He watched her laugh, eyes wide and fascinated.
“Cruel,” he whispered, his thumb rubbing the inside of her wrist and scattering gooseflesh up her arm. “The cruelest, loveliest thing.”
She understood now . . . the softness she had seen in him.
It was . . .wonder.
Shewas the wonder.
How very astonishing.
“Dr. Whitaker—”
“What happens to the dragon?” He shifted his hold, sliding his hand down to hers and wrapping his fingers around her palm. The pressure of his warm skin set her heart to skipping. “The one in the story?”
Lottie’s smile refused to dim. How stupefying this conversation had become.
“He falls in love with the princess,” she told him, sinking into the chair beside him. “And the princess with him.”
“Ah.” A long pause. His eyes drifted shut in earnest, his breathing deepening. “A happy ending then—the dragon and the princess?”
“Yes.”
He did not respond. But hedidpull her hand onto his chest, splaying her palm over his heart and placing both his own atop it, as if cuddling her hand to him.
Lottie stared, the sensations zinging up her arm almost overwhelming. She couldfeelthe thump of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his ribcage as sleep claimed him once again.
She reached for the book—one-handed, of course, as she would not be the one to remove her hand from his.
But then his voice reached her.
“No’ for me, that happy ending,” he murmured. “For myself, I ken love would be a catastrophe.”
9
The world came back to Alex in pieces.
The scrape of the counterpane under his hands.
The rustle of a servant stirring the fire.
The smell of wood smoke and camphor.
That odd befuddlement of his senses being heightened and yet scattered at the same time.
Memory rushed in.
Shooting. Accident. Broken leg. Rest. Heal.
Laudanum.
He had taken laudanum. And if the bitter taste in his mouth and cloudiness of his thoughts were any indication, he had taken alotof it.
How long had he been asleep?
Closing his eyes, he assessed his body.
He deliberately took in a