Page 100 of The Duke
He certainly didn’t, she thought mulishly.
“What is he doing here?” she breathed, not realizing she addressed Longhurst instead of Cole. She wasn’t ready for this… She was barely awake, and should like to fall back into a coma any moment now.
The man in question drew cruel brows together in a scowl.
“He hasn’t left since he saved your life,” Dr. Longhurst informed her with a long-suffering exhale. “Good thing you survived,” he muttered, glancing at the duke. “For both our sakes.”
“How is she?” Cole demanded, also addressing Dr. Longhurst though his eyes would not leave her, would not stop drinking her in.
He’d saved her life? Jeremy had been in her room when he attacked her which meant… Cole had comebackafter he’d left.
“I—I’m fine,” she stammered.
He held up a hand to silence her, and Imogen’s astonishment turned to something like outrage.
“How is she?” Cole asked again in the voice of a man unused to repeating himself. “Was she injured in the fall? Any permanent damage done?”
“The fall? What fall?” Imogen’s question fell on deaf ears.
Dr. Longhurst furrowed his brow. “The chloroform mixed with the alcohol in her system seemed to intensify the other’s effect, resulting in a longer loss of consciousness. Though she was dropped from the window, her lax pliability may have been what saved her life—”
“I was dropped from the window?” she asked, a great deal louder this time.
“Howisshe?” Cole exploded, taking a threatening step toward the doctor.
Longhurst leaped up, obviously glad her bed was in between them. “In a word. She’s fine.”
“Good. Get out.”
Imogen made a few stupefied sounds of disagreement as the doctor gathered his instruments. Finally she found her voice. “I already said I was fine. I want someone to explain to me what happened.”
Longhurt froze, forehead creased with indecision.
“Get.Out.” Cole’s teeth no longer separated, and his lips drew back with a snarl. The good doctor abandoned her to Cole’s smoldering glare and ticking jaw with undue alacrity.
Imogen closed her eyes to summon strength, but found her reserves depleted. “I know you’re still angry.” She sighed. “But I simply don’t have the strength to listen while you—”
“Youwilllisten to me, woman, and you will listen well.” His tone brooked no argument, his eyes glinting with a warning to rival the sparks from Hephaestus’s hammer as he tempered Zeus’s thunderbolts. “You aregoingto marry me, Imogen, and this is why.” He ticked the reasons with the touch of his index finger to that of his alloy ones. “Firstly, because I want you to, and I happen to be a very powerful duke who is in the habit of getting what he wants. Secondary, because you will find it easier to attain more of your philanthropic objectives as a duchess rather than merely a countess.”
“M-merely a countess?” Had those words ever been spoken before? Had he just… proposed marriage? Surely that couldn’t be right.
“I’m not finished,” he said curtly.
She made an astonished sound somewhere between a squeak and a groan. Was it possible she was still dreaming? That she was having some strange and ill reaction to the chloroform? Surely that had to be the case, as it sounded like he was agreeing to her charity work, offering his title as support.
“Tertiary.” He sent her a quelling look. “After the events of last night—no, strike that—due to your terrifying andinfuriatingtendency over the past few years to attract various enemies and obsessed lunatics—not to mention your affinity to find yourself in dangerous situations—it only makes sense that we reside together so I no longer have to rush all the way next door in order to continue to save your life. Which is, apparently, my new vocation and takes up entirely too much of my time. And in conclusion because—”
“Because you love me?” Imogen asked, gasping in a breath tinged with that very thing she’d thought had abandoned her.
Hope.
His lashes lowered over his eyes, as his gaze slid elsewhere to avoid hers. “Of course I love you,” he told her bedpost, worrying at something imaginary in the woodwork with distracted, anxious fingers. “I informed you and your entire household of that only a million times last night when I thought…” His sentence trailed away as Imogen watched his throat work as though to swallow shards of glass.
“Cole,” she murmured gently. “Look at me.”
“I can’t.” He stood staring at her bedpost, waging a silent, desperate struggle with his greatest opponent. Himself. “I can’tfuckingsurvive something like that again,” he finally admitted in a suspiciously husky voice. “I’d return to prison before I ever saw you in danger like that. It was the singular worst experience of my life.”
Imogen glanced at his prosthetic, the whole of it visible as his shirtsleeves had been rolled up at some point during his vigil over her. He couldn’t mean that.
