Page 26 of When her Duke Returns
Alexander brought his hand to the back of her head to check for bleeding, but his gloved fingers came away clean. “You must ride for help! The both of you!Now! Get Francis or my groom, and bring some clean water.”
Cecelia drew her hands from her face, nodded, and sprinted off toward her mare. Within moments, Alexander watched her speed off toward the castle through the empty space between the leaves.
He reached his hand sheepishly into the fountain then drew his hand to Mary’s face and gently pressed his damp palm against her cheeks and forehead. Suddenly, her lashes began to beat wildly like a bird taking to flight.
He checked her over once more, concerned about the spots of blood at the base of her dress and her rapid pulse as his own rose in tandem. The fabric had twisted strangely around her ankles, and he feared one or the other had been broken. He had seen terrible things at war—bones and flesh mangled beyond repair—and his mind spun dangerous narratives as he looked over Mary’s limp body.
Without so much as a second thought, he pushed the tattered ends of the gown up her to her thighs but was relieved to find the damage minimal at best. The blood had been pooling from a deep set of cuts beneath her knees, probably from an unfortunate collision with the bank on her way down.
“What… Wh—What are you doing?” he heard suddenly. Mary had begun to stir. He held his body over hers and brought a hand to rest behind her back as she made to scuttle away from him.
“Mary! Oh, Mary! What did you do? What happened?”
“What are youdoing?” she asked instead, bringing herself level with him. Her face was white as a sheet, her breathing erratic. She pushed him away limply with a cry.
Alexander’s mouth fell open at the realization: in her confusion, he most likely looked like an attacker come to finish the job, a monster looking to feed. “No, oh no, Mary… I’ve done nothing, I swear. I think you’ve had a fall.”
Her eyes fell dark beneath her lashes as she made to rise, only to fall back down with a whelp. It seemed to snap her from her daze. “God, my foot!”
“Does it hurt?” he asked in his panic. She glowered at him, her face contorted in pain.“Of course, it hurts,” he corrected sheepishly. “I’ve sent for help. We’ll have you seen by a physician in no time.”
Mary rubbed the back of her hands against her face to clear it of hair and settled against the edge of the fountain, the sculpture of a long-forgotten vixen looming overhead. “I fell…” she murmured and looked away as if trying to recall the event in greater clarity. “I was running, and I fell… I lost my way in the woods.”
Her rambling was almost too quiet to hear, but Alexander connected the dots. “Why were you running so far from home? Were you trying to find us?”
She shook her head and strained a laugh. “You think too highly of yourself,” she poked. Clearly, her penchant for sarcasm was greater than her pain. “There was a disagreement. I needed to go away and cool off…”
“By throwing yourself off a bank?”
“I didn’t throw myself off of anything! I didn’t see the ledge, and I suppose I fell.”
“Yousuppose?” Alexander echoed. He hadn’t intended to voice any of his suspicions, but her story rang strangely against all reason.
She appeared none too pleased with his tone. “Are you suggesting I threw myself over the ledge so that you would feel sorry for me?”
“No,” he replied. “I’m not sure what I meant.”Mary sunk into silence, and Alexander shuffled to rise. Despite their circumstances, his grandmother’s words sounded in his mind. He had to put some distance between them, lest someone come across them in intimacy.
“Wait,” she urged and put a hand on his shoulder. “Help me up.”
He did as he was told, bringing her to a stand beside him, his arms locked around her waist. She hesitated for a moment, testing the weight on her ankle before ultimately settling back down on the stone lip of the pool with an unladylike groan.
Even at this moment, Alexander thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, perhaps made all the more beautiful by her undoing at the hands of the forest and her temper.
“What was the disagreement about?” he had to pry to stop himself from staring.
“Familial concerns.”
“That whittles it down.”
Mary scoffed and began massaging her ankle, her bosom threatening to slip from her mucky gown with every new trip of her fingers. “Antony sold Summerhead… or Francis did, it would seem, and he gave Antony the note.”
Alexander shook his head. It was no wonder she had run off. She cared for that estate more than any other in the world.
“It’s really quite stupid,” she added without missing a beat. “It’s not like we spend much time there at all... but it’s the principle of it all. It was mine, in a way, or I so wanted it to be. Oh, you wouldn’t understand!”
“To have something you adore ripped from you without so much as a forewarning… No, I suppose that’s a condition I have no bearing over,” he sneered.
Mary dropped her gaze from his, and Alexander suffered a surge of sudden guilt. He had promised himself not to speak of their past, not to speak ofanythingthat might incite dangerous feelings, so he could keep her safe. But, when it came to Mary, he found himself quite like Icarus to the sun.
