Page 22 of The Duke
Imogen knew he’d owned a part of it since that night they’d spent together. It would take little more than a kind word and that devastating smile to coax the rest of it into his strong hands.
Hand.He only had the one. She’d help him get used to that as well. She’d fetch and carry what he could not. She would—
All sentient thoughts scattered like a flock of startled birds when she rounded the frame of his door.
Had Imogen passed him on the street, she would not have recognized him. Certainly, there was the jaw she’d shaved smooth only this morning. Aristocratic angles and masculine stubbornness clenched against a sip of tea William held to lips that remained pressed together. His hair wanted a cut, though she’d washed and shaped it after a fashion. It fell across eyes that bore no resemblance to the molten fire she remembered. They were now more feral than fierce, but dull too. Dull and empty. As if everything that had once made him Collin Talmage, Duke of Trenwyth, had been taken, leaving only this coarse and rather lupine creature in his stead.
Shadows seemed to gather around him that had nothing to do with the fact that Molly drew the curtains closed against the spring afternoon.
“Your Grace,” Longhurst said, leading Imogen into the room. “Might Nurse Pritchard persuade you to take your tea, or broth if you prefer?”
Unable to breathe, Imogen stared in slack-jawed stupefaction.
Trenwyth’s eyes flicked over her and fixed back onto Longhurst. He’d considered her only for the time it took a grain of sand to pass through an hourglass, but it was enough to set Imogen’s limbs to trembling. Not for the reasons she predicted either. Those eyes, once so full of assessing wit, predatory confidence, and not a little pain, were now only strident wells of immeasurable nothingness.
“Why would she?” His dry voice resembled a growl, but lacked an iota of inflection.
“Why, indeed?” Fowler muttered from where he stood over the duke, his arms crossed in what Imogen translated to be a rather defensive stance.
She winced, but stood her ground, unable to tear her eyes away from the dear sight of him. Alive. Awake. His left arm, still heavily bandaged, was secured to his chest with a sling draped from his wide shoulder. He had regained some color beneath his chapped and weather-beaten skin.
He was battered, bruised, and still every bit as beautiful as she remembered.
“Nurse Pritchard is the reason you’re alive,” Longhurst informed him.
“Hardly!” Fowler unfolded his arms, his hands falling to clench at his sides.
“She, alone, diagnosed you,” Longhurst reasoned. “We all thought you had typhus. She fought for you. For your survival. And won, obviously.”
Trenwyth’s head swiveled on his neck with almost unnatural slowness until he’d speared her with a glare that froze the blood in her veins. “Did she?”
It wasn’t gratitude that arranged his features, but accusation.
Longhurst’s regard, in contrast, glowed with uncharacteristic warmth. “She is to be commended,” he murmured.
No one said a thing for an uncomfortably long time.
Conscious of her drab uniform and the severe knot of hair beneath her cap, Imogen smoothed her apron as she stepped forward, trying again to catch Trenwyth’s eye. “If the tea isn’t to your liking, I could bring you another—”
“I want nothing from you,” Trenwyth said shortly without looking at her. “I despise tea. I’ll take coffee.”
Stung, Imogen stepped back. This wasn’t at all what she’d expected.
“Stimulants are not recommended for recent surgery patients,” Longhurst informed him. “Perhaps in time—”
“Where is my man?” Trenwyth’s cold copper eyes searched the faces of all those gathered in his room. All but hers.
“Who?” Fowler asked.
“Sean O’Mara, my valet, did he return from…?” For a moment the duke looked confused, then resolute as though he’d remembered something, until the shadows and spite settled back around him like a cloak. “Is he alive?” he asked tightly.
“He’ll be sent for straightaway, Your Grace.” Longhurst bowed to him, watching him intently. “He’s now employed with Scotland Yard under Sir Carlton Morley. In the meantime, allow Nurse Pritchard to administer your opiate tincture. For the pain in your wrist.”
Trenwyth’s lip curled back from his teeth in a cruel sneer. “That plain-faced twit won’t come near me, and neither will you, sawbones.”
“Beg your pardon?” Longhurst said in a way that made it clear that pardon wasn’t being begged, but demanded.
“You won’t drug my wits from me, not when I’ve just regained them.” The duke met Longhurst’s challenging gaze with dark censure.
