A Bouquet of Thorns by Tania Crosse

some purpose in life, when I was beginning to wonder quite what was the point of it all. A daughter would be no more able to cope with the business affairs I will one day leave than Rose herself would. But I love my wife dearly, for all her light-headed ways, and what you say grieves me deeply.’
    â€˜I believe you underestimate your wife’s capabilities, sir, but that is none of my business. Her health
is
, however, and in my opinion a little more show of support from yourself could well be beneficial.’
    Charles studied the closed expression on the doctor’s face, and nodded slowly. ‘So be it. I could not bear to lose my wife,’ he muttered as he got to his feet and, crossing out into the hallway, made for the stairs.
    â€˜Oh, Rose, Rose, my darling,’ Charles pleaded in a broken whisper, wiping her sweat-bedewed face yet again before taking her limp, fragile hand between his strong, brown ones. Her sunken eyes were closed, the long, dark lashes fanned out on her cheeks which were no longer pale, but flushed with fever. Her skin seemed transparent, and she looked more like a child than did the tiny infant up in the nursery, which Charles had not visited since his wife had sunk into the consuming delirium three days previously.
    It wasn’t puerperal fever, both physicians had confirmed. The bleeding from her womb was quite normal and inoffensive, and the site of the now removed stitches was only minimally infected. It went deeper than that, something Dr Seaton could not explain but had witnessed before, though usually in someone lost in grief. Rose’s strength had always been in her mind rather than in her slender, waif-like form, and now that, too, had ebbed away. It was as if she could not face reality, and so had willed herself to drift into some unconscious state where it was peaceful and safe.
    â€˜Why don’t you get some rest, Mr Chadwick?’ Florrie suggested, for though she had never been fond of Charles and despised him as much as Rose did for getting rid of her beloved horse, he had been sitting at Rose’s side for two days without a break. ‘I can take over for a while.’
    â€˜No, no, Mrs Bennett,’ he answered wearily. ‘I can’t leave her.’
    He turned back to the bed, lifting Rose’s hand to his lips and kissing each thin finger in turn. He wanted to pump his own strong will, his virility, into her frail body, to fill her again with that maddening resolve he had striven, he realized now, to smother.
    â€˜Rose?’
    His heart soared as her eyes half opened, but he saw at once that they were unfocused, lost in some dim fever stare, some daze that she alone could see into. What was it that lurked in the dark shadows of her tortured mind? Had he done this to her, by selling Gospel? By refusing to help that blackguard out in the stable? May God forgive him! She began to whimper, as she had on several occasions in the last few days, as some hideous nightmare slithered into the deepest chasm of her soul. She threw her head against the pillows, her limbs writhing in the bed until the sweat stood out on her forehead in tiny globules and her dry lips muttered in incomprehensible anguish.
    â€˜Oh, my poor lamb,’ Florrie breathed in a desperate sigh as she hurried over to the bed, the lines on her face ever deeper. ‘What is it, my sweet?’
    As if in reply, a tiny gasp seemed to catch in Rose’s throat and a thin moan quavered from her lips. Charles met Florrie’s gaze, his eyes hollow as he wrung out the cool face cloth yet again and tried to lay it over Rose’s brow. But she flung her head so that the flannel slid on to the pillow.
    â€˜No!’ she wailed quite distinctly now. ‘Seth! Oh, Seth!’
    She suddenly sat bolt upright and reached out to one side of the bed, which happened to be Florrie’s, her eyes somehow wild and yet blank at the same time. Florrie wrapped Rose’s wasting form