Page 87 of Hounded

It was enough.

The nurses shooed me out of the way as they eased Jonathan onto his back and daubed his mouth with a kerchief. I continued retreating, then skirted the foot ofthe bed to approach Beatrice and the girls.

Bea’s hair was pulled into a bun, enhancing the strain on her features. “Thank you for watching him, Lorenzo.” Even her voice sounded tight. “I think we should be with him now.”

I looked at Edith and Dorothy with their matching braids and their faces blanketed by Beatrice’s careful hands. That nagging sob surged up my throat as a swell of feeling I wished I could expel. I swallowed, but it didn’t move, so I forced words past it in a croak.

“I’m sorry.”

For whatever she knew and everything she didn’t.

Jonathan’s coughs rang out like a death knell. I couldn’t stand the sound of them or the sight of the nurses flurrying to administer care, so I sucked a breath and held it while I marched toward the exit.

My lungs burned by the time I made my way out of the medical ward and into the hallway beyond. Once there, I doubled over and breathed out a whimpering cry.

There was no one else for me. I knew that the day I met Jonathan. Before him, I was orphaned and abandoned in an unkind world. I had lost my parents and sister to an illness I barely survived myself.

I was sick, ragged and reeking of fresh death, when Jonathan found me. He saw something in my nothing and took me in. Without him, I would have fallen victim to some other virulent plague or been worked to death building a country that wasn’t mine.

He saved me. I lived because of him. For him.

If I could have, I would have died for him, too.

Another nurse approached. I thought she would passinto the large room beyond the closed double doors, but she stopped. A man stood beside her, strikingly handsome with pale blond locks and a strong, stubbled jaw. While the woman was in her work uniform, the man wore a tailored suit with a silk cravat tie as green as his eyes. He must have been a visitor like me, attending to a loved one. But his expression was so fixed and stoic that I wondered if he was already past the point of grief. If so, I envied him.

“Are you all right?” the nurse asked. She was slender with long, black hair and crimson eyes like faceted rubies.

I studied her when I should have responded, then was startled when she laughed.

A narrow wooden bench lined the wall nearby, and the nurse moved toward it while beckoning me to follow. She sat, her male companion stood, and I remained on my feet as well until she took my hands and pulled me down beside her.

Once we were both settled, she asked, “Who are you here for?”

I paused.

Did I have to deny Jonathan even now? All the way to the end?

Even if he hadn’t been married, our relationship was criminal. Obscene in the eyes of the public and of the God I’d been raised to believe in. Sodomy was a sin, the damning kind.

“My friend,” I replied.

The nurse’s attention roamed from my face to the hem of my wool coat and back up again. The smile that tilted her lips seemed odd in this desolate place.

“Closefriend?” she inquired.

I hesitated long enough that the nurse spoke in my stead.

“Tell me about him.”

My focus shifted to the man standing by. He seemed distant, disengaged, and he failed to meet my eyes.

The nurse squeezed my fingers. Her touch seemed scorching, prompting me to jerk back as she laughed again. Her expression turned earnest as she leaned toward me and added, “You can tell me anything.”

My lips parted and stayed that way until I found the words to explain. “He has a wife and daughter. He wants me to care for them, but I…” I cupped a hand to my mouth, suddenly choked. With a growl of determination, I freed my voice to conclude, “If I can’t live without him, how can they?”

I’d already considered the loss. Dorothy and Edith would grow up fatherless, Beatrice would be left to find a new husband, and I would be cast out. I hardly expected Jonathan’s widow to continue paying the rent for my apartment, and I couldn’t afford it myself.

I had no skills to speak of. My father had worked as a glassblower in Murano before we immigrated to America. Those talents were wasted here, where he’d been forced to toil in a crowded factory for twelve hours a day, six days a week. Thanks to Jonathan’s charity, I avoided a similar fate. I’d enjoyed a gentleman’s status and a level of comfort I did not earn. With my benefactor absent, I would be sent back to where I belonged: the dregs of society.

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