Read Online The Offer by Catherine Coulter - Free Book Online

her arms free of the blankets and struck him in the chest. “You bastard! Let me go, do you hear? Let me go!”
    What was going on here? Was it Trevor she saw again? She began crying, choking on her own tears. He couldn’t bear it. He pulled her up against his chest and began to rock her in his arms. “It will be all right, Sabrina. I wouldn’t lie to you. Trust me. No one will ever hurt you again, I swear it. You must rest now to get well. Once you’re well again you can hit me as many times as you wish.”
    She quieted at last. He thought she would sink back into sleep. But she reared back suddenly in his arms, trying to pull away from him. She stared straight at him and said, “It’s so hot in here. Why is it so very hot? I don’t like it at all. Have you no sense? Look, there’s even a fire in the grate. Why?”
    He remembered the awful fever that had eaten at Lucius, burning him from the inside out. “I’ll make it cooler. Try not to think about the heat, all right?”
    He gave her some water. She was trying to swallow it faster than she could breathe. She choked, coughing even as she tried to drink all the water at once. When at last she was done, the coughing stilled, she lay back and stared up at him. But it wasn’t him she was seeing. “Please, Mary, I have tried not to think about theheat, but it does no good. Please open the window. I’m so hot, so very hot.”
    She knew she was dying. She had wondered several times what it would be like. She just hadn’t imagined that she’d be roasted alive from the inside out. It was strange, this heat that was cooking her slowly and thoroughly. Then she heard a man’s voice, vague and far away from her, Phillip’s voice. Who was Phillip? Somewhere deep inside her, she knew who Phillip was, but the knowledge of him escaped her. He said from above her, “Just lie still, Sabrina. The pain will stop in just a moment, and the heat.”
    How could that be possible? She was dying from the fire burning her insides. Suddenly she felt a cold wet cloth against her face. She again heard a man’s voice, clearer this time. “No, no, don’t struggle. Just feel this. Don’t you like it?”
    She would give him a moment to make good on his words. She suddenly felt cool air on her chest closely followed by the cold wet cloth. She arched her back against it, wanting more, wanting it to cover all of her at once. She felt his hands about her waist, turning her over. She struggled until she felt the damp cloth moving up and down her back, and over her hips, cooling all of her.
    Phillip bathed her with a cold wet towel several times an hour throughout the afternoon and into the evening. A weary smile lit his eyes when he touched his hands to her cheeks. For the time being, at least, he had broken the fever. He thought for a moment that he saw an answering smile before she closed her eyes in sleep.
    Phillip shucked off his clothes, pulled off one of the blankets from Sabrina’s bed, and stretched out in a large chair near the fireplace. He listened to the night wind howling outside, and the swirling gusts of snowslamming against the windowpanes. It was a comforting sound that relaxed him and soothed his mind. He wasn’t concerned about hearing Sabrina if she awoke during the night, for he was a light sleeper, his years on the Peninsula having taught him that men who released themselves completely into sleep often never awoke in the morning. The French had deployed small bands of soldiers, disguised as peasants, to slip into English camps and dispatch as many of its members as possible. He would never forget the deep gurgling sound that had erupted from the throat of his sergeant, a campaign-hardened soldier from Devonshire. Phillip had caught his assassin and choked the life from the man with his bare hands, but of course, it had been too late for his sergeant. He felt again the wave