Page 75 of The Spy Who Loved Her
“Rafe.” Her voice crackled away into nothingness, smothered against the cool surface of the pillow. Somehow she managed to lift her head enough to try again. “I—”
Gentle fingers slid through her hair in a soothing stroke. “Emma, for God’s sake. Go to sleep.”
Well, she hadtried. But she hadn’t managed even to open her eyes, really. With a long sigh, she surrendered that last bit of consciousness to which she had clung so desperately, and for a while she knew nothing further.
She had no sense of the passage of time, nothing more than the occasional vague awareness of something happening nearby. The muted scrape of a chair’s legs across the carpet. A hand upon her back, warm against her skin even through the familiar softness of her nightgown, into which she had been changed at some indeterminable point. The weight of the counterpane being tucked around her shoulders to ward away the chill. The crackle of the firebeing stoked, and an ambient heat curling around her.
Brief conversations held in hushed voices, as if the speakers were loath to disturb her rest. Diana’s voice, in gentle whispers. Dannyboy’s, and Hannah’s, and Kit’s, too, once, or so she thought. Sometimes they tugged her from the depths of that curious lethargy, pulling her close—but not quite near enough—to the surface once more. They wove a strange tapestry of sounds about her, but it was…comforting. Pleasant. Reassuring.
She slept. And she slept. Impossible to tell, really, what was waking and what was dreaming. Impossible to know when at last that veil would lift, whether what little she had been aware of happening in her vicinity had been real or just an invention of her exhausted mind. When she might at last stir herself enough toward wakefulness to ease the notes of worry she heard lingering between softly-spoken words.
“She’s not woken yet.” Rafe’s voice, rife with concern.
She wanted to. It was just that her every muscle refused to cooperate. Even her thoughts were vague and distant, swimming away from her before she could grasp at them, until she felt like an outside observer even to herself.
“She will, Rafe,” Diana said. “She only needs rest. She’s stretched herself to her very limits these last few days.”
“Onouraccount.” It was a dark grumble, full of guilt.
“Would you have preferred to hang?” A heavy silence drew out, too long for comfort, and Diana snapped in strident tones of reproach, “Rafe.”
“I would have preferred not to involve her, and certainly never to such an extent,” he said at last, but Emma felt his fingers once more twine through her hair, as if it presented an irresistible lure. “She’s been through enough already.”
“As have you, I think,” Diana said. She gave a delicate cough, the sort meant to indicate a modicum of disapproval. “If you will not take rest yourself, at least you ought to bathe. I could smell you from the hall.”
“I will.” But still his fingers slid through her hair on a smooth, even glide. “Eventually.”
Diana heaved an exasperated sigh. “Have it your way,” she said. “But I am going to fetch someone to see to your hand. It looks just dreadful.”
His battered fingers. They had to pain him terribly.
There was the soft pad of footsteps retreating, and then the whisk of the door closing. The distant crackle of the fire prickled at the silence, scorching it at the edges.
“I’m so sorry, Emma.” He whispered the words as if he had not theright to speak them, as if it were a grave offense only to let them pass his lips. “I’m so damned sorry. There are so many things I would have done differently, had I known better at the time.”
She knew this already. She had learned for herself the travails of making difficult choices with only the information one possessed. Sometimes therewasno right choice. That even the choices one felt entirely justified in making could burn one in the end. That it was possible to make the objectively correct choice and still live to regret it. There were never any certainties in life.
“It was selfish of me even to come,” he said, still in that same hushed tone. “Once again I have placed my wishes above your own, and I have no defense for it. Perhaps it would be best to leave before you wake. To do you the small courtesy of absenting myself and save you the trouble of ejecting me.”
Her lids were too heavy still to lift, but her lips formed a word. Her fingers flexed, summoning the strength to slide across the vast emptiness of the bed that separated them. She heard the catch of his breath as her fingers brushed his.
“Stay,” she whispered. It was the most that she could manage, but it had been enough. He made a choked sound, ragged and aching, and his hand collected hers within it.
“As you wish,” he said.
And there; there was certainty now, in this. That he would still be here at her bedside when at last she could stir herself enough to open her eyes. And it was that thought that carried her once more down into a deep sleep once more.
∞∞∞
It was dark when she awoke again, the fire banked to a low, flickering glow of shifting orange and red. This time, when she thought about moving, her muscles obeyed. Slowly, and with trembling, jerky movements—but they obeyed. Her arm slid out from beneath the covers, stretching for the nightstand beside her bed in a queer, shaky gesture, fingers reaching blindly in the darkness.
There was a faint rustle beside her. “What do you need?”
“Water.” Her voice was the hoarse croak of a toad, through a throat that felt hot and dry and scratchy. In the darkness there was a strange blur ofmovement, and then the cold surface of a glass pressed against her fingers. She grabbed it greedily, swallowing down half the cool contents in a single desperate gulp.
The blurred edges of her vision cleared enough to bring Rafe’s dim outline into focus, to see him brace one hand upon the edge of the bed. “Would you like me to ring for dinner?” he asked.
“Dinner?” She surrendered the empty glass back to him. “Is it so late already?”
