Page 24 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
“Simply allow her to sleep. Then, make sure she drinks plenty of water when she awakes,” Doctor Miller said. “If there’s any trouble at all in the morning, simply come back to find me. You always know where I am.”
Colin and Judith watched as Doctor Miller gathered his things and clipped out the door. They listened as his footsteps creaked down the staircase. Then, there was the final thud of the front door. He’d been there no more than thirty minutes—much less than the time he’d spent there when he’d been caring for Colin’s father.
When Colin mentioned this, Judith thought about it for quite some time. “The girl is entirely healthy in every other way. I suppose her stubbornness got the better of her tonight. But tomorrow, we have only to ensure she awakes and drinks water. Perhaps she’ll be none the wiser about all the events of tonight. Who knows?”
Colin considered this. Was it possible that Rose would awaken and not remember that he’d carried her inside, that he’d ridden fast and hard toward the doctor to ensure she was all right?
Perhaps it was better that she never knew.
Now, Judith’s lips parted into a wild yawn. She stretched her fingers over his bicep and whispered, “It’s best that you get some sleep, my lord. Despite tonight, I know you have a great deal of work to do tomorrow. Don’t let such a silly act from a silly girl interrupt your strict schedule. Good night.”
She stepped into the hallway and padded the familiar path toward her bedroom. This left Colin there alone with Rose, the unconscious Rose, who was none the wiser that he stood over her, his heart aching with worry.
God, she was so beautiful.
And yet, the fact of the incident that night stirred within Colin a strange rage. Why had she felt it to be so important to head out into the rain like that? Why had she completely ignored Judith’s orders?
Perhaps this was something Colin could bring up later, when she was better and conscious.
He simply had to, in order to ensure that she conducted herself in a manner that was in accordance with the rules of the house.
He remembered now what he’d told her about his mother—that his mother and her friend, Rose’s ex-employer, both upheld manners above all things. He assumed that Rose comprehended these manners, that she obeyed them like biblical rules. Perhaps he’d been wrong about her. Yet, despite the clear idea that she’d disobeyed, his heart surged with a feeling of respect. What was it about this girl?
In the minutes that followed, Colin grew to an understanding. If she was going to awaken without fright, he had to find a way to move her back to her bed, wherever that was.
Colin stepped into the hallway. It was now sometime past three in the morning, he supposed. He heard a little cough from somewhere down the hall. After a moment, there was a flash of a white nightgown. He stepped toward it, and the creak of his step made the girl stop.
“Come out,” he ordered.
Suddenly, the servant girl, Anna, stepped into the moonlight. She looked a bit bleary-eyed, her cheeks hollow and her skin sallow. It was obvious that she’d just awoken.
“I was wondering if you might help me with something,” Colin said. He tried his best to make his voice tender and soft and approachable, but he knew the girl was fearful of him—and had been since she’d appeared at the mansion several years before.
“Of course, my lord,” she said.
“I hoped that you would tell me…. where the governess’s bedroom is,” he said. “There’s been an accident, and I need only to take her back where she belongs. I’d hope that you’d be discrete about this. I don’t want to terrify her more than she already will be.”
Anna tilted her head, seemingly incredulous. Colin didn’t blame her, yet he didn’t have time to explain. He wanted only to wring his hands of the entire incident, strip the bed, add dry sheets, and stumble into slumber. His bones ached with fatigue.
“Of—of course,” Anna murmured. She drew a stand of hair around the back of her ear. “She’s on the third floor, in the servants’ quarters.”
Colin was a bit incredulous that the girl’s room was stitched so far from the rest of theirs, yet he didn’t question it. He thanked Anna, who then hobbled back into her bedroom and dropped the door closed behind her. He made a mental note to attempt to be kinder to the girl, to create some kind of goodwill between them. He wondered if it was already too late.
Then, Colin snaked back into his bedroom and dropped to his knees. He forbade himself from spending even more time staring at the girl—he had begun to feel it was a kind of poison. Instead, he swept one arm beneath her legs and another beneath her head.
Then, he stretched up on his legs and eased back into the hallway, plotting the course toward the servant’s quarters on the third floor. He couldn’t fully remember a time when he’d actually been up there, yet he instinctively knew precisely where they were.
When he reached her bedroom, he kicked at the door and peered in at the dreadful room. The bed was slumped in the center, hardly big enough for a human woman. If he lay upon it, it certainly would have cracked in two. Unsure of what else to do, and not wanting to frighten her in the morning, he splayed her across the bed and then stretched the blanket over her. She whimpered a bit as he did the final adjustments.
The contrast between this beautiful girl and the shoddy room around her was dismal. He swallowed hard. A strange thought passed through his mind—one that told him that wherever she’d grown up, in the orphanage, she’d surely had even worse conditions.
But why hadn’t Judith offered her one of the better bedrooms?
Had this been his order, when he hadn’t known who she was? How could he commit such an oversight?
But now, as he gazed down at her, he felt something shift within him. He understood now, beyond anything else, that he couldn’t allow such things to take place with regards to Rose any longer. When he’d carried her in his arms, he’d felt an overwhelming sense that he needed to protect her—that she might not be around much longer if he didn’t work to ensure she was all right.
Throughout the past few months, Colin had lost so much. And as he hovered in Rose’s room, really unsure if he wanted to press out into the night and find his own bedroom again, he resolved never to lose Rose. He didn’t know what this would look like: if it meant that simply he took care of her monetarily, or…
