Page 78 of The Duke's Carriage Window
Kit joined Darius, looking around warily as if expecting more men to jump out of the shadows. “Is she all right?”
“I’m not sure. She’s passed out again. We need the doctor to see to her at once.”
“Of course.” Kit left and Darius carried Meredith home, just as she’d asked.
The doctor arrived shortly after Darius settled Meredith in her bedchamber. She hadn’t opened her eyes, but she seemed to be resting peacefully. The bruises that had started to darken along her neck, a sight that drove painfully into Darius’s gut. He left her side reluctantly when the doctor asked, so as to allow the man enough room to examine her.
“She woke for a moment and then lost consciousness again,” he informed the doctor.
Dr. Bradburn nodded as he began his inspection. He checked her breathing first, then lifted her lids and peered into them.
“She will have a sore throat and her eyes will be bloodshot, but I believe she will heal without any complications,” Dr. Bradburn said. “She is likely exhausted from the struggle. I will give her some laudanum for the pain. That will also help her sleep.”
Darius could only nod and hold Meredith’s hand as she rested. The doctor poured some laudanum onto a spoon and parted Meredith’s lips. She stirred slightly, frowning and licking her lips as she took the medicine. Satisfied, the doctor took his leave.
Frances brought Darius dinner, but he didn’t touch it. He had no appetite. He kept replaying that moment of finding her limp and nearly lifeless. She had almost died. The woman he loved so much he was going mad with it. His future wife.
And for what? To catch a murderer, because she hadn’t trusted him. She’d gone to Warren instead. His own friends had kept him in the dark. He was left with an empty feeling inside. He’d believed they’d trusted one another, and that there would be no more secrets. Yet she’d kept one that had almost killed her. And so, after a fashion, had he.
Holding her hand, he brushed the pad of his thumb over her skin.
“Why didn’t you trust me?” he whispered. “We were going to catch him. I just needed more time.”
They had started this investigation together, but somewhere along the way, she’d stopped confiding in him. Would their marriage be like that? Would he lose her trust as a husband someday, just as he had in this matter? He couldn’t imagine doing anything that would drive her away, but now that fear grew inside his chest, making him ill at the mere thought of it.
He sat at Meredith’s side until his body ached from the bent position. When the moon rose high in the sky, the bedchamber door opened.
Warren’s voice pulled him out of his bleak thoughts. “How is she?”
A crimson veil descended over his vision. Darius leapt up and charged at Warren. He struck a blow against his friend that sent Warren reeling back into the corridor.
“How is she?” he hissed. “She almost bloody died!” Darius’s fear exploded through him, turning into a molten rage. “You nearly killed the woman I love, and you expect me to just sit here and?—”
“Darius I?—”
“She chose to confide in you over me. How could you let her do that? And because she trusted you, she nearly died!
“Darius, I—” Warren lifted his hands in surrender. “It was a sound plan?—”
“That was not your decision to make!”
“No, it was hers,” Warren said. “She blames herself for the death of Crell’s wife.”
That stopped Darius, but only a moment.
“This was something she believed she had to do,” said Warren. “Because she did nothing when it might have mattered.”
“That woman’s death is not Meredith’s fault,” Darius growled.
“I know,” said Warren. “But she’s never believed that. It was tearing her up inside. That’s why I agreed to help her. I never?—”
“Get out!” Darius snarled. “Get out before I do something I will regret.”
Warren’s face shuttered as he turned and walked quickly away.
Darius’s body was still shaking as he went back into Meredith’s bedchamber. He closed the door and sank down with his back against the wood, then covered his face in his hands and wept.
All of his life, he’d endured loss. As a boy, he’d lost his mother’s loving compassion, and as a young man when he’d needed the loving support of his friends most, he’d lost Kit to the penal colonies for a crime Kit hadn’t committed. For seven years he’d believed that he might never see Kit again, a man that was as close as a brother to him. And when he held his head up, and carried on despite the pain raging like a tempest in his heart and soul, he’d lost his father, the kind, generous man who’d taught him to be everything he had become. He’d quarreled with Uncle Ben and never had a chance to make things right before he died.
