Page 85 of A Rescue by the Rakish Duke
More memories flashed through her mind. The almost intimate way Timothy had strangled her with an embrace. The way he had shifted his gaze to the window where Damian stood laughing with another gentleman. Timothy’s demand that she give him the location of the documents.
Damian turned to her, his face impassive even as his hand caressed hers. “You could have been killed, Gwendoline. And it’s not the first time,” he said with so much anguish that her self-control almost shattered.
Anger. Anguish. She wished that Damian didn’t have to hold on to those feelings for a long time. They were the reasons he married her and kept her close to him. She couldn’t help but remember Timothy’s taunts. He said that the duke would not have anything to do with her after all of this was over.
“I’m sorry, Damian. I didn’t mean to make you worry,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.
“It’s not your fault. I should have kept a better eye on you. We also can’t move on with our lives as long as Timothy lurks in the shadows,” he replied, his voice husky and strained.
His fingers curled around hers tightly as if he did not want to let go, but Timothy’s words echoed in Gwendoline’s head. In her heart.
“You couldn’t have known he’d attempt something like this with so many people around,” she said gently, comforting her husband even though her heart was shattering into pieces.
She wondered how her emotional pain could eclipse the physical one.
“I’ve promised you over and over that I’m taking no chances and that he won’t get near you. And here we are, going home after you had an encounter with the man himself. The devil himself.”
Gwendoline couldn’t help but stare at her husband’s ticking jaw. She might have been hurt physically, but he was in anguish. She continued to remind herself that he simply cared as anyone would about the people near them. He simply wanted to avenge his friends against her cousin.
“We’ll face him together,” she promised.
But her heart sank even further the longer she didn’t tell Damian what she’d done. What she’d said.
“Together,” he agreed, looking at her with a big grin on his face.
He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead so tenderly that even as she opened her mouth to tell him that Timothy knew about the location of the documents, no words came out.
The carriage rumbled toward the disturbed peace of his London residence. Gwendoline leaned against him, trying to draw strength from his formidable presence. She hoped that he would still mean the word ‘together’ after he realized what they had just lost.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Atense silence descended on the carriage. Damian felt his wife’s head on his shoulder. She must have dozed off. Across from them sat a quiet Evan, looking out the window.
He felt guilty about letting her wander the gardens at night in somebody else’s estate. She had already been hurt in Greyvale.
What was he thinking?
He had been too preoccupied with recruiting more allies. He remembered laughing and drinking some whiskey with his peers. It had been a while since that had happened.
A long time.
The last time he was like that was before Montrose invaded his life. Their lives. Even then, there was some bitterness in his life,with his mother’s illness and his father’s steadfast commitment to duty.
Duty, duty, duty.
He had been good at it, at least. He knew who to ally himself with, manage the estate, and handle the finances. But his engagement with happiness might be a lie. His mother was a whirlwind of emotions, soaring up and crashing down. When she crashed down, she crashed downhard.
Damian had lost her. It was why he never had close friends like Mary and Levi. He had let them in when they were all too young, before his mother’s death broke him. Then, he lost them, too. Now that he was unmoored, he was terrified by his reaction to the attempts on Gwendoline’s life.
“It was all my fault,” he whispered.
Evan stared at him from across the carriage. His fists were on his lap, and he seemed like he was barely breathing.
He had always been Damian’s man and friend. The only reason Damian had put some distance between them was that his father didn’t want him to be friends with servants.
Yet, here they were.
Here he was, in a carriage with a friend he could not claim and a woman who had made him vulnerable again.
