Page 93 of Duke of Destruction
Percy. Percy was here. In her bedchamber. In her armchair. Asleep.
If Catherine’s body had felt better equipped to do, well, anything, she might have reacted to this more violently. As it was, she just stared at him for a moment.
What in the good Lord’s name was he doing here? He lookedwretched, and he was going to have a crick in his neck to rival whatever was happening in Catherine’s head and spine from sleeping in a chair like that, his chin tucked down toward his chest, his shoulder wedged awkwardly against the wing of the chair.
Also, he was wearing…were those Jason’s clothes? If so, she could understand why he hadn’t taken them to his marital home. They were, every single one of them, hideous.
She blinked rapidly a few times—alsoow, which was unfair; blinking shouldn’t hurt—and then it all came back to her.
I miss youand the terrible rage she’d felt after. Storming off to find Percy, only to encounter him right outside her own home. The garden. Crompton. Calling for help, Percy defending her, and then?—
Oh. No wonder her head hurt so much. She must have bashed it on that stupid, ugly stone bench, the one that was too uncomfortable for anyone to sit on, but which hadhistoryandfamily legacy,and so they were all stuck with it, forever.
Catherine was still Catherine, even when she was in pain and thirsty and still rather confused. She made a mental note to use this opportunity to make Xander get rid of the blasted thing. He couldn’t cryhistoryover anear-murderousbench, now could he?
But that was for later. For now, her head was swimming, and her throat was arid.
She tried, slowly, to push herself to a seated position. Ow, ow, and triple ow.
Catherine made every attempt at being quiet; whatever had happened in the aftermath of her injury, it was clear that Percy needed sleep and needed it badly. But the pain of moving made her suck in a tiny breath, and apparently that was all that was needed for Percy to sit bolt upright in his chair, looking around wildly like he feared attack from all corners.
“Catherine,” he said, his voice croaking on the word. He dropped from the chair and, to her utter astonishment, fell to his knees at her bedside. He grabbed her nearest hand and pressed it to his mouth, his fingers trembling beneath hers.
It was a long moment before he let her go, and when he did, he looked up at her with a haunted expression.
“Christ, Catherine,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t—that you would never…” He trailed off, then let out a shaky breath.
“Water,” she rasped, her voice sounding far worse than his. He startled, then leapt to his feet with impressive agility, given the position she’d just seen him take while sleeping.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course. Here you go.”
He rushed to a nearby ewer and poured her a cup of water, which he helped her drink, one hand tilting the cup, the other hovering a hairsbreadth above her spine, not quite touching her, but ready to steady her if she needed it. She wanted to be irked by this solicitousness, but found that she couldn’t be, primarily because she feared that she would need it. None of her felt particularly steady or stable.
She took a half dozen sips of blissfully cool, refreshing water before letting him take the cup away. He put it on her bedside table, then sat carefully again on the edge of the armchair, though he cast a glance at the ground that suggested he would prefer to be kneeling there again.
“What happened?” she asked, relieved when her voice sounded more like her own.
Percy folded his hands tightly in his lap. His knuckles were bruised, she noticed.
“Do you remember…Crompton?” he asked gently.
She nodded.Massivemistake, that was. Percy let out a strangled sound as she winced and put a hand to her temple, and when she opened her eyes again, he was pulling his hands back into his lap, like he’d reached out for her and then thought better of it.
Her heart should likely be hurting more about this, she thought, but perhaps all the hurt was merely being used up on other parts of her body.
“Yes,” she said. “I tried to pull away, slipped, fell. I trust from—” She gestured toward the back of her head, but kept her movements controlled; she’d learned her lesson from the nodding debacle. “—that I hit my head.”
Percy nodded, swallowing hard. She saw his Adam’s apple bob beneath a cravat that was tied so loosely it was a miracle that it was holding on.
“You were—” He swallowed again. “—unconscious for two days.”
“Two days?” Catherine yelped before she could think better of it. She raised her hand to her temple instinctively, then realizedthat the throbbing in her skull was not as bad with the sound as it had been with movement. Well, good. That was something.
“Yes.” Well, that explained the bags under Percy’s eyes, the way he looked as though someone had been trying to crush him slowly. “We weren’t certain… The physician didn’t know for certain if you would wake. If you did, he said you should heal just fine, but we didn’t know…” He trailed off, then said in a low, fierce whisper, as if he was trying to convince himself, “But you did. You did wake up. You did.”
She had, and she was glad to be alive, of course, but it did all rather beg the question?—
If she had been unconscious for two days, had Percy been sitting in that chair fortwo days? He didlookas though he had, to be honest. It simply didn’t make any sense, though. Why would he do such a thing?
