His Californian Countess

“We could talk,” she said hopefully.

He winced. “Hurts.”

“Then I’ll talk.”

And talk she did. She told him about her adventures. About her visit to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she’d worn her Easter finery on their famous boardwalk by the sea. She told amusing stories about the students she’d taught, and about going to college and the wealthy girls who’d been kind and shared their clothes and family holidays with her.

He fell asleep again to the sound of her sweet voice and she followed him into his dreams. But worry followed him, too. He was suddenly young again and Pixie was his teacher. Uncle Oswald was there and Jamie was under his uncle’s control again.

Then Meara was in the house.

And it changed. It was wrong. Now the object of his uncle’s ire was Meara. And as a young boy Jamie tried to protect her, but had no power to do so. He screamed her name as the blows fell on her and he cursed his uncle to hell.

His eyes flew open to find his magical pixie staring down at him with concerned eyes. “You shouted. Are you all right? Can I help?” she asked and took the hot cloth off his head.

“I’m worse,” he whispered and grabbed her wrist after she set the cooled cloth back on his forehead. “You know I am.”

She covered his hand with her free one. “You’re warmer. I’m trying everything I know.”

He let go of her. “I know you are … Pixie.”

“My name is Amber. I’m not magic,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes and voice. “If I were, you’d be on the mend.”

“How long?”

“Don’t talk like that. You have to get better for your Meara.”

“Not till … I die. How long … have I … been sick?”

She wiped her pert nose on a dainty handkerchief. “It’s been a week.”

“And you’re … so tired … else you wouldn’t … be crying … over me.” Her image wavered and he tried to see her more clearly, but to no avail. “Don’t even like me,” he muttered. “Never have.”

Amber frowned and pushed an annoying stray hair off her forehead. What was going through that fevered mind of his? “It isn’t true that I don’t like you. I hardly knew you before needing to care for you. If I didn’t like you, I’d have told the doctor to go hang.”

He narrowed his eyes as if trying to puzzle something out. “Would you marry me, Helena?”

Disappointment pressed in on Amber. He’d seemed to know her. And now he didn’t. He’d closed his eyes again. Amber called softly to him, but she knew it was futile. She’d lost him again.

As long as she didn’t lose him altogether. He was so worried about his poor motherless daughter. It was poignant, but confusing. Why was he not with her? Would he neglect the child he loved because this obsession of his with Helena was so all consuming? Sadly it seemed to be. He’d just asked the woman to marry him, hadn’t he?

It made her a bit cross with him. He had a child who relied on him. What she wouldn’t give for the chance to be a parent. Nothing would be more important to her than her child. She knew what it was like to be orphaned. The loneliness and grief had nearly torn her apart on that long train ride east. But she’d been lucky enough to have her aunt and uncle meet her and envelope her in loving arms. Even though Aunty had been sick for so long before she was gone, too, Amber had been secure in the love of the adults in her life even when it was only her and Uncle Charles.

It wasn’t long after Aunty died that he began talking of her going to a two-year boarding school where she’d be further educated with the idea that she would advance from there to Vassar. It wasn’t merely the education he’d wanted for her, though. He’d wanted her away from the coal patch. And away from men like Joseph. Men who were miners. Men who could go to work one day and never return. He’d wanted more for her than pain and loss. So he’d sent her away where someone else could see she met the right people.

But as soon as the ink was dry on her prestigious diploma, she’d moved back to the coal patch, to a town where the mine owner wanted to educate the children of his miners. And there she’d met and fallen in love with Joseph—a miner. Then, just after the banns were read the third time, Joseph died.

She’d continued to teach, but the heart had gone out of her. In the state she was in, she’d nearly let Joseph’s mother push her on her other son. She’d woken up one day, looked around at the soot and death and seen Uncle Charles’s wisdom. And that had put her right where she was now.

Coming to care too much for a man she was beginning to fear was about to die.

Amber shook her head and went back to bathing him, careful of the rash he’d said hurt when she ran the wet cloths over it. She’d checked her grandmother’s book and sure enough, it mentioned that the rash was painful and burned.

“No, Uncle Oswald. Please don’t! No! Damn you to hell for hurting her!” Jamie called out, tossing on the narrow bed.

Amber grabbed his shoulders while trying to hold on to him. The stool she stood on rocked under her feet. “Jamie! Calm down,” she ordered in her schoolroom voice.

He stilled instantly and opened his eyes. His voice rawer for his shouting, he rasped out, “You can’t … let it happen. She’s sweet and innocent. He … he’s a monster.”

“All I can do is keep taking care of you.”

“Marry me. Be Meara’s mother. She needs you. You don’t know what he’d do. He’d break her. Nearly broke me, but I had Mimm and Alex. She’d love you, Pixie.”

He knew her again. He knew who he was asking—begging to marry him before it was too late to help his child. Could she do it? Could she marry him and care for the child he spoke of with such love? She’d wanted children for as long as she could remember. But she’d buried that dream with Joseph.

“Don’t think it … to death.” He chuckled, but it was a heartbreaking sound.

Amber wanted to remember the man on deck, handsome and smiling and kind. Not this hollow-eyed near-corpse. She forced her thoughts to his strange proposal. “I’m all alone, Jamie. How could I care for a child?”

“How can you not? I’m dying. You know it. I know it. There’s money. You wouldn’t have to worry about means. That old pile in Ireland would go to Oswald and he can have it along with the title he’s wanted my whole life. But please don’t let him have Meara. You have to promise to protect her.”

“He’s powerful. He’d take all the money, Jamie. I couldn’t fight him. I’m going to be a governess in California. What kind of life would that be for a little girl who should have been wealthy?”

He frowned, looking thoughtful. “I’ll write a codicil,” he said at last.

“You could barely hold a pen.”

“Then you write it. I’ll sign it. Make Captain Baker witness it. Figure it out. Save her, damn it. Please. At least let me rest in peace.”

“Stop it! I’m not letting you die! Then you’d be stuck with me when all this turns out okay. I’m not countess material no matter where I spent the years I was at college.”

Again that thoughtful look entered his eyes. “Then, if I live, when the voyage ends, we’ll annul it.”

Amber bit her lip. A child. A little girl who’d be all alone but for a man her father clearly loathed. He said there’d be money so Meara would never want for anything. There was little she could do but agree and that made it just a bit vexing. Everyone else’s problems kept forcing her into doing outrageous things.

“All right,” she said, annoyed. “I’ll call out to the young man assigned to us. He can see if the captain will do what you want about the codicil and if the minister I met will marry us. He’s very afraid of becoming ill, so he may refuse. He most likely should.”

“So fierce, Pixie.” He reached up and traced her jawline.

She shivered at his touch.

“And fierce is what I need just now. Protect my princess.”

“You most likely won’t remember all this when you wake up again, but I’ll ask.”

Amber knocked on the door and asked the cabin boy to fetch Captain Baker and the reverend. Then she went back to the bed with her notebook. “Are you still with me?”

“Aye. Write this. To the firm of Bootey and Fowler, New York, New York. This is a codicil to my last will and testament. I hereby appoint my wife …” He waved his hand weakly toward her notebook and swallowed. After a breath and a long pause he said, “Put your whole name there, Pixie, and … uh … add the date … my wife as guardian … to my Meara … Reynolds, my daughter.”