He shook his head, remembering all too well the gaunt cheeks that did nothing to detract from the brightness of his smile. “They expected he wouldn’t live but a few more years. He surprised them all though. He always fought. Always. Because he knew we needed him.”
Libby lifted his hand, wrapped her other around it, and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, knotting him up inside. And unknotting him too. “My father died of consumption,” she said. “It was a long process. Terrible. Some days I wished it would just happen quickly, so he wouldn’t be in such pain. Other days, I was so very thankful for the extra time with him. The quiet moments at his bedside, when we could whisper together. I think I got to know him better in those two years of illness than in all the years before.”
Oliver nodded. “I’ve wondered if I would have been as close to Morgan if he had been healthy. If we would have been such friends if he’d been able to go his own way. I can never know, of course. This was the only Morgan we really knew. The one who was so very aware of how big a gift each day was. The one who loved us so fully, because we were his whole life.” He shook his head. “We didn’t have to be. He was the eldest, the heir. And for a few years there, he was stronger than he’d been before. He could have married—there was a girl who was sweet on him. She’d have said yes in a heartbeat. But he said it would be unfair to her. To give her only a year or two and then loneliness. And to risk . . . to risk having a child with the same infirmities.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “I daresay this girl would have disagreed.”
“Probably, had he ever given her the choice. I could never convince him to approach her. It was while I was at university, and I wasn’t home often. Had I been . . .” Another shake of his head. “She left for the mainland right after his funeral. I see her parents still. They tell me she’s married, is happy. So perhaps Morgan was wise in his stubbornness.”
Or perhaps he’d chosen loneliness not just for Daisy’s sake, but for Oliver’s. He’d always suspected it. “Honestly, I think he felt guilty for all the money we’d spent on treatments over the years. After our parents died, he refused any more, anything beyond routine. He said he didn’t want to squander my inheritance on quacks hawking medicine that wouldn’t work. My inheritance.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, though it only made Morgan’s image all the clearer in his mind. Looking at him with that love. That selflessness. “As if any of that mattered more than having him for one more day, one more week, one more month. I’d have given it all for him. And he should have let me. It was his, not mine.”
“I can understand his thoughts though. He wanted to provide for his family in whatever way he could. He wanted to leave you with a legacy, not debt or resentments. My father—he apologized over and again for his illness’s taking over our lives. As if I would have traded those days with him for a debut Season at the prearranged time.”
She had the right of it. Morgan had been that very way. He tugged their joined hands over so he could take a turn at kissing her knuckles. “I don’t want to lose her, Libby. Not yet. I’m not ready. And I know I’ll never be ready, but . . . but now I’m really not.”
“I’m not either.” A smile trembled its way onto her lips. “I’ve only just found her. I know I haven’t the claim on her that you or your family or the islanders do, but . . . but I want the chance to.”
A corner of his own mouth tugged up in response. And his free hand lifted to rest on her neck, under her ear, without his being aware of giving it the command. “She’s certainly claimed you. I think that gives you every right to claim her back.”
He really ought to drop his hand and step away. But she leaned toward him, and he was helpless to do anything but meet her, lips to lips. Heart to heart. Their fingers untangled, giving him the freedom to slide an arm around her waist, hers wrapping around him.
For those few glorious moments, there was only her and them and this—a primal need to know and be known and belong there with another. There was the simmer in his veins that no one else had ever ignited and the thudding of his heart that said this was right. There was the fog of pleasure that masked, just for a minute, the pain of the last twenty-four hours.
Then there was the aching certainty that it was only that. A minute. A moment stolen from time that it would demand back. An impossibility. He broke away with a sigh and rested his forehead against hers. “You should make me stop doing that.” Or better still, he should stop of his own volition.
If he could make himself want to.
“Should I?” Her voice sounded a bit fogged-up still. And made him want to kiss her again, and again.
He resisted, though his fingers protested by flexing against her back. “Libby . . . they’d never approve of me. Your family, I mean. I’m not wealthy enough or titled. I could supply your needs, but nothing more. Not with all we spent on Morgan.” And what was he doing, speaking of such things when he barely knew her?
But no, he knew her. Not in terms of time, perhaps, but in terms of heart. He knew her. At least as well as any society gentleman did after a Season of balls and soirees, and no one would have batted an eye at one of them proposing.
Not that he was proposing. Not that he dared to.
Her fingers curled into his shirt over his heart. Pressed there. “I don’t care about any of that.”
No. She didn’t. And that was why his heart had melded so quickly with hers. “But you care about your family. Their approval matters.”
A truth she couldn’t refute. She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. “You’ll win them over. Just take them by the elbow and you’ll have them charmed in minutes.”
He had a feeling her brother wouldn’t be open to that particular tactic. He made himself ease away, though his stubborn hand refused to break contact entirely. It found hers again and held it tight. “For you, my sweet one, I’ll try anything. But I don’t ever want to cause trouble between you. I know too well how important family is.”
She mustered a smile that looked braver than it should have to be when the subject was something as sweet as the first blush of love.
Not that he was mentioning love quite yet either. Perhaps it was the only word he could think of to describe this certainty inside him, but he knew once he spoke it, gave it that name, it would take on new power. Power that might try to run roughshod over the promise he’d just made her. That would seek its own bond with her above others’.
“A worry for another day,” she said. “Heaven knows today has plenty of its own.”
All the reminder he needed to step back into the corridor, tugging her with him. He left Morgan’s door open, though, in case he needed the solace of those memories later. For now, that stroll through the garden was a good idea. “Do you need to go back to St. Mary’s tonight? I can take you, or Mabena’s father would.”
His aunt and uncle had been among the visitors today, and they’d been none too happy to realize that their daughter had been injured too, and that they hadn’t been informed immediately.
Libby shook her head and fell into step beside him. “I don’t think so. Mabena isn’t fit for it yet, certainly. My only real concern is Darling. I hate to leave him so long—though I think I left enough food for him, and Mabena fashioned him a sandbox for his business. He refused to go outside when we left. He hid under my bed, and I couldn’t lure him out.”