Page 114 of Deceiving an Earl
“She just needs to heal.” Oliver settled into a chair and trained his gaze on Ellen. The restlessness was gone. He felt surprisingly calm and confident in Ellen’s recovery, now that Needham was taken care of.
“Where did you go?” Philip asked. He appeared a little less sullen, a little less frightened and more awake.
Oliver could see that the housekeeper had tried feeding him. A nearly full tray of food sat to the side.
“You’re not hungry?” Oliver tipped his head to the tray.
“No. Where’d you go?”
Oliver had hoped to change the subject, but Philip was having none of it.
“I had business to attend to.”
“Did the business involve scraping your knuckles?”
Oliver looked down at his hand. He’d not even noticed that his knuckles were raw and bleeding. He flexed his fingers, wincing at the slight sting. But the satisfaction of taking Needham to the ground far outweighed roughed-up knuckles.
“Is he dead?”
Oliver glanced at Philip. “No.”
Philip turned his head to look at his mother. “Too bad.”
“Killing him would have caused more problems.”
“But you thought about it?”
“Of course I did.”
“I thought about it, too,” Philip whispered. “Killing him. I wanted to.”
“But you realized it was not the right choice. We’re not like him, Philip. We don’t resort to violence. And we certainly don’t hit women.” Oliver folded his fingers over his knuckles.
“No,” Philip said softly, still looking at his mother.
Oliver leaned forward. “Remember this. Remember what happened to your mother and never, ever touch a woman in anger. If I hear that you did, I will hunt you down.”
“I would never do that,” Philip said. “On my word.”
Oliver nodded. “A man’s word means everything. If you don’t have your word, you have nothing.”
“I understand.”
They descended into silence, comforted by Ellen’s steady breathing.
“We’ll figure this out,” Oliver said into the silence, not knowing if he was speaking to Philip, Ellen, or both of them. “We’ll sort all of this out.”
“Will we?” Philip asked.
…
She pictured the pain as an ocean. She’d gone to the ocean once. In France. With her family. It had been beautiful and magical and it had called to a primitive part of her and she’d never felt that type of connection again. She’d always thought that if she could, she would live on the ocean and listen to the waves for the rest of her life, and every day she would walk with bare toes sinking into the wet sand and the small waves lapping at her ankles, and life would be good.
The pain came in waves like that, and if she rode the wave and pictured the endless water and the horizon in the distance, it made it better. Tolerable, at least.
But certain things would pull her back. Like the driftwood that would gather at the edge of the water. Voices. People touching her. She didn’t like the touching, but they were gentle hands and at times she recognized her housekeeper and a kindly gentleman who came and went.
A doctor maybe.
