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Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
What she got was the opposite of what she wanted, also known as the subtitle to her marriage.
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Heart & Sole
#1
Summer 1887
Edge of the Kalahari Desert

Delia had been wound up so tight with worry that she'd hardly eaten in the days Hadrian was missing. In the desert. By himself. She would have wasted away alongside him if he hadn't managed to find his way back to her. Waiting for the healer to evaluate him felt like an eon as she paced outside of the tent until there was a line in the sand. Once she had been allowed in and able to take him back to their own tent to rest, she hurried along to make sure he was comfortable in the cool, quiet of their own sleeping quarters.

Flitting about, Dee lit low lamps to illuminate their dark tent, letting him get comfortable on their bed, which had felt so empty and cold without him. She set about making some chamomile tea in their little travel set, hoping it would help him relax. While it steeped, she slipped out of her boots, overskirts and heavier layers, laying them across their reading chair without much thought. All she wanted to do was make sure he was alright and then snuggle in beside him and maybe, finally get some rest.

"How are you feeling? Was it awful out there?" She whispered as she sat on the edge of the bed, brushing his hair from his handsome face. He still felt a little warm, but she was trying her best not to worry. The healer said he would be fine, and he had survived worse with his bad habit of tasting unfamiliar plants. They'd had plenty of close calls and several near-misses, but always together and never quite so bad as to have her this out of sorts. After losing the baby, she couldn't lose him too. It would kill her. "You had me so worried." Delia wasn't sure her heart would ever recover.


Hadrian Nott



[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#2
He was drunk on water, he thought, water and life, and still mildly delirious from dragging himself back to camp on no food and less to drink, and a week-and-a-half old wound that was still festering. Of course, the healer had tidied him up considerably, so he was ten times better than he had been – but he was still far from feeling fully restored. (The healer had insisted it would take months to feel himself again, and not mere weeks of recovery – but Hadrian was quietly sure, since he wasn’t dead after all, that he only had the patience for days.)

“Ye of little faith,” Hadrian said, as he lolled his head back and let her stroke his hair. His head was still pounding from the unrelenting heat, or just the memory of it – and he hadn’t had the strength to stand, let alone scrounge up a mirror yet, but he expected his skin was burnt crimson and peeling. “I’m as good as invincible,” he declared – although the boasting was probably impeded by the hoarseness of his voice, the dry rawness of his throat. Still, he reached out a hand, loosely finding her waist with it – real, not just another mirage, a concerning hallucination of being fed and rested and together again. He grinned feverishly at her. “And you know I’d never leave you.”

He didn’t think they had been distinctly apart for as many days as this since they’d married. They had always been together; she had always been right there.




set by bee!
#3
Hadrian liked to believe he was invincible, and Delia was inclined to agree, considering all of the things they had gotten through up until this point. This time had been different. He'd been gone. She had somehow lost him and they had always been side-by-side before this. It had been the longest few days of her life.

"I know," she let her hand trail over his forehead and his cheek before reaching for the compress and cool water on the table beside their bed. After soaking the cloth in the water and ringing it out, she laid it gently across his forehead to help with the fever. Hopefully he would bounce back in his typical fashion. She hated seeing him like this. Hads was vibrant, full of life and ideas and unable to sit still. That would truly be the challenge here, getting him to get the appropriate rest and not try to hop back out into the fray too soon. "And I will never lose you again." He would never leave; she would never let go, that was it.

"Are you hungry at all?" He must have been famished after being out in the desert for so long. She still didn't know how he managed to survive with the minimal supplies that he'd retained.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#4
He wanted to kiss her, but that felt like a mountain climb of a task for the moment, even with the pleasant comfort of the compress against his forehead. Instead he settled for continuing to gaze at her, in continued affection and dazed relief, drinking in her presence – as if they had never been apart at all.

He would never take her company for granted again.

His stomach gave an odd twist at her next remark – it was something of a grumble, but gave rise to a more sickening feeling than usual. He grimaced. “I should try,” he said, to eat, and managed to jerk his chin in a nod – because, however unsettled his stomach felt, he ought to eat some real food again, not the desperate measures he’d gone to in his scavenging. “I haven’t eaten properly in days. What do you have?”




set by bee!
#5
Delia had settled her gaze on him carefully, trying not to fret, but still anxious. Despite the healer's optimism, Delia wanted to make sure. "There's tea, and some soup. Something local, though it's a bit spicy." She had always liked a kick to her food, not that bland English fare they got back home, but she supposed she could attribute that to her upbringing. "Cheeses and bread. I could make you a sandwich or something along those lines if you like? There's plenty of fruit." They had gotten lucky, in their positioning, to be not too far from supplies.

