“He’s lying, isn’t he?” Rose’s voice rang out through the empty exhibition room as she stared up at Michael in the semi-darkness. “Just a bid for attention. He went back to Elisee’s village, and did God knows what to get those photos, and now he hopes to someone infect the international community with his lies.”

Michael’s heart ached. He didn’t know what hurt more – the realization that evil had, once again, found the village they had tried so hard to help or that he had no idea how to explain things to Rose so they made sense.

“Rose…there is some truth in what he says.” Even in the dim light of the room, he could see her face fall. Rose searched his expression almost desperately, as if she expected him to soothe the alarm rising in her mind. “I am Russian by birth. I didn’t know until very recently…I’m sure you might have seen the Tate family tree in the book you borrowed.” The young woman merely gaped as he continued. “I was adopted…apparently the love child of a Russian minister and his lover. My parents told me they wanted to save me, but I’m sure what they wanted was a trump card they could use later, so they took me away and raised me as a Tate. But I’m not a spy. I didn’t even know about this until a few weeks ago. How a man with the resources of a Congolese militant discovered the details is beyond me.”

He didn’t think his chest had ever been so tight. Rose stared up at him, her attention focused on him until he finished speaking, When he trailed off, she stepped forward, her expression unreadable. “Is that all this is?” She inquired softly, her fingers curling into his shoulders. In her earnest gaze, she begged him to be finished – hoped with every fiber of her being that that was all there was to this misunderstanding.

And Michael knew that he had to tell her all of it. He couldn’t marry her unless Rose knew the entire truth.

“That’s not all.” He had hoped for better circumstances than this, but in that moment, it occurred to Michael that maybe the magic scenario he was waiting on would never come. “There were certain…conditions placed on my adoption. As I was a Russian citizen almost forty years ago, the way things were done was…antiquated. Ridiculous.”

“How ridiculous?” Her fingers were now curled so tightly into his arms that he could feel the tips of her nails through his shift. Her eyes were hard on his, and Michael’s heart hammered heavily against his ribs.

“It was required that I…marry. Into a true British noble family. The marriage license would secure my status as a Tate and my ability to provide heirs, completing my citizenship and assuring my inheritance, as well as the familial line.”

Rose froze, every muscle in her body going visibly stiff. Michael could see the cogs in her mind working and rushed to reassure her that it wasn’t what she thought it was. “Rose, this means nothing. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you-”

“When did you find out about your inheritance?” She cut him off sharply, her eyes blazing defiance. “Tell me.”

Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell. Michael swallowed thickly. No secrets. “The week before we were engaged.”

Rose staggered back from him as if he’d physically struck her, her expression horrified. Michael made to go after her, only to have Rose throw a hand up in warning. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you bloody touch me!”

“Rose.” He could feel his heart being torn into a thousand pieces at the betrayed expression on her face. “Please believe me.”

“Believe you?” She replied incredulously, her voice trembling. “You want me to believe that you want to marry me after knowing me for six weeks? That you’re madly in love? That this just happened to coincide with the knowledge that everything would be taken from you if you didn’t marry posthaste.” She began to shake her head slowly in disbelief. “I can’t believe I fell for it…that I almost…” A choked sob escaped her, and Michael’s eyes slid shut. He could hardly breathe.

He had to gather the wherewithal to tell her. To make her understand that this had nothing to do with money or titles. That he’d never felt the same about any woman he’d ever known. But the words wouldn’t come. All he could see was the devastated expression on her face. 

All at once, there was a soft tinkling sound and Michael’s eyes popped open as a small object struck the ground at his feet. His eyes widened when they fell on Rose’s engagement ring before jerking back to her face in horror.

The woman’s expression was stony, absolutely cold – even as her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “You can take your bloody hope diamond and shove it up your arse.”

With that, she turned on her heel, flinging the door to the room open before storming out.

Leaving Michael utterly alone.

His face a mask of disbelief, the Doctor bent to pick up the ring at his feet. As he raised it to his line of vision, it glimmered in the low light. Michael remembered the look of shock on Rose’s face when she first laid eyes on it. Remembered how she’d trembled as he slipped it on his finger. He had never imagined he might feel any greater emotion than he had in that moment.

But now, he knew better.

The weight of tragedy was far heavier than the elation of triumph.

He floated through the rest of the event on a blurry haze of automatic responses as gentlemanly airs. He had long learned to mask his real feelings behind politeness, and now, for the first time, he welcomed the anonymity .Of course, his guests wanted to know what had happened. What the Congolese man on the television had been talking about – but Michael allowed his parents and sister to field their particular concerns. He himself focused as best he could on running the benefit.

Even though Rose had long fled. He couldn’t answer guests who asked him where she was, so, instead, he redirected their interests. He pandered their fundraising and, by the end of the night, they had raised almost ten million dollars in relief funds.

And he felt absolutely nothing.

Michael left as soon as he was able, despite Elias’ demands that he tell him what had happened. He drove the Rolls Royce himself, not back to his parents’ manor, but to his own apartment in North London.

Though he was sure the maid had been in frequently, the place seemed oddly musty – and completely empty. Where Michael had once enjoyed his solitude, he now found it almost overbearing. In the past few weeks he’d spent with Rose, he’d grown used to having her at his side. Used to the thought of having her forever.

But he’d blown all of that.

Bloody fucking hell if he’d just been honest with her from the get-go…maybe all of this could have been avoided. Maybe she would still be here with him…

But it wasn’t going to help him to dwell on maybes and what could-have-beens. Right now, he needed to get good and fucking drunk. That was the only thing that was going to help him. With a sigh, he tossed his jacket on the couch and retrieved a bottle of Macallans from where Elias had placed it in the cabinet months ago. He started to get a glass but ultimately decided that he didn’t care and began drinking straight from the bottle.

