Page 152 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days
“Oh, God,” she groaned, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. “So much death, Jean-Yves. More bodies. More secrets.”
“Do not think of this.” A paternal hand brushed over her hair, light as the fall of an autumn leaf. “I am sorry I did not follow you that night,” he said earnestly. “I thought you were safe in your husband’s arms. In his bed. I did not think you’d slip away.” His eyes held a mild censure, one that pricked her with guilt.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the apology encompassing more than he would ever realize. She’d never bring herself to admit to him that she’d suspected him of blackmail. That her guilt and terror had caused her to treat everyone in her sphere with the same distrust. “I’m so sorry.”
“It is over, Duchesse.The authorities know the duke’s cousin tried to kill him, and that Forsythe killed Lady Throckmorton and that you would have been next had he not dispatched them.” His kind gaze crinkled with a sad smile. “Your secrets are now safe. Your husband is now safe.”
“But—”
“These bodies, I helped to bury, as well, and I always will if called upon to do so. For you, and for them.” He motioned with his chin to the door. “Your life may begin anew with a man who loves you most desperately.”
She grasped his hand and held it, her throat too full of emotion to express her gratitude, though he squeezed her palm, his smile full of tender comprehension.
Releasing her, he went to the door, motioning someone inside.
Not Redmayne, but the “them” to whom he had referred.
The Red Rogues descended upon her in a flurry of silks and exclamations.
“You’re awake!” Cecelia leaned down and hugged the air around her as if she were too fragile to even touch. “Oh, thank God, Alexander, we were so bereft when we heard you’d been shot, we nearly rowed the length of the entire Channel rather than wait for a ferry.”
Francesca dropped a single kiss on her forehead. “Luckily, Cecelia was able to charm a fisherman into chugging us across.”
“And by charm, she means pay.” Cecelia nudged her spectacles farther up onto the bridge of her pert nose, hovering like a worried hummingbird swathed in cobalt silks.
Francesca bustled about, her butter-yellow skirts swishing across the floor efficiently as she filled Alexandra’s water glass, adjusted the drapes for optimal light, placed her shawl close by, selected a book for her to read, and scrutinized the label of the tonic on the bedside table as though prepared to give her medical opinion.
“How long have I been asleep?” Alexandra wondered.
“Oh, a few hours, not to worry.” Cecelia picked up a hairbrush. “Would you like me to untangle your hair?”
“A few hours?” Alexandra looked to Francesca for the truth.
“A few dozen hours.” Francesca sighed. “One and forty, to be exact, if you count the time it took your husband to get you here.”
Almost two days?Alexandra marveled as she drank in the sight of her lovely friends and did her best to push herself into a seated position. Pain incised her, and she hissed a foul word.
“Oh, no, you mustn’t move,” Cecelia admonished. “Your stitches might tear, and then poor Redmayne would—”
“Where is he?” Alexandra asked, wishing for him with an ache that surpassed the one in her side.
“Oh, in the next room.” Cecelia threw a flippant gesture to Redmayne’s suite as she lowered herself to the mattress and began a cautious unknotting of Alexandra’s braid. “Francesca poisoned him.”
“What?”
“I didnot,” Francesca insisted. “He’s still breathing, or was, when I checked an hour ago.”
“She slipped a sleeping tonic into his tea,” Cecelia tattled, running the silver brush over Alexandra’s tangled tresses. “But I think she gave him too much as he’s been unconscious for nigh on ten hours.”
“That had nothing to do with the draught I gave him,” Francesca argued. “And everything to do with the fact that he hadn’t rested for the thirty hours prior.” Dropping into the chair beside the bed, Francesca smirked. “He forced my hand, I’ll have you know. If he’d not have been pacing like a caged lion, growling at the staff and interrogating the surgeon every twenty minutes, making a general nuisance of himself, I’d have let him be. But the longer he stayed awake—the longer you remained unconscious—the more insufferable he became.”
Cecelia leaned in conspiratorially, her blueberry eyes sparkling with rapture. “He’s hopelessly besotted with you, Alexander. Now that I’m not terrified for your life, I find his behavior rather romantic.”
It buoyed Alexandra to no end to hear it. For she would have been the same. Insensible. Incoherent with worry for him. That’s what love did to a person.
“Yes, the poor lummox,” Francesca agreed. “What the devil did you do to him? You’ve only known each other ten days.”
“And yet I love him,” Alexandra admitted, meaning it with every part of her soul. “I love him so terribly much.”
