Page 137 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
‘No, but I would like to sit upright.’
He collected cushions from chairs about the room to prop behind her back, then carefully helped her sit. ‘Better?’
‘Yes. Why did you not come home yesterday?’
He sat down.Be honest, John, change. ‘Because I was avoiding this conversation. I knew you were right and I am too arrogant to simply admit it. I am a fool…’
She smiled at his self-mocking tone. ‘I wish you would be like this outside the house.’
‘If I must be different outside the house to keep your love, Katherine, and to make you happy, I shall be.’ She did not answer. ‘You do not believe me, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘You have promised before.’
‘And not changed… I shall this time, and you must recover. So I can prove it to you.’
50
John stayed beside her for two days. Refusing to leave even when his mother or Mary offered to stay with her in his stead.
She was glad.
She could not stop thinking of being tied on that bed every time she shut her eyes, and in her sleep she heard Mr Wareham say he was her father over and over.
When the morning of the third day came, the doctor agreed to her attempting to get out of bed and John left her so she might wash and change.
It felt awful to be without him. It felt like it was an end.
Katherine’s absence rankled within John like a canker. But he had agreed to let his mother help her dress.
When he returned she was paler.
‘I will carry you to the chair,’ he said.
‘I can walk. It is my shoulder that is wounded not my legs.’
He smiled, noting with a feeling of warmth that she must be feeling better to berate him. ‘Very well, but you will take my arm, and you are only going as far as your sitting room today.’ She gave him a half-smile but conceded, sliding to the edge of the bed, while lifting her hand.
He took it, but her fingers gripped too tightly as she rose. ‘Wait a moment, my head is spinning.’
‘Let me carry you.’
‘No.’ Her determined gaze met his.
‘Very well.’ Swallowing back his irritation and his need to cosset her, he braced her fingers on his arm. He liked it when she turned to him for comfort. He did not like it when she turned away. And here was a lesson to him. Is this not what Katherine had complained of the night of the last ball? She liked him turning to her, too. ‘Ready?’
She nodded but her smile stiffened.
‘Is it hurting?’
‘Like the devil,’ she whispered.
‘Do you want to take another dose of laudanum when you are settled?’
‘No,’ she answered, grimacing. ‘It makes me feel sick and too sleepy, and I fear what it does to the child.’
John’s mother interrupted their tête-à-tête. ‘Get settled then, and I will send for some sweet tea. Mary can read to you, too, and that will distract you.’
John walked Katherine into the other room and saw her into a chair, then stepped back and let his mother and Mary fuss, begrudging their presence. He had become too used to being alone with Katherine, he was not ready to share her with others yet.