Rose.

He lost her.

He lost her.

He couldn’t ever remember feeling so desolate.

Michael drank until his senses were dulled – until the sharp pain in his chest reduced to an excruciating ache and his vision started to run together. He had never been a heavy drinker, but right now, he needed, more than anything, to block out the gravity of his mistakes. He hadn’t the wherewithal to deal with them with his usual grace. No, right now, if he were sober, he would throw things. Break them. Be completely and totally idiotic.

So he needed to drink.

He was, in fact, so inebriated, that he didn’t notice his phone buzzing in his pants pocket. When he fumbled to pull it from his slacks, he noticed that he had no less than ten missed calls. Some were from Elias, more than a few were from Alice, but five were from his parents.

They had enormous bollocks to be trying to contact him right now. They’d spent the entire evening of the benefit bowing and scraping, reassuring people that the Congolese militia man who’d tried to shoot him was lying through his teeth in an attempt to cause an uproar – and, luckily enough, almost all of the Benefits patrons believed them.

How fortunate they were to just be able to erase their mistakes. A snap of their fingers and they were gone. While he was looking over his calls, his phone began to vibrate once more, his mother’s name scrolling across the screen.

Michael contemplated merely tossing the device in the toilet and flushing it down, but on impulse, he answered.  “Hello, Mum.”

“Michael, thank goodness you’re alright!” The Countess immediately gushed with the typical drama. “We were worried sick about you! Where have you gone?”

“Home.” The Doctor took a swig of liquor from the half-empty bottle on the table before him. “I won’t be coming back to the manor. You can have Annie pack my things and send them back to my flat.”

“…Darling, that’s ridiculous! You need to come back to the manor and speak to Rose! She’s packing all her things to leave and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of her engagement ring. What happened, Michael?”

The diamond was hard in his pocket, pressing against his thigh. When he first saw it in the shop, his only thought was how beautiful it would look on Rose’s delicate finger. Now, without her, it was just a rock, threatening to cut into his flesh. “There is no engagement, mother.”

The Countess inhaled so sharply that Michael was surprised she didn’t swallow her mobile phone whole. “Rose knows all about the adoption and the stipulations. I told her everything at the benefit.”

“But…but darling!” Countess Angela Tate had a bad habit of stuttering when she was nervous. She almost never did so, but now, she was quite panicked.  “W-why would you do s-such a thing! You two were s-so splendid together!”

“Because it was the right thing to do,” he replied flatly. “Better to tell her now then have it come out in the wash later.”

“But she broke off the engagement? Michael, d-dear, that means…you only have another y-year or so before-”

“Fuck the titles, mother.” Michael’s words were sharp and piercing, designed to hurt. “Fuck the inheritance and fuck the Tate family reputation. This is your doing. You wanted your bloody heir but you didn’t think about your son, did you?” Rising from the couch, he picked up the bottle to carry with him as he began to pace furiously, years of frustration pouring from him. “You were never willing to accept me for what I was. You only wanted to mold me in your image – and now look where it’s gotten you. You’re only worried about a bloody fucking marriage for politics sake and, you know what? You won’t get it.” He took another swallow from the bottle, quite pleased to hear his mother all but hyperventilating over the phone. “I’m not touching another woman. Ever. No marriage, no children – nothing. And when the year is up, everyone will know the truth of what you’ve done. It’s the least you deserve.”

For almost a full minute, silence reigned between them. When the Countess finally spoke, her tone was meek and pleading. “But, Michael, you could just as easily find another…there are p-plenty of beautiful, willing ladies-”

Michael snapped. Regardless of the drink intended to dull his senses and the desolation that consumed him, his mother’s selfish request was enough to slam his temper to the forefront.

“I love her!” He roared into the receiver, sending the half-full bottle of Macallans hurtling against the opposite wall to smash in a fountain of glass and liquor. “I love her and your bloody machinations have ruined my chances with her! How can you be so fucking cruel as to imply that there’s another! I would rather fucking die than inherit your name you selfish crone!”

His phone went the same way as the bottle, smashing into tiny bits and pieces against the marble of the kitchen counter. Once it was decimated, Michael sank down onto his haunches behind the sink, his breathing ragged.

Goddamn it. Goddamn it.

Inhaling long and slow, he attempted to force himself to calm down. He’d always had a hold on his temper - never let it rule him. But this…this was too much.

He knew he’d been harsh with his mother. Somewhere down deep, she probably loved him s truly as she purported to. But that love was buried in a place he couldn’t reach. Somewhere deep beneath selfish aspiration and superficiality.

Well, he would have no more part in it. None.

Trembling in fury, the man rose to his feet and padded back to the liquor cabinet, heedless of the shards of glass that cut into his feet.

He needed another bottle like he needed air to breathe. Maybe if he drank enough, he would stop seeing her face.

His precious, precious Rose.

The next week was hell. At least, it was when he wasn’t drunk. After attempting to go to the hospital on Monday and being sent home by superiors shocked at his haggard appearance, Michael consciously decided to drink himself into a constant stupor. Why not? It would be a while before he could get his mind together enough to practice again, so why not fill his head with drink.

At least, that way, he didn’t have to think of her.

But even with the constant IV of alcohol running down his throat, Michael couldn’t forget Rose completely. When he lay in bed, he remembered how she felt next to him when she slept. He remembered how she nestled into the crook of his neck and shoulder and pressed soft kisses there until he shuddered and gave into her desires.

