Once And Always

Chapter 20

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Early the following afternoon, Dr. Worthing was able to report that Uncle Prama was "still holding his own."

The next day, he came downstairs to the dining room where Tae and Tee were having dinner and informed them that Prama "appeared to be much improved."

Tee could scarcely contain his joy, but Tae merely quirked a brow at the physician and invited him to join them for dinner.

"Er—thank you," Dr. Worthing said, shooting a sharp look at Tae's inscrutable features. "I believe I can leave my patient unattended for a short time."

"I'm certain you can," Tae replied blandly.

"Do you think he'll recover, Dr. Worthing?" Tee burst out, wondering how Tae could appear so utterly unemotional.

Carefully avoiding the khun luang's assessing stare, Dr. Worthing directed his uneasy gaze at Tee and cleared his throat. "It's difficult to say. You see, he says he wants to live to see you two married. He's most determined to do so. You might say that he's clinging to that as a reason to live."

Tee bit his lip and glanced uneasily at Tae before asking the doctor, "What will happen if he starts to recover and we—we tell him we've changed our minds?"

Tae answered Tee in a bland drawl. "In that case, he'll undoubtedly have a relapse." Turning to the physician, he said coolly, "Won't he?"

Dr. Worthing's gaze skittered away from Tae's steely eyes. "I'm sure you know him better than I, Nong'Tae. What do you think he'll do?"

Tae shrugged. "I think he'll have a relapse."

Tee felt as if life were deliberately tormenting him, taking away his home and the people he loved, forcing him to come to a strange foreign land, and now propelling him into a loveless marriage with a man who didn't want him.

Long after both older men left, he remained at the table, listlessly toying with the food on his plate, trying to find a way out of this dilemma for the khun luang's sake and his own. His dreams of a happy home, with a loving spouse at his side and a baby gurgling in his arms, came back to mock him, and he allowed himself a bout of self-pity. After all, he hadn't asked very much of life; he hadn't yearned for furs and jewels, for seasons in Bangkok or palatial homes where he could play reigning lord. He had wanted no more than what he'd had in Chiang Mai—except that he had wanted a spouse and children to go with it.

A wave of dizzying homesickness washed over him and he bent his head. How he longed to set time back a year and keep it there, to have his parents' smiling faces before his, to listen to his father speak of the hospital he wanted to build, and to be surrounded by the villagers who had been his second family. He would do anything, anything to go back home again. An image of P'Godt's handsome, laughing face appeared to taunt him, and Tee thrust it away, refusing to shed any more tears for the faithless man he had adored.

He pushed his chair back and went looking for the khun luang. P'Godt had abandoned him to his own fate, but Tae was here and he was obliged to help him think of some way out of a marriage neither of them wanted.

Tee found him alone in his study—a solitary, brooding man standing with his arm draped on the mantel, staring into the empty fireplace. Compassion swelled in his heart as he realized that, although he had pretended to be cold and unemotional in front of Dr. Worthing, Tae had come in here to worry in lonely privacy.