He whispered soothing words in her ear and softly caressed her shoulder, trying to comfort her with his mere presence. And slowly—very, slowly; he had no idea how many minutes he sat under that table with her—he could feel her muscles begin to unwind. Her skin lost that awful clammy feeling, and her breathing, while still rushed, no longer sounded quite so panicked.
Finally, when he felt she might be ready, he touched two fingers to the underside of her chin, using the softest pressure imaginable to lift her face so that he could see her eyes. “Look at me, Kate,” he whispered, his voice gentle but suffused with authority. “If you just look at me, you will know that you are safe.”
The tiny muscles around her eyes quivered for a good fifteen seconds before her lids finally fluttered. She was trying to open her eyes, but they were resisting. Anthony had little experience with this sort of terror, but it seemed to make sense to him that her eyes just wouldn’t want to open, that they simply wouldn’t want to see whatever it was that so frightened her.
After several more seconds of fluttering, she finally managed to open her eyes all the way and met his gaze.
Anthony felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.
If eyes were truly the windows to the soul, something had shattered within Kate Sheffield that night. She looked haunted, hunted, and utterly lost and bewildered.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
He took her hand, which he’d never relinquished his hold on, and brought it to his lips again. He pressed a gentle, almost paternal kiss on her palm. “You don’t remember what?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you remember coming to the library?”
She nodded.
“Do you remember the storm?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if the act of keeping them open had required more energy than she possessed. “It’s still storming.”
Anthony nodded. That was true. The rain was still beating against the windows with just as much ferocity as before, but it had been several minutes since the last bout of thunder and lightning.
She looked at him with desperate eyes. “I can’t…I don’t…”
Anthony squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to say anything.”
He felt her body shudder and relax, then heard her whisper, “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to talk to you?” he asked.
She shut her eyes—not as tightly as before—and nodded.
He smiled, even though he knew she could not see it. But maybe she could sense it. Maybe she’d be able to hear his smile in his voice. “Let’s see,” he mused, “what can I tell you about?”
“Tell me about the house,” she whispered.
“This house?” he asked in surprise.
She nodded.
“Very well,” he replied, feeling rather absurdly pleased that she was interested in the one pile of stone and mortar that meant so much to him. “I grew up here, you know.”
“Your mother told me.”
Anthony felt a spark of something warm and powerful in his chest as she spoke. He’d told her she didn’t have to say anything, and she’d been quite obviously thankful for that, but now she was actually taking part in the conversation. Surely that had to mean she was beginning to feel better. If she’d open her eyes—if they weren’t sitting under a table—it might seem almost normal.
And it was stunning how much he wanted to be the one to make her feel better.
“Shall I tell you about the time my brother drowned my sister’s favorite doll?” he asked.
She shook her head, then flinched when the wind picked up, causing the rain to beat against the windows with new ferocity. But she steeled her chin and said, “Tell me something about you.”
“All right,” Anthony said slowly, trying to ignore the vague, uncomfortable feeling that spread in his chest. It was so much easier to tell a tale of his many siblings than to talk about himself.
“Tell me about your father.”
He froze. “My father?”
She smiled, but he was too shocked by her request to notice. “You must have had one,” she said.
Anthony’s throat began to feel very tight. He didn’t often talk about his father, not even with his family. He’d told himself that it was because it was so much water under the bridge; Edmund had been dead for over ten years. But the truth was that some things simply hurt too much.
And there were some wounds that didn’t heal, not even in ten years.