The fatigue was settling over her like a fog. She hadn't slept much in the last few days, too worried and upset to do much eating or sleeping. All she truly wanted to do was curl up next to him and catch up on her own shuteye. Still, his recovery was more important, and he should eat something to help him get some of his strength back. Once they'd accomplished that, then she could wrap herself around him and never let go again.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#6
“Ugh, fruit,” Hadrian half-groaned, half-begged, already feeling as though he might actually salivating at the mouth, if his body was finally no longer too dehydrated to manage it. His stomach would be easily sated, after the shit it had been trying to digest – not literally shit, in most cases, although he had tasted something he thought might be dung; but after the boiled leather of his own shoes for something to chew on, he would kill for a pear or a plum. A pineapple. A mango. A banana. He could envision the stores they had in their travel tents, all the things he’d been without. “I could murder a watermelon.”

And she was making tea, but after that he would ask or want for nothing: just her presence, just the luxury of being here. “But I’ll get it – you don’t need to wait on me hand and foot.” Hadrian protested, trying to sit up and then potentially haul himself off the bed she had not so long ago helped him into. But – whether from what he had just said or catching sight of his bare feet at the end of his bed, and remembering the unpleasant toughness of old leather, his face blanched and his insides cramped.




set by bee!
#7
"I want you to stay there," Delia warned with a stern look in his direction. He didn't look like he would make it very far and she waved him to lie back. "You need your rest, I can handle tea and some fruit." The kettle was still warming and so she went about slicing up whatever it was in the basket into bite-sized pieces. She was not very good in the kitchen, but she did cut up plants a lot and fruit fell into that category. If that wasn't enough, she probably could handle a sandwich or something along those lines.

Humming to herself, she swayed around, getting everything ready. Once it was all on the tray, she brought it back around the bed and settled it for him, perching herself opposite it, but close enough to help him if needed. "There, see, nothing to it." She assured him with a soft smile, running her fingers down the braid hanging over her shoulder as an outlet for unease settling into her bones. All she wanted was for him to get better. "I can't even imagine what you had to survive on out there." Between them, though Hadrian could be far more... impetuous about things than she could, they usually found things to survive off, if necessary, but the desert was a harsh place with little in the way of plants.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#8
How positively authoritarian of her; Hadrian had missed even her most domineering dulcet tones.

She had spoiled him, with the selection of fruit. Hadrian – he was already too bored to be lying down – crossed his legs and started gorging himself, like a starving man might – oh, wait. “There wa’ nuffin’ out there,” he explained, or half-explained, words muffled by the fruit in his cheeks. There was already juice dribbling down his chin. He was going to have some bloody terrible diarrhoea after this, he knew this well: but the pleasure in the moment was well worth the indignity of later.

“I caught some desert rat, the first day.” He shrugged; then his luck had run out or the weather had changed, and every scrap of life had disappeared in the sandstorms. “And then nothing. All I had to chew on were my favourite boots,” Hadrian admitted mournfully, with a pout. He’d stripped all the leather from them bit by bit until they were as good as sandals, just the soles and laces, and his feet were so disgustingly blistered from being out in the unrelenting heat of the desert that he’d had to bandage them up in cloth so he didn’t have to look at them. And he had such nice feet, usually.


The following 1 user Likes Hadrian Nott's post:
   Cordelia Emsworth


set by bee!
#9
Delia reached to fetch a napkin from the tray and pressed it to his chin gently. She could only imagine what it had been like out there.

Nothing could have prepared her for his comment about the boots though.

In an effort to be sympathetic, she started with, "Oh, my poor darling," but could not much contain the laughter that followed. His boots! Of course Delia had heard of resorting to such measures when one had no other option, but to think that Hadrian had been forced to eat his boots, well, in time she wasn't sure she would ever let him live it down.

"That must have been terrible," she managed after a moment. "Slow down, Love, you're going to make yourself ill." He'd always had a healthy appetite, but after not eating anything of... substance for a few days, he would likely get sick and it would all come back up if he didn't take it easy.



