The Prospect: The Malloy Family, Book 10 by Beth Williamson Page B

readied ingredients to cook, Jo wrestled with the notion she was dreaming. Everything about the last thirty minutes was surreal, unfamiliar and unknown. She vaguely remembered the small cabin and Mr. Drummond. However, she had no recollections beyond that. Had the fever stolen her mind for good? Or would it eventually return and with it the memories she didn’t appear to want to keep?
    What had happened in this cabin?

Chapter Four
    Declan could barely focus on the carrots he dumped into the pot. All he could think of was Jo. He’d kissed her and she called it “not unpleasant.” What in the name of all that’s holy had he been thinking? She had no idea what he’d done in the last three weeks, nor what he’d wanted to do to her. He had set his urges aside to survive. That was all he knew how to do—survive.
    Now he had to explain what he’d done to take care of her, and it made his stomach flip-flop to think of her reaction. She was from New York, but she had lived a sheltered life with her family in Brooklyn. Jo knew nothing of the dregs of Manhattan or the gangs that roamed the streets like medieval warlords’ hounds. She was innocent. Or had been until now. After she found out the truth, she could never be the same young woman she’d been a month earlier.
    Typhoid and Declan were responsible. He reached up to tug on his beard and belatedly remembered it was gone. Another victim of their time in Fort John. He’d been growing that beard since the first whisker popped out of his chin. Now he had to shave every day and be the respectable Josephine’s husband.
    The reminder of their marriage made his knees weak. How was he going to explain it to Jo if she didn’t remember? It was survival. Her mother had been the one to propose it. He agreed to it. Now he would deal with the consequences. Jo might not ever forgive him, but she was alive and her fever had broken. Nothing else mattered.
    “I would like to talk about what happened, Declan.” She always talked fancy and proper, like she was a living book of words. “While I am sure your cooking is perfectly adequate and will be filling, I do not think I could eat presently.”
    He put the last of the vegetables in the pot and couldn’t put off facing her a moment longer. Her tone, although still polite, told him she was done being patient. He wiped his hands on his trousers and turned around. She looked a little worse for wear, her dark hair in a tangled mess, cheekbones prominent in her face and her mouth in a tight bow.
    “After your parents dropped off all your things outside the shack, they returned to the wagon. Then I moved everything in here.” He gestured to the trunk, books and chair crammed into the corner. “Then I spent time putting all the quilts and blankets together into a comfortable bed for you. The fever hit you hard that night. I didn’t want to let your mother inside again the next morning. She insisted, though. You were, ah, seeing things that weren’t there and thrashing. I had to keep you from hurting yourself.”
    How could he tell her how much it hurt to tie her arms to the cot? She had scratched furrows in her own body, and his, before he was able to stop her. He could still hear her screams and the violent curses she’d flung at him. Josephine Chastain knew quite a few curse words, some he’d only heard the lowest dregs of society spit out.
    “I appreciate your care when I was insensate.”
    He shook his head. “I promised your parents I would keep you safe and nurse you through the sickness. My mam, she was a midwife, so I knew some nursing from her.”
    Declan hadn’t planned on telling her that, but it tumbled out of his mouth anyway. He shouldn’t be embarrassed to have had a mother or to have loved her enough to be her helper.
    “It is very fortunate for me you had that knowledge. I am alive and the fever has broken.” She squinted at him, then touched her face. “Where are my spectacles?”
    Declan retrieved them from