He remembered the way she gazed defiantly up at him when he challenged her and the way she spoke her mind, regardless of what anyone else thought. How long, he wondered, would it take his vivid memories to fade?

Funny, in the end, he and Rose had parted at the end of the summer. Only Michael had never imagined that it would be like this.

Sequestered in his apartment, Michael went through a bottle of Macallans a day. When he ran out, he ordered more. When he needed to eat, he ordered takeaway – which only served to remind him how highly Rose thought of a good takeaway.

His parents continued to try and contact him, and his mother even tried to visit, but Michael wouldn’t buzz her up. He wouldn’t even listen to her pleas for forgiveness. They were the last thing he wanted to hear at the moment.

Elias got a little further. Michael actually allowed him into the apartment and offered him a drink. When the architect instead merely commented on how shitty he looked and how he needed to hurry up and return to his old self, Michael merely stared at him blankly. After an hour of insulting, cajoling and ultimate frustration, Elias stormed out with a threat to send Cat and the baby over to guilt him into conceding.

But Michael knew that he would never follow through. A good father would never send his wife and child into a dark apartment littered with empty liquor bottles – no matter who its occupant was. So he was safe in his solitude.

Or so he thought.

On Monday of the second week, Alice came to visit him. He had, of course, ignored all her calls, and so when she arrived, she merely let herself in with a spare key. Michael was lounging in his living room, starting his daily bottle, when she appeared before him. As always, Alice looked breathtaking without a hair out of placed. Juxtaposed with his newly dingy flat, she looked even more radiant.

For a long beat, she merely gazed down at him, her expression disgusted. Then, she rounded his coffee table to snatch his bottle away from him before he could take his next sip. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

Michael merely glared at her, groping for his Macallans. “Give that back.”

“Like hell. You look a mess.” His sister scoffed, giving him a withering once over that might have once made him cringe. Now, Michael found he hardly cared. When he failed to answer her, she merely took his bottle with her when she stalked away from him to the drapes covering the windows. When she flung them open to let in the bright sunlight, Michael cursed.

“Fuck, Alice. What are you doing?”

“No, what are you doing, you bloody idiot?” She countered sharply, setting the bottle firmly out of his reach. “Sitting here in your apartment, drinking yourself into old age. Don’t be such a pouting little cunt.” From Alice, the insult had an effect it hadn’t from Elias and Michael’s eyes narrowed in affront.

His gaze never leaving his sister, he rose from the couch to make his way to the liquor cabinet, from which he retrieved another bottle of whiskey and proceeded to open it in front of her, with flourish. “Did you just come here to insult me?” He took a long swallow and Alice reddened.

“I came to get you off your arse.” Alice snapped, visibly irritated. “Seeing as how no one else seems to be able to.”

“What if I don’t want to get off my arse?” He replied scathingly, sinking back down onto the couch obtrusively. “What if I just want to be alone?”

Alice merely glared at him scathingly for a long beat before she spoke again. “Why didn’t you come home the night of the benefit, Mike? You could have spoken to her. Reasoned with her. Instead, you just came skulking back to your apartment like a brat.”

Michael’s chest tightened as his glare intensified. “Alice, don’t.”

“I heard her, Michael. She was pissed, yes. She was packing up to leave but she was sobbing. I heard it every time I passed by her door. I wanted to go in and try to make her feel better, but I had no business. It could only have been you. But you weren’t there. She was upset and you weren’t there to comfort her.”

“Stop it.” He cut in sharply, his stomach twisting viciously. No amount of liquor could help him drown out the pain Alice’s words brought. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“God knows where she is now!” Alice burst, throwing up her hands in frustration. “Long gone! All you had to do was talk to her. Use that exceedingly big head of yours and find a solution, but you’re so wrapped up in your own horse shit-”

“Shut up!” Michael bellowed, his voice echoing through the emptiness of his apartment as he held his ground against Alice for perhaps the first time in his life. After all, this was no petty squabble they were speaking of. This was his life and he wouldn’t have her belittle it. “Shut up and get out of my house! I don’t want you here!”

Alice’s reaction was instantaneous.

She struck him, hard, the loud smack ringing to the ceiling as she stood before him, trembling in anger. For split second, Michael was shocked. It was the first time he’d felt anything but anger and desolation for almost a week, and it broke through the cloudy haze of his depressed, drunken stupor. As his cheek smarted sharply, he touched the injury gently, before looking to his sister in surprise.

“First of all,” Alice’s tone remained just as curt as before, “You don’t ever talk that way to me. Ever. Next time you’ll get a knee to the scrotum for your troubles. Second…” the young woman paused a moment before she stepped forward to wrap her arms around him and pull him into her embrace.

In that moment, Michael realized how exhausted he was. Exhausted from being angry, from being upset – from being everything under the sun except the one thing he had once prided himself on: rational. The moment Alice’s arms were around him, he melted, sagging against her as the bottle in his hand clattered to the floor. With a sigh, Alice rubbed up and down his back comfortingly. She was the only women he knew who could slap him one moment and be embracing him the next. “It’s going to be alright.” Alice murmured softly. “You can fix this. I know you can.”

A hopeless, hollow laugh escaped him. “How? You told me that she was gone. After I left her alone, she spent an entire night crying and then took off. How am I supposed to find her now? How am I supposed to make her believe me?”

Alice looked up, cupping her elder brother’s face so she could gaze into his hazel eyes. “You made her fall in love with you once. Now you just have to make her remember why.”

He groaned.

