“But I want to help—”

“All I want from you is your absence!”

His words were hurtful, intended to cause pain, spoken with cruelty since he knew that was the only way he could drive her from his side. He fully expected her to snap back at him, to hurl harsh words at his scarred face, to run sobbing from the room. What he wasn’t expecting was for her to press herself against him and kiss him gently on his lips.

“I love you, Dare. I always will.”

He kept his eye closed tight against the tears that rose with her words and held his breath until he heard the door close behind her. With the soft click of the lock, he released his breath and stared dully at the rug beneath his feet.

The last thing he could bear was for her to see him cry.

***

“I am back, Batsfoam.”

“So I can see, my lady. How was Mr. Crouch?”

Charlotte unburdened herself of her spencer. “Saddened that my plan for distracting Society by means of the mortal embarrassment of Lady Brindley has been permanently delayed, but he agreed that I have more important things to tend to now than worrying about what people say. The visit to Dr. Milton was less pleasant. Has my husband eaten?”

“I regret that he has not, my lady.”

Charlotte paused in the act of removing her gloves and looked closely at the butler. His habitual air of misery had been missing the last four weeks, as if tending to his wounded master had relieved him of his own self-absorption. Batsfoam had worked just as hard as she had to keep Dare alive those first few weeks, spelling each other so one could rest while the other sat with Dare and made sure the fever that set in didn’t claim his life. It had been a long, tortuous fight, but after two weeks they silently celebrated their victory when Dare’s fever broke and he quickly began to regain his strength.

Until the last week, when melancholy and depression set in.

“Has he left his bedchamber?”

“He went to his study.”

Batsfoam’s eyes were dark with apprehension. Charlotte frowned as she pulled off the second glove. What was in Dare’s study that had Batsfoam so concerned? Dare hadn’t left his bedchamber since he was carried upstairs, more dead than alive. Surely the fact that he left his room to go to the study was a good sign.

She frowned over the memory of the morning as she headed for the stairs. He had told her he didn’t need her. He’d rejected her attentions, couldn’t even bring himself to kiss her when she pressed against him, but she had seen the self-loathing in his eye and knew he was wallowing in an endless well of self-pity. The physician had told her Dare had healed physically, but his mind was now the cause of worry… “Damnation! His pistols!”

She leaped up the stairs, her heart pounding madly. Why hadn’t she had the sense to hide his pistols? The answer echoed in her head as she cleared the top step and turned to race down the long hall.