Page 60 of The Dove
He would have his final revenge.
But Niall was calling his name, and his little dove was bleeding to death. There wasn’t time for both … he had to choose.
Choose, Adam … me, or him?
Her words echoed through his mind as he glanced from the gun, a means to an end, to the woman who had saved him tonight, not once, but twice.
Choose, Adam …
With a shaking hand, he reached out and made his decision without hesitation.
Darkness crowded Daphne’s vision, seeming to encompass her entire world, blotting out all other sounds and smells. Snatches of things flickered against the backs of her eyelids, memories, perhaps. Or, dreams. They passed her by so swiftly, she could not grab onto a single one for long. She only knew there was chaos—screams and the loud clap of a gunshot, feet pounding over the hard ground. And there had been blood, so much of it everywhere, sticky and wet, its scent stinging her nostrils with a coppery tang.
There had been motion—arms lifting her, carrying her, running. The bounce and jostle of it had hurt her shoulder, sending fiery tendrils of agony into her arm and chest, but she had been grateful for it … it proved to her that she lived. The darkness had come and gone, choking out everything one moment, then relenting and allowing her a glimpse of her surroundings the next.
The night sky above her, then the interior of a hired hack, then the familiar ceiling of a bedroom at Fairchild House. A man with kind, blue eyes looming over her, calling her brave, crooning that he knew it hurt, but she must let him operate. Then … pain. Blinding pain as he’d shoved something into her wound, digging around so forcefully, she thought he might rip her arm off. She’d tried to form words, tried to tell him he could take her arm as long as he stopped poking and prodding about inside her like this. But, either she had been incapable of speech, or she’d been ignored, because the man had continued digging, slicing, tearing her apart in his quest for … well, something. She had never figured out exactly what, because the pain had proved enough to cast her back into the darkness.
There were other things after that … voices she recognized but could not place. Movement around the soft bed she lay on, and the taste of laudanum and spirits being poured down her throat.
She slept. Fitful sleep filled with dreams of blood and pain and torment, a beautiful monster of a man in the midst of it all with eyes made of green and gold fire.
It seemed to go on for days, her fading in and out in a dizzying muddle she could not sort out.
At last, a bright light came hurtling at her through the darkness, a pinpoint that grew and swelled until she was wincing, turning her head away from it with a groan. Sunlight streaming through a window … far too bright after so much darkness.
“Close the drapes,” a rough voice commanded … a voice she knew well.
She waited until the sting of brightness faded beyond her eyelids, then she opened her eyes with a contented sigh. The dimmer lighting proved more forgiving as she took in her surroundings. She was back in the chamber she’d been sharing with Adam at Fairchild House, laid in the massive bed with the coverlet pulled up to her chin. Turning her head the opposite way, she winced at the pain it caused, agony exploding in her shoulder and stabbing her in the chest.
She bit back a whimper and fought to focus her vision, which had begun to fade from the sudden pain. Breathing through it, she fought to remain conscious, to search the room until she found the source of that voice, the one that had greeted her after her ascent from the darkness.
Her gaze settled on his hulking form, slouched in a chair at her bedside. Still wearing the clothing he’d had on that fateful night in the Mint—sans his greatcoat—he looked as if he had not slept for days, his hair a bedraggled mess around his face, dark circles ringing his eyes, his mouth pulled taut as he leaned forward and braced his elbows upon his knees.
His eyes were pure gold, brimming with exhaustion and sadness and … and a hundred different mysteries she might never solve. They simply stared at each other for a long while, her remaining still in her bed, him leaning forward, his gaze seeming to trace every line and plane of her face.
Finally, he reached out one hand, his fingers gently stroking the line of her jaw, angling back up and then toward her hairline. That touch sparked warmth in her, and the pain became a distant afterthought in the wake of his tender caress.
“Little dove,” he whispered, inclining his head. “You’re back.”
She tried to nod, but thought better of it, remembering the pain. Instead, she gave him a weak smile. “So it would seem. How … how long?”
“Three days,” he replied, the heaviness of the sigh he emitted on the heel of those words carrying the weight of each day.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to think past the spinning of the room and the dryness of her mouth. She was thirsty, hungry, and aching all over … as if the bullet had made its way through her entire body, inflicting damage everywhere it touched.
“What …” She trailed off, opening her eyes to look at him. “What happened?”
He scowled. “You were shot.”
That made her laugh, then wince and groan, earning her a scathing glare.
“Do not do that again,” he chided.
She pinched her quivering lips together to stifle another laugh. “Yes, well, I am quite aware that I was shot. I was there, remember?”
He sighed, lowering his head and running a hand over his mussed hair. Had he been at her side this entire time? He looked as if he’d occupied that chair for every hour of the past three days.
“After … you were fading fast,” he said slowly, glancing down at his hands. “You lost so much blood, we thought … we thought you might not survive.”