Alice made it sound so easy. God knew she was quite the authority on love for never having actually encountered it herself. With a groan, Michael turned away from her, raking a hand through his unkempt hair. God, how long had it been since he’d showered or shaved? An eternity it seemed like. He realized, for the first time, how odious his mouth tasted

God, he had been such a fool.

“Please tell me you’re not going to let your pride stand in the way of going after the woman you insist you love.”

When Alice goaded him needlessly, Michael turned on her, his expression fierce. “I do love her! More than anything in the entire cosmos!”

At that, Alice merely grinned, crossing her arms over her chest in obvious satisfaction. “Prove it.”

**

One month later

She was an idiot. An utter and complete fool.

Sitting on a mound of warm sand, Rose curled her toes into the grains beneath her as she stared out at the ocean. It seemed as if it could go on forever – and endless, glassy plain of blue that she could lose herself in.

That she wanted to lose herself in.

There were worse places she could have come, really. Ultimately, she had stuck to her plan. She came to the place she professed she always would: Thailand. Now, sitting on a remote beach about one hundred meters away from the village where she’d taken up residence, Rose tried her utmost to feel the sense of serenity and fulfillment that enveloped her the last time she had come to this place.

Tried and failed.

But then…nothing had been easy since she’d left England. Nothing had turned out the way she wanted it to.

Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to remember the events of a month prior and was quietly ashamed that tears still welled in her eyes. Why on earth was she crying? She had rid herself of a man who used her – found out just in time to keep from being a pawn in his plan to maintain wealth and power.

Why wasn’t she elated?

Christ, what a complicated question.

Sucking in a breath, Rose forced her eyes open. If she opened them, she wouldn’t have to think about what could have been.

But sometimes…sometimes she let herself remember.

Those two weeks in Africa. They should have been absolute hell. She and Michael had been in a war torn country trying to save people with little chance of success. Ultimately, she didn’t know what had become of Elisee and her people after she and Michael left. But, while they were there, they had done some good. They helped people.

They helped each other.

For her entire life, Rose had believed that the concept of love was a lark. A lie designed to trick women into settling when they could be so much more. Her parents had been hell bent on pressing her into marriage because it was the “proper” thing to do. Proper her arse. She lived in the twenty-first century. She was her own woman and Rose was hell bent on doing only what she deemed worth her time.

Africa had been worth her time. Not only because of Elisee and her people, but because of Michael. He was the first person she’d ever met who she truly believed understood her. So much so that he put his own life on the line to get her to a place he had never gone and used his skills to help her cause.

No one had ever done anything so selfless for her before.

So, yes, their time in Africa had been dangerous. Ultimately, Michael’s sister Alice had arrived to take them away before they were killed.

But those two weeks had been bliss. Rose had been able to keep a promise and help people who needed her…and she had also gotten to know Michael intimately. She watched him work his magic on the people in the village – the man was a medical Messiah. He could practically lay his hands on someone and heal them. His skills were unparalleled, not only in a plush hospital in a first world country, but also out in the middle of nowhere – where it really counted.

She had really, truly believed that she cared for him.

The way he touched her…the way he held her…God, she had craved him. She still did, if she were honest with herself.

Was that why she couldn’t let him go?

Or was it because he had lied to her? Because he had allowed her to believe that he was a kind, selfless soul when, really, he was no different from the rest of them?

He had really had her fooled. The way he so easily cast aside the trimmings and trappings of nobility to enter her world. How much of it, she wondered, had been an act? Had it all just been an act? The soup kitchen, the trip they took…even the night he proposed to her in the cabin on the lake.

She could still recall how shocked she’d been. How the rational side of her warred heartily with the part that had fallen head over heels for the man without she herself even realizing it.

She hadn’t known him for very long, but Lord Michael Tate was the only man she ever loved. The only man who saw her for who she really was.

And the only man to hurt her so completely.

Rose remained on the beach, close to the water, until the sun went down. Only when the last magenta streaks of light had disappeared from the dark sky did she return back to her village to help make the evening meal.

In all honesty, she barely remembered leaving England. Everything was a blur. After Michael revealed his deception to her, the only thing she could think about was getting away from him, even as some weak, clinging part of her wished that he would come after her. Tell her it was all a joke. That he did love her…

But he hadn’t come.

She spent the entire night flinging things furiously around her room, sobbing, refusing to talk to the Tates and readying for her departure.

Of course, her parents demanded to know what had happened when she told them the engagement was off. They wanted her to come home and discuss things – to be rational. But Rose was far beyond being able to listen to them. She booked the first ticket to Bangkok she could find and left the next morning at dawn.

The only person awake to see her off was Alice.

Of course, Rose meant to leave the house without anyone’s knowledge. In a perfect world, she would never talk to another Tate as long as she lived.

But fate hadn’t been on her side recently.

Alice caught her on her way out the door. The dark-haired woman was still clad in her nightgown and robe when she approached Rose, and it was only out of civility that Rose even spoke to her at all.

“Please, wait.” It was the only time Rose had ever seen Alice anything other than calm and composed. Her expression was worried, her lovely eyes ringed with dark circles. “Wait for him, Rose. He’ll make things right.”

Like hell she would.

Rose had forced a small smile onto her face and dipped her head to kiss Alice briefly on the cheek. “Thank you for everything, Lady Tate.”

Those were her last words in Tate manor. Rose had gone straight from Northern England to Heathrow airport and been in Bangkok within ten hours. She had hoped that the strain of travel would help her to forget the humiliation she endured, but she hadn’t been so lucky.

