Page 77 of Duke of Myste
CHAPTER 24
“No, Richard. Despite your best arguments, you cannot survive on brandy and stubbornness alone?—”
The whispered argument filtered through the fog of Jane’s consciousness like sunlight through the morning mist, the familiar voices weaving in and out of her awareness as she struggled toward wakefulness.
Her head felt as though someone had taken a blacksmith’s hammer to it, each heartbeat sending sharp waves of pain from her temple to the base of her skull.
What happened to me?
She was trying to piece together fragments of memory that seemed to slip away like water through her fingers.
She tried to move, to shift position in hopes of alleviating the throbbing ache, but her body felt strangely disconnected fromher mind, heavy and unresponsive as though she were trapped beneath layers of thick wool blankets.
“Jane?” The voice was closer now, filled with such tender concern that it made her chest tighten with emotion. “Can you hear me, darling?”
Darling.
The endearment sent warmth through her despite the pain, and she forced her eyes open despite the stabbing pain that the gentle morning light streaming through her bedchamber windows sent through her skull.
Richard sounds so worried and frightened.
The argument between the siblings continued in hushed tones that carried the weight of genuine concern and growing frustration. And then sleep claimed her again, despite her best efforts to keep her eyes open.
Sometime later, when she woke up again, the first thing she saw was Richard’s face, tight with exhaustion and etched with worry lines that seemed to have appeared overnight. His usually immaculate appearance was thoroughly disheveled—his hair falling over his forehead, his cravat missing, and his white shirt wrinkled as though he had slept in it. Which, Jane realized as her vision cleared further, he had.
He sat in the large armchair that had been pulled close to her bedside, his tall frame folded into a position that looked very uncomfortable. His head rested on his hands, which were folded on her blanket near her hip, and the awkward angle of his neck suggested that he had fallen asleep while maintaining his vigil beside her bed.
He’s been sleeping in here? Watching over me?
The realization sent a flutter of warmth through her that had nothing to do with her injuries.
But it was the small addition to this tableau that made her heart swell with tenderness. Pippin, the spaniel Harriet had gifted her and insisted on them keeping despite Richard’s protests, was curled up in a ball right next to Richard’s elbow, his small back rising and falling with the peaceful rhythm of sleep.
Oh, my heart. Even dear Pippin is keeping vigil with him.
The sight of her stern, proper Duke sleeping beside her bed in such a disheveled state with a puppy as his companion struck Jane as so endearingly absurd that she felt tears prick the corners of her eyes.
This is not the controlled, distant man I married. He really loves me.
The effort of maintaining consciousness once again proved too much, and she found herself drifting back to sleep, the imageof Richard and Pippin’s peaceful forms the last thing she saw before darkness claimed her again.
When she next awakened, the light in the room had dimmed, suggesting several hours had passed. The throbbing in her head had diminished to a more manageable ache, and her thoughts felt clearer, less wrapped in cotton wool and confusion.
“… absolutely refuse to leave this room until she wakes up,” Richard’s voice was saying, low but firm with the particular brand of stubbornness that Jane had come to recognize as his default response to situations beyond his control.
“Richard, you’ve been awake for hours,” came Harriet’s exasperated reply. “If you collapse from exhaustion, you’ll be no good to Jane at all. At the very least, just eat something, for heaven’s sake.”
“I am not hungry.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say, which is truly saying something, given your tendency toward dramatic pronouncements about duty and propriety.”
Jane could hear the rustle of fabric and the soft clink of china that suggested Harriet had brought food—food that Richard was apparently rejecting with typical masculine pig-headedness.
“Harriet, I appreciate your concern, but?—”
“Are you truly going to stand there and try to convince me, all while your stomach is rumbling like a mountain avalanche?”
“Do I need to make it my weekly demand?” Jane interrupted in a voice that came out considerably weaker than she had intended, barely more than a whisper that somehow managed to cut through the siblings’ argument like a freshly sharpened blade.
