Page 27 of A Fearless Heart
“That’s…completely unacceptable,” she sputtered. “I’m an unmarried woman.”
“Who drinks strange potions and then falls down half-dead. Sorry, my lady, but this is how it will be tonight.”
“You’re just going to stare at my sleeping form and hold a mirror to my mouth to see if it fogs up?”
“Hadn’t thought about the mirror until now, but it’s a good idea.” He turned, looking around, then walked over to her vanity, where he picked up the hand mirror without asking.
“That was my grandmother’s!” Cady protested.
“Very pretty. Silver? Don’t worry, I won’t nick it.”
“That was not my biggest fear.”
“What is your biggest fear?” The way he asked the question made her think of the litany of terrors that haunted her these past months and years (which was extensive, and yet a man in her bedroom was too outlandish to have made the list at all).
Cady frowned. “I couldn’t possibly choose.”
“Well, list some of them, then.” He pulled one of the room’s sitting chairs over to her bedside and sat down as if he did it every night.
“Spiders, because they’re venomous. Rats, because they convey plague. Thunderstorms, because the lightning might strike a tree and make a limb fall on me. Fire, because it could get out of hand and burn my home to the ground. Falling off a horse…falling off a bridge…falling in general. The dark, because then you can’t even see the things you should really be afraid of…”
“That’s enough. Sorry I asked.”
“Everyone always is sorry,” she noted. “The topic is not a pleasant one to discuss.”
“Well, this hasn’t been a pleasant evening so far, what with you nearly dying,” he said, sounding as if it really did matter to him. “So we may as well forge ahead with the unpleasantries. Have you always been so scared of things? Even as a child?”
“Children are innocent,” she countered. “They don’t know enough to be afraid.”
“Nonsense. Children get scared about anything. My older brother thought ghosts lived on the third floor.”
“Did you think that?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But we’re not talking about my fears. I’m more interested in yours. Plus I want to keep you alert.”
Cady absentmindedly plumped a pillow behind her head. “I don’t know why I’m so scared of everything. I do know it got worse over the past few years. When Mama died, and then when Trevor left.”
“Trevor?”
“Trevor’s my younger brother,” she explained. “But when I was child, I didn’t feel frightened, you know. I didn’t shriek when a mouse ran though the dining room—they loved the dining room on account of all the crumbs. Papa was always very exacting in his manner, and he’d never tolerate a wailing female in his house.”
“What did he tolerate?”
“Very little,” Cady admitted with a soft chuckle. “He insisted everything be just so, myself included. He felt that Mama was too lax in my education and upbringing, so after she passed and my upbringing fell to him, he was…intensive.”
“How so?”
“Oh, just that I had to present myself to the best of my ability at all times. Which of course is what any father would demand. Impeccable manners, perfect behavior, never speaking of subjects that might annoy or offend. His view was that a lady should be an ornament and a comfort, not an additional burden.”
Gabe’s calm expression flickered for a moment. But then he just shook his head. “And you agreed?”
“Of course I agreed. He was my father, and the master of the house.” Cady usually put more conviction into her statements…but then she wasn’t usually recovering from a botched experiment. “He cared for me very much,” she added defensively.
“Who wouldn’t?” Gabe responded, with a smile that gave her insides reasons to flutter—or was that another side effect of the various compounds she’d ingested?
“Can you make another note?” she asked. “My stomach is possibly a bit upset.”
“Left the notebook downstairs. Nauseous?” he asked, immediately looking serious.