It had taken her two days to reach the isolated village of Phi Ao in Southern Thailand. It was where Rose had spent her tenure in the Peace Corps, and she remembered it intimately. Despite the fact that she hadn’t formally told any of the residents she was coming, when she arrived, they greeted her with open arms. She was welcomed as if she had never left, and in that, she found some small measure of comfort.

She hoped she would heal.

And, one day, she knew she would. But for now, as she helped to serve children the rice their mothers had cooked them, the pain in her heart was still enough to temper any joy she might feel. Where, she wondered bitterly, was Michael now? Had he already moved onto the next unsuspecting, moneyed woman in London? How quickly would he get her to agree to his proposal of marriage?

Though the idea of Michael being with another woman made her physically ill, she forced herself to relive it over and over. It was the only way she would be able to distance herself from him.

Rose managed to last until after dinner before she hurried to the edge of the village to empty the contents of her stomach miserably. It seemed that ever since she left London, she could barely keep anything down. Of course, she had often heard rumors of someone being so heartsick that it made their body physically ill, but she had never believed them.

Not until recently.

That night, she lied awake on her cot, staring up at the thatched roof of the hut she shared with a woman named Pri and her small daughter Lau and wondering when she’d be able to forget. When she would be back to her old self again and be able to move on with her life.

Hopefully, being in Thailand would help. It had to. If helping these people didn’t hasten her journey back to the real world, she wasn’t sure what would.

The days seemed to pass at a snail’s pace for Rose. Every morning, she awoke early to help the children on their way to school. In the small but cleanly space, she did her best to help the teacher educate them. Of course, her best subject was English, and after four weeks in Phi Ao, she was proud to discover that almost all of the children knew their alphabet. Rose also wasn’t too shabby in arithmetic, and so she helped where she could when the teacher fell short.

Her afternoons were spent helping to harvest food and fish – a sport she used to enjoy heartily but now she found she could barely muster the strength for it. By the time she went about her evening duties and into dinner, she was exhausted, all but crawling into bed. It seemed she grew more and more tired by the day, but Rose wasn’t convinced she was anything but profoundly depressed until one of the village elders was found dead in her hut one morning.

A quick diagnosis by one of the only trained nurses among them proved that it was a particularly virulent strain of Malaria, thought to be confined to the north of the country. Almost immediately, the news spread through the village. Everyone was warned to wash their hands with soapy water, make sure food was thoroughly cleaned and cooked, and, most of all, to make sure that mosquito bites were dealt with quickly.

Of course, it was impossible to avoid the buggers altogether. Rose herself had been bitten hundreds of times in the month she’d been in the village. Ultimately, she told herself that putting anything on her skin was fighting a losing battle.

At least until the Malaria outbreak started.

Despite their best efforts, the people of the village sickened, one by one. First, the small children fell ill, and then their mothers, in an effort to care for them. Then those tending to the sick were infected until, finally, in only two weeks’ time, over seventy percent of the village was sick. Numerous pleas were sent to larger cities to send a doctor, but so far, no one had come. Rose did the best she could to keep up with the demand for care, but when Lily, the nurse who had diagnosed the first case, died, she found herself swamped with work. She ran from hut to hut from dawn until dusk, barely stopping to eat and sleep for a few hours every night. Even as exhausted as she was, Rose told herself that if she just pushed through it, things would come out better on the other side. These people needed her and she couldn’t let them down.

That thought kept her going right up until she collapsed in the village square one morning, not a single hour after getting up.

It came without warning. One moment, Rose felt hot and dizzy and the next she was coming to on the ground, a host of concerned faces hovering above her. “Rose?” Pri’s voice was faint, almost as if she were half a world away. “Are you alright, Rose?”

“I’m fine,” Rose tried to speak, but her words came out in the weakest of whispers. Why couldn’t she lift her head? All of her limbs felt like lead and her mouth might have been full of cotton. Her expression alarmed, Pri raised a hand to feel Rose’s forehead and drew back in shock. “She’s burning up! Get her into one of the houses, quick!”

Burning up?

Was she sick? But she couldn’t be sick! She had work to do…

However, there was little Rose could do as the few healthy people left in the village pooled their strength to carry her to one of the only remaining free beds. As the villagers bustled around her, she finally allowed her exhaustion to overwhelm her and felt herself falling into darkness.

**

Phi Ao.

When the man Michael had paid to see him through Thailand first told him that the village would take two days to reach, he’d been skeptical. But he forced himself to let Coby do his job. After all, he hadn’t come this far to quit now.

As he sat in the back of a car racing towards the closest village that would allow them access to the jungle beyond, the tall man stared out of the window, his expression intense.

He wished he could have come sooner.

In truth, he would have come the moment his sister managed to snap him out of his drunken stupor, but he had encountered more than his fair share of obstacles. He had, of course, needed first and foremost to find Rose, and the only people who knew where she was were her parents.

Rose had once told Michael that their parents weren’t very different. They both came from noble families that prized wealth and prestige over anything else. However, when he had arrived at the Lithgall family estate, Lord and Lady Lithgall had laid into them not because he had bollocksed up the marriage they had so meticulously planned, but because he had driven their daughter away.

They were incensed, convinced – and not wrongly so – that Michael was the reason Rose had fled the country. They expelled him from their house and barred him from returning – which meant they also refused to divulge where their daughter had gone.

Thanks to Lady Lithgall’s drunken rant, Michael already knew it was somewhere in Thailand – but unless he got a more specific location, he might very well spend the rest of his life in the Southeast Asian country trying to find her. He needed to Lithgalls to help him, and, to say the least, they hadn’t been very accommodating. Every attempt Michael made to see them only resulted in further defiance until finally, shockingly, his parents had stepped in.

