’t even begin to know me. If he knew some of the things I had done, the dark things I sometimes thought, he’d change his mind.
“I didn’t undress you,” he said, and the silence that came next was heavy between us.
Breath slipped from my lips, pressed by some invisible force. A connection was growing between us, pulsating between us, in time with the beating of my heart. That might not be my last dream about Edward Prince, I realized. And the next one might not be unwelcome.
Fifteen
WE LEFT MY ROOM and found Father and Montgomery in the main building. The entire ground floor was one large, high-ceilinged room with wide shutters angled to let in air but keep out the sun. A dinner table sat behind a seating area with a fireplace and stone mantel. A simple staircase led to a second-floor landing with two more shut doors, and another door on the ground floor that might have led to the kitchen. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of fine but threadbare Rococo-style furniture and a few crudely handmade wooden chairs and tables. In the corner was a piano, its black wood dented and one leg broken, but polished to a high gleam. A sigh slipped from my lips. A breath of elegance whispered here that I hadn’t expected to find.
Montgomery looked up from cleaning a rifle on the table. He jumped to his feet, wiping his hands on a rag. Just seeing him made me blush, remembering the near kiss in my room that had unwittingly transformed him to Edward in my dream.
But maybe I’d been misinterpreting. Maybe Montgomery had just been caught up in the dizzying memories of the past, and it hadn’t meant anything more. I’d been the one practically throwing myself against him, after all. The ways of men and women were such a puzzle. And I could barely decipher my own feelings, let alone anyone else’s.
Father put down his book and looked me over. “Ah, you’re wearing one of Evelyn’s dresses. She didn’t like it, I seem to recall. Too plain. Come sit and have a cup of tea. You’ve missed breakfast by a few hours, I’m afraid.”
My feet stumbled into the room on his order. A strange sensation overcame me, as though I were stepping into a memory. Something about the placement of the furniture perhaps. Or the smell of Father’s tobacco. Something from long ago that had sunk into that delicate space between the conscious and subconscious.