The following 1 user Likes Cordelia Emsworth's post:
   Hadrian Nott

[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#10
Divided as his attentions was between her and the fruit, and her nursely ministrations with the napkin, Hadrian flinched away from her and pulled a betrayed expression. The expression might have come off better if he didn’t still have a chunk of horned melon (kiwano, to the native cultures; the African horned cucumber, to those at home) stored up in his cheek like a lopsided squirrel.

“Are you laughing at me, Cordelia?” She was almost always Delia, if not treated to a petname; Cordelia for special cases. Like this one. What magnificent betrayal. “I almost starved to death, and you’re laughing at me?” He didn’t believe her afterthought of sympathy, and narrowed his eyes at her to express this. If his stomach lurched a little in the moment, well – maybe a lingering clump of undigested leather was betraying him, too.




set by bee!
#11
"I mean, you are drooling a little bit." Delia smothered a smile by pouting instead; he never called her by her full name. "I am just worried, I would hate for anything to get worse." He ought to know that! They did not often go without food entirely, but sometimes things got tight if they got delayed somehow or things were lost or spoiled. They had traveled so extensively that there was little they hadn't faced thus far. "I just want you well, Hadrian." She countered, using his full name which was used even less often than hers. She always called him by something sickeningly sweet term of endearment that drove everyone around them to nausea.

Delia turned herself on the pillows so that she was more next to him than opposite him now, settling down comfortably. She had missed his presence next to her in the bed and was relieved to finally have a good night's sleep ahead of her. She brushed one of her legs against his slowly more for comfort than anything else.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#12
The idea that he was drooling did frighten him into some better caution and composure, with his picking at the food. And she was right; he had better pace himself, or he would only make himself sick.

Fortunately, her presence was the welcome distraction and the familiar comfort to save him from himself. Hadrian, in easy surrender, set aside the fruit and the chamomile tea and sent his head keening back towards the pillow. “Oh, but I’m well now,” he admitted more softly, tilting his head to the side to see her better and turning into the touch of her leg against his. He gave her a smile, fuzzy around the edges. But, see, if she had been worried about him, as worried as she said, Delia had probably suffered nearly as much as he had in their separation. “Did you get much sleep while I was gone?” he asked with a returned lilt of concern, his hand hunting idly for hers in the meantime.




set by bee!
#13
The stress of the last few days had started to finally melt away. She could feel it in the release of tension in her shoulders, in the set of her jaw, and she was grateful. Having Hadrian safe and well was everything she could ask for, it was worth the sleepless nights now. "Not at all," it was the truth and not said to make him feel bad. There hadn't been anything he could have done about it. Short of the night when somebody had finally slipped something into her wine at dinner to finally get her to sleep, she had been fretful and pacing. He didn't need to know how bad she'd been; he could probably guess, but she didn't want him to worry about it now. Everything was done and over.

"Looking forward to it tonight," she hummed out as she relaxed into him, stretching out and snuggling in so that as much of her was touching him as possible. She tangled her fingers into his and finally felt like she could breathe again.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]
#14
He looked at her with a sudden, welling tenderness. He had suffered in some ways, lost out there without supplies; she had suffered in others, concerned in here, having to make unilateral decisions on where to look and what to do. And never mind this reminder that the lives they led could be dangerous, and full of risk – but they might have chosen the safest lifestyle in all the world and the truth would still be that they both suffered when they were apart, regardless.

Too much sentiment in the aftermath of some life-threatening, fear-inducing felt like too much fruit on an empty stomach, though. So Hadrian kept his sweeter and most nauseating thoughts to himself, just relishing in the comfortable way they could lie here, anchored solidly here together. And said instead, a teasing murmur into the crook between her neck and her shoulder, “Well, I was hoping you didn’t have too much fun without me.” He was back in one piece, just about; so he could freely make jokes now.




set by bee!
#15
Lulled into a sense of calm by his easy breathing, Delia smiled to herself. The breath against her neck was not quite as relaxing, but she was determined to shove those thoughts down for another night. "You are the fun, my Love." She sighed. Hopefully this would be their last time apart for any reason. She couldn't imagine doing that again for any length of time.

"Let's keep it here in the future." She meant together and he would know that. They wouldn't be here for too much longer anyway. She leaned in more and pressed her lips softly against his cheek. "I love you." She said, because it had been days too long since she last had and that was far too many to wait any longer.




[Image: Cordelia-Sig.png]

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