Predictably, Michael hadn’t wanted their help. He wanted nothing more to do with his family’s selfish bids to rule British nobility. Almost as if in tandem with the Lithgalls, he stolidly refused to see either of them until, finally, his mother got through to him.

Alice, nearly as shocked as he himself at the news, told him that her mother had come clean about everything. She had all but announced to British society the exact plight of Michael’s birth – that he needed to be married by the time he was thirty-seven in order to maintain citizenship and his family ties to the Tates…and how wrong she had been for accepting the terms set upon his adoption.

Of course, the latter profession had garnered Michael’s attention – enough that he agreed to see his mother.

Angela had met him tearfully, and to his complete surprise, revealed why she had outed their prestigious family’s secret.

“I love you, Michael. Perhaps I was too stubborn and foolish to have been so selfish until now, but I’d like to make up for it. Whether you marry or not…whether you can ever forgive me or find yourself unable to, I will always be your mother, and you my son. I will fight for you.”

Even now, months later, Michael was still reeling from her profession – from the tightness of, perhaps, the first earnest embrace she’d given him in her entire life.

His renewed faith in his parents allowed him to accept their health – and that was when the Tates began to pressure the Lithgalls. Admittedly, it didn’t take much for them to crack. The threat of social isolation in London was enough for them to grant Michael the meeting that led him to Southern Thailand – and the village in which he hoped to find Rose.

Coby and he arrived at An, the closed village to Phi Ao, around midday. From there, a village fisherman told them it was a full day’s trip through the jungle to reach Phi Ao, and that it would be better to wait until the storm brewing on the horizon had passed.

Michael had seen no storm, but true to the fisherman’s words, the next day, the sky opened up and rain poured down on the small village and rivulets. Michael and Coby were driven inside their own rented hut to wait out the storm, and every minute that ticked by only infuriated Michael more.

It rained for a full two days, and by then, all Michael’s clothes were soaked through with a mixture of perspiration and humidity. By the time he and Coby finally left, he was itching to escape the small confines of their hut.

Of course, the jungle was hardly any more kind. Their fisherman guide helped them to avoid some of the more dangerous animals and took the lead on a well-worn path through the foliage. Even so, Michael found it hard to keep his footing. The ground was uneven and the bags he carried weighed on him more with every step he took.

To keep his confidence, he reminded himself that Rose lie at the end of his journey. When he saw her, he would make up for all the pain he had caused her. As Alice had directed him, he would prove that he loved Rose more than life itself.

And he would win her back.

They got only a precious few hours of sleep that night, and when they awoke, the fisherman announced they were a scant four hours from Phi Ao. Michael had to resist the urge to shove the man aside and run the entire way. Instead, he kept to the path and followed the fisherman and Coby until the path finally ended. In the clearing beyond lay a very picturesque little Thai village against the brilliant backdrop of the sea.

Though Michael knew that it was in Rose’s nature to want to help people, he was sure it had helped her decision to come here that the place as absolutely beautiful.

As drew nearer, however, Michael noticed that something seemed…off. It was midday, and yet he couldn’t see a single inhabitant of the village milling about.

“We’re sure this is it?” He inquired skeptically to Coby. “It’s inhabited?”

“For sure.” The Thai man replied succinctly. “Fisherman are in and out all the time.”

So why did it seem so utterly deserted?

Michael didn’t see any signs of life at all until they were literally in the thick of the village itself. It was only then that he began to hear soft moaning – low wails of discomfort and almost inaudible sobbing.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up. What on earth was happening here!?

All at once, two women and a man appeared in the doorway of a house not three meters in front of them. Between them, they carried a makeshift stretcher, and upon it was the body of a recently deceased teenage girl.

Michael’s stomach tightened. He couldn’t fight impulse and immediately raced to them. “What happened?” He demanded immediately, almost shocking the two women into dropping the load they carried.  “How did she die?”

For a long beat, all three villagers only stared at him and Michael cursed. They probably didn’t speak English. Luckily, Coby and the fisherman came to the rescue. Coby spoke to the trio in rapid Thai before turning back to Michael. “I told them you are a doctor. They say she died of Malaria. Most of the village is infected.”

Michael’s blood ran cold. “Ask them if they knew an Englishwoman living her. Her name is Rose. She might be helping with the sick.”

Coby nodded, immediately translating for the trio of villagers. One of the women’s eyes widened in surprise at the mention of Rose’s name. “Rose?” She repeated in English. “Rose?”

“Yes, Rose!” Michael burst impatiently, taking the woman’s hand gently. “Do you know where she is?”

Quickly Coby convinced the fisherman to help him take the woman’s burden from her. The moment she was free, she wrapped strong fingers around Michael’s wrist and dragged him towards a line of huts in the rear. “She pointed to one of the last ones on the right and Michael thanked her quickly before breaking away and sprinting towards it.

Within a moment, he was inside the dim space. And the sight that met his eyes almost brought him to his knees.

Rose’s lithe, slender form lay on a narrow cot, paler than he’d ever seen her. Every inch of her skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and she seemed to be struggling for breath. Next to her, a middle-aged Thai woman held her hand tightly, rocking back and forth with an anxious expression.

“Rose.” The word escaped him on a rush and Michael barely made it to her side before he collapsed to his knees. The woman next to him leapt to her feet. “Who are you!?” She demanded in perfect English. “What are you doing here?”

Michael could hardly speak. He took the hand the woman had dropped and felt the weak pulse at Rose’s wrist. Any elation he might have felt at being reunited with her was sapped from him at the sight of her struggling so hard to take her next breath. She was very, very ill.

