Page 16 of When the Marquess Was Mine
She wet her lips and glanced at the door. “Nor where you are, or why you came here?”
“No.” He attempted a smile but it hurt too much. “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
She flinched. “What?”
“He said you’re my fiancée. Is that true? I can’t believe I wouldn’t remember a lady like you.”
Slowly she sank into the chair beside the bed. Her wide eyes were fixed on him, but her expression was inscrutable. “You don’t remember me.”
He studied every inch of her face. “Are we truly engaged?”
Crimson flooded her cheeks. She looked humiliated, and he felt bad at once.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I... I can’t seem to recall much of anything.”
“Including your own name,” she said again. “Not at all?”
“No.” He paused. “The doctor called me Sterling—is that it? It doesn’t feel right...”
“Sterling is a title,” she said, her gaze veering away. “Viscount Sterling.”
It struck no chord within him. Shouldn’t it? Panic began to rise in his chest.
She hesitated, her fingers tapping nervously on her knee. “Your given name is Robert,” she said softly.
Something eased inside him;thatfelt right. Thank God he wasn’t completely mad. “Yes,” he said on a sigh. His eyes wouldn’t stay open. Weakly he opened his hand to her. “I’m sorry...”
“Oh no! Don’t be!” She took his hand, her fingers curling around his gently but with comforting firmness. He relaxed a little more. His mind felt oddly distant from his body. This ought to be more upsetting, but he had no strength for anger or fear. But she was here—Georgiana, the doctor called her. She had been tending him. The doctor even said she’d saved his life. She had stood over him protectively, and he sensed she wouldn’t leave him. Bereft of any other lodestar, he used his last waking thought to grip her hand, and fell back into unconsciousness.
Georgiana sat as stiff as wrought iron, Westmorland’s fingers wrapped around hers. It wasn’t enough that she had to strip him and bathe him, bracing herself for his caustic reaction when he woke. It wasn’t enough that she had been forced to sit beside his bed for three straight days now, terrified that the moment she left would be the moment he woke and brought her edifice of half-truths and outright lies crashing down.
And, of course, he had. She’d only stepped into the corridor to have a quick word with Kitty, who had brought a tray of sandwiches and tea. She slipped back into the room just in time to hear Dr. Elton, who could not keep silent to save his life, tell Westmorland that she’d been by his side the entire time. That she was his fiancée.
She had braced herself for a withering reply. Instead, Westmorland had stared at her blankly.
Then he said he had no idea who she was.
And before she could even decide whether to be relieved or piqued that he’d not paid her so much as a sliver of attention in all the times they’d met in London, it became clear that he didn’t remember whohewas.
Perhaps that was not as alarming as it seemed. Surely, she told herself, getting beaten as badly as he had would rattle anyone’s brain. Once he slept some more, had something to eat, and was more recovered, he would wake up his old self—the sharp-tongued, arrogant Marquess of Westmorland, who inspired no pity and deserved to be taken down a peg or ten for his cruel intentions toward Kitty.
For three days Georgiana had planned all the scenarios in which she would tell him off properly. Mentally she had composed a list of sins to reproach him for, from rude comments about people at balls, to the immorality of gambling so recklessly, to the utter depravity of turning a family out of their home. In truth, she had begun to look forward to it.
She’d envisioned just how it would be: he, lying there furious and weakened, forced to listen as she righteously excoriated him for being a heartless scoundrel. She, of course, would extort his promise to leave Osbourne House and never come back. She would make him swear not to breathe a word of his true identity to Kitty, and she would badger him into writing a letter to Charles explaining that he’d had a change of heart and would forgive whatever debt had given him possession of Osbourne House.
It hadn’t bothered her that he would probably be glaring at her with murder in his eyes as he wrote such a letter—sealed with the signet she’d taken from his hand and hidden in her room, of course. She had even planned how she would get him out of Osbourne House as quickly as possible: an invented crisis at his invented uncle’s house in Somersetshire. She’d already composed the urgent letter in her mind, replete with floods and plagues of life-threatening illness. No one had ever accused Georgiana of lacking imagination.
Instead, though... he slept, clinging to her hand as if he needed her. When she tried to tug her fingers loose, his tightened even though he didn’t wake.
She was still sitting there, her hand trapped in his, when Dr. Elton returned. “Ah, fallen back to sleep, has he?” He clucked his tongue, waving at the maid behind him to set down the tray with the broth.
Georgiana waited until Lucy had gone. “Is it normal for people to wake up not remembering?” she asked quietly.
“It is not unusual,” said Dr. Elton. “He was beaten rather badly, and the bruising on his head indicates he took several hard blows there, which often causes considerable confusion.”
Georgiana exhaled in relief.
“However...” the doctor went on slowly, “it is alarming that he did not recognize you or his own name. A man does not easily forget either of those things.”
