Page 85 of A Lady of Means
“What about…her?”Tristan urged.
“What about her?”Peregrine retorted.Devyn didn’t like the defensiveness in his voice.
“Shouldn’t someone tell her he didn’t bleeding die?”
“What business is it of hers?She’s marrying a duke.”
Devyn pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.He pulled at the ends of his hair as his heart fought its way out of his chest.A strangled sob escaped him.The words ran him through worse than a dull lance.
How could she?But then, how could shenotconsent to marrying a duke, a prince, a king even, because that’s what she deserved.
Devyn rubbed a hand over the ache in his chest.He’d never been enough for her.He’d been fighting like hell the last seven months to get back to her, and to recover the last week to get her back, but what did he have to recover for now?
“Once my brother makes it through his next hurdle of fighting the infection of his gunshot wound, and then standing on his own, I’ll let him tell her himself.”
Devyn heard his brother’s words like they were at the surface, and he was falling head first under waves of relentless ocean water.
Tristan returned in a low voice.“What if he doesn’t tell her?”
“Don’t see how that’s my problem.”
“She’s gutted,” Tristan pushed.
Images of her in pain, the heartbreaking shade of blue her eyes went when she cried, tears hanging from her lashes, the heavy pout of her fuller lower lip, the way she must hate him for doing this to her and then not being able to comfort her, all drowned him further in his grief.
“I would hope so, she did claim to love him.”
“Just be the man I love, the man who loves me.That’s enough for me.”
Had she said that to me?Had all of it even been real?God, I’m not clear-headed enough to sort this shit out.
Tristan’s voice sounded a bit pleading.“And she doesn’twantto marry the duke.”
How did he know?Had he seen her and not shared any details to avoid setting back Devyn and his recovery?
Peregrine’s voice was neutral.“No one’s forcing her.”
“Aren’t they?”
Fire frenzied along his veins.Devyn couldn’t take it anymore.Using one leg to stand, bracing himself on a chair, he leaned over to the nearby table and swiped its contents onto the floor.A loud groan and a crash accompanied a parade of glass shards before him where there once had been bottles of laudanum.
Peregrine stood in the doorway, assessing Devyn’s shirtless form and cocked up hair and red-rimmed eyes, the mess he’d made.
“Oh, Devyn.What about the pain?Your last dose-”
“Was my last dose,” Devyn interjected.“I need to move without it.”
He needed tothinkwithout it, he couldn’t stand the way it heightened everything and then left him dull and hollowed out.He had started to count the minutes down to his scheduled dose and he knew if he followed where that would lead.He was definitely no use to her a slave to the contents of a bottle.
“But your injury-”
Devyn rotated his shoulders, stretched his arms almost above his head, winced, then brought them back down.
“I’ve felt worse,” he groaned.
A maid entered with a broom and a dustpan.He felt like an ass, so he took the instruments from her small hands and told her to step back, biting back a grimace as he did so.
“You’re as stubborn as father,” Peregrine said, shaking his head.