But he had to keep his composure. It was one of the things Rose had so admired him for. If he couldn’t do that now, he wouldn’t be able to help her or any of the people in the village.

And he would have come here for nothing.

Somehow, he managed to speak. “I’m here to help.”

And it was the honest-to-God truth.

Michael had seen far too many epidemics in the past year. They were ugly things, products of isolated settlements and governments who cared little for their people. Luckily, in Phi Ao, there hadn’t been many deaths yet.

But there might have been. Had Michael not arrived when he had, who knew how long the villagers might have gone without medical care. He got to work within minutes of finding Rose’s barely breathing form, calling Coby, the fisherman and every able-bodied villager to him to give them direction.

He sent two of the villagers and the fisherman back to An in order to take a car and secure supplies from the nearest hospital. Coby and the others set on to work with the limited supplies he’d brought with him. For now, emphasis was placed on keeping people well hydrated and conscious.

But Rose was well beyond that. Though he knew he had other patients to tend to, Michael couldn’t bring himself to devote his full attention to them. Not with Rose clinging to life the way she was. According to Pri, her companion, she’d been bedridden for about a week, but the older woman suspected that Rose had been sicker for far longer. She’d been exhausted and listless almost since she’d arrived at the village, and now, it seemed as if she had lost the will to live.

Michael made her as comfortable as he could. He fed Rose a thin gruel, made sure she drank as much as she was able and mopped her fever moist skin. But until drugs arrived from a hospital in the closest city, there was little else he could do but pray.

Michael absorbed himself in his work. All in all, there were about thirty sick villagers, but most of them were still conscious. They could walk and feed themselves, and with Coby and the other villagers to help him, Michael could split his time evenly between Rose and overseeing their recovery.

For two days, he barely left her side. Michael did everything for her, helped the villagers cooked and clean, and prayed to whatever deity existed that he hadn’t come all this way just for Rose to slip through his fingertips.

Ultimately, his prayers were answered. Thirty-six hours after Fisherman Li had gone, he returned with the other two villagers on four wheelers with cases of anti-malarials. Everyone in the village was duly vaccinated, and those who needed them were given IVs. From then on, it was a simple waiting game.

One Michael hated playing.

To distract himself, he looked over Rose again and again Committed to memory features that he thought he might have forgotten. The way her hair curled over her shoulders almost to her waist, the soft pout of her lips and her incredible milky skin. He checked her pupils and vitals, especially her heart rate, which was up since she’d been vaccinated.

And that’s when he discovered it.

A second heartbeat.

For a moment, Michael thought that he was imagining things, but it was there. Light and faint – but growing in strength, a scant six inches from its mothers.

He could only stare, his mind awhirl.

Michael learned from the other villagers that Pri was Rose’s liaison. She didn’t speak Thai, and so Pri was both her friend, translator and confidant. She had said nothing about this, which led Michael to believe that she didn’t know.

Which meant that Rose didn’t know.

Dear sweet God…he’d left her alone here…she and the new life within might have died and he’d never have known…

Michael took her hand in his, squeezing it tightly as his heart filled until he could barely breathe. All he needed now was for her to wake up…and for the stitches that bound them to be completed for the last time.

**

Hers was a world of haze and half shadows. For the longest time, Rose wasn’t sure if she was asleep or awake. She was hot, then cold, then hot again. Somewhere in her dreams she heard the voices of Pri and the villagers, but found she wasn’t strong enough to respond. She knew she couldn’t be awake because, a few times, she heard Michael’s voice mingling with the ones she knew.

Even when she was barely conscious, she couldn’t escape him. Funny, it was also this half-awake state that allowed her to find her situation almost amusing. Lost somewhere between sleeping and wakefulness, pining for a man that cared nothing for her.

And then, one day, the dream ended.

And Rose woke up.

It happened very suddenly. One moment, she was swimming in darkness and the next she was staring at the thatched ceiling of an unfamiliar hut. She blinked at the bright light streaming in through the window before turning her head to gaze at her surroundings. The moment she did, the woman beside her leapt to her feet, tears in her eyes as she clutched at Rose’s limp arm. “Miss Rose! You’re awake. Thank God!”

Before Rose could ask anything of her, the woman released her hand and raced from the tent, leaving the young woman in a haze of confusion. Where did Pri go? Hopefully to get water because Rose was unbelievably parched.

She needed to get up and ask how long she had been sleeping. What happened to the villagers? Who was still sick?

“Rose.”

Her heart stopped.

Slowly, her gaze rose to the doorway of the hut, and for a moment, Rose was convinced she was still sleeping. That was the only way that Lord Michael Tate could be standing before her, in Thailand, thousands of kilometers away from home. “You’re finally awake.” She watched his expression in a mixture of awe and desire so sudden and fierce that it was almost enough to galvanize her into motion.

Why was he here? This man had hurt her. He had lied to her and ripped her heart from her chest. Why wasn’t he back in Britain, finding her replacement?

Slowly, Michael stepped into the tent, filling it with his presence. He looked tired – as if he hadn’t slept for days. But that made him no less devastatingly handsome – and hurt her heart no less. Those eyes…God, those eyes could undo her. “How do you feel?” Michael’s tone was carefully neutral, but his fists were clenched at his sides, and Rose found herself following thickly.

“Tired….awful, really.” She managed, her gaze never leaving him. “Like you look.”

That earned her a ghost of a smile, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “You’re recovering from Malaria. I arrived a few days ago to find over half the village out with it. Luckily enough, we managed to acquire some anti-malarials from Phuket Everyone should be right as rain within the next week or two.”

