Read His Californian Countess for Free Online

and done a good job of it. He could do it again.
     
    The next time he woke it was night and a lantern lit the room. He lay, watching the lantern swing to the same rhythm as the rocking of the room. Why would a room move? he asked himself. Earthquake? He’d felt minor tremors in California, but those never made theroom rock this way. He closed his eyes, dizziness swamping him, and groaned.
    “Jamie?”
    It was the pixie calling softly to him. She laid a cool cloth over his forehead. He opened his eyes again. Bathed in the light from overhead, he saw her. “You’ve returned,” he said, then winced at how painful his throat was.
    “I didn’t leave. You fell asleep. You must try to stay with me this time. Could you eat some fresh broth?”
    He shook his head. He hated to disappoint her, but he couldn’t imagine eating anything with the room swaying as it was.
    “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 screamedher 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