She should be elated. The village would survive – Pri and her family would be fine. But, instead, Rose found herself nervous. She was too weak – too afraid to keep herself from asking the questions that rose to her lips.

And so, she didn’t. “Why did you come here?” Her voice barely rose above the rush of the waves beyond the window of the hut.

Without a word, Michael looked over her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Rose was suddenly acutely aware of how haggard she must look. She’d been in a bed for what must have been days, she was covered in a sheen of sweat, and her mouth tasted awful.

And yet, Michael stared at her as if she were a priceless treasure on exhibit at the Louvre. Like he could want nothing more than to covet her for the rest of his life.

But…she had to be imagining the emotion in his eyes. It couldn’t be real. Believing that it was had gotten her into trouble. She couldn’t fall for his game again.

If it was a game he was playing, her rational mind piped up drily, why did he come all the way here from the UK? It was an awful long way to come just to satisfy a requirement far better suited to women close to home.

“I came for you.” Taking a step forward, Michael raised his gaze to hers, and the adoration she saw there, took her breath away. “Rose…you…you can’t imagine how I felt the moment I saw you lying there…clinging to life.” Another step forward brought him just inches from her bed, and Rose was terrified of what would happen if he came any closer. “I came here to find you…to convince you that what I feel for you is real but I didn’t know how real until I thought I might lose you.”

To her shock, the man dropped to his knees beside her bed, taking her hand. Rose let him. In fact, she reveled in the warmth that radiated from him – his gaze, his scent. It was everything about him she missed. Everything she denied herself. “Rose I love you. Without titles, without rules and regulations, I love you more than life itself and I will do anything…anything to prove it to you.”

She couldn’t stop the tears that welled in her eyes. Rose wanted to be strong – to reject him and protect her heart, but she couldn’t. Not this time.

“Rose…listen to me. Before you say anything,” Reaching forward carefully, Michael rested his large hand on the flat expanse of her lower belly. “You’re with child.”

Rose stopped breathing.

Even as she wanted to deny the possibility – to insist that she had been protected, a part of her had known it was true. Even before she fell sick with Malaria, she had been constantly lethargic. Sick to her stomach. Her breasts had recently grown tender and she was hard pressed to remember her last cycle. She’d been so wrapped up in the shambles of her life that she’d attributed all the symptoms to stress…but deep down, she had known exactly what they were.

A baby.

She was pregnant with Michael’s child. “I heard the second heartbeat while I was examining you,” Michael continued, his voice tremoring slightly over the words, “you’re going to be fine. The baby is fine. Rose, all I heard was the most minute of flutters…I thought I was imagining it, but I knew….and I wanted it. I want you, Rose. And I want our baby.” Reaching up, the man cupped her cheek and Rose felt a heart she was sure had been shattered irreparably starting to piece itself together. Against her will, her love for him enveloped her in a warm blanket. One that told her that, no matter what happened, everything would be alright.

That she would get her fairytale.

And still, Rose fought. She had always been a fighter. “So what now?” Tears spilled down her cheeks as she searched Michael’s face for answers. “I go back to Britain with you and the baby? We all become Tates and live happily after in a society that gives aid only to the people it deigns worthy?”

If she expected Michael to rise to her jibe, she was disappointed. Instead, his hazel eyes merely gleamed with good humor. “Well, I suppose, eventually, that our parents might want to meet their grandchild. But that doesn’t mean we have to live in Britain. In fact, my entire status as a Tate is up in the air right now.”

Rose’s eyes widened in shock. “What do you mean?”

Michael chuckled softly. “My mother is challenging the adoption regulations. If she wins, I’ll be a Tate regardless of where I came from or who I marry. If she loses, I’ll be just an ordinary British citizen.” Leaning down, he brought his face close to hers, so that his lips were a bare hairsbreadth away from her own. “Do you think you could love an ordinary man?”

Rose’s eyes slid shut, tears sliding down her cheeks. What he said was absolute bollocks, of course. She knew enough about Michael do know that he had amassed his own fortune from his practice, along with wise investments that both his best friend and sister helped him to make. And even if he were dirt poor, Michael could never be an ordinary man. It was impossible. He was extraordinary. Willing to risk life and limb for people who could do nothing for him in return – he was a gentleman even without his title. A brilliant Doctor, philanthropist, lover…and the man she wanted more desperately than she needed her next breath.

“So we’ll go wherever you want. Do whatever you want. We never have to go back to London, as far as I’m concerned. Mind you,” Michael grinned teasingly, “I’m sure Catherine and Alice would be dreadfully upset if they never got to see you again.”

Rose couldn’t help it. She laughed through her tears, reaching up to cup Michaels face between her hands. She hadn’t felt this light - this elated – in what seemed like an eternity. He was here. Really here…and he wanted her and only her.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Michael shifted carefully to withdraw an object from his pocket, and, in a trice, a very familiar ring was winking before her line of vision. “This is yours. I’ve been holding onto it for safekeeping.” Taking her hand gently, he gestured to her in permission. “Do you mind if I return it?”

Beyond words, Rose shook her head slowly. She watched as Michael returned the lovely ring to where it belonged. She would never take it off again – not for as long as she lived. Once the ring was in its proper place, Michael kissed her palm warmly, and then, his mouth found hers.

Delirious with joy, Rose kissed him back, devouring every whispered praise that left his lips. “I love you, Rose Lithgall. I love you so much I can’t stand the thought of living without you.”

“You won’t have to.” Rose drew back for long enough to gaze into the eyes that had won her heart – at the man who had touched her like none ever had. “We’re bound together, you and I. And nothing will ever break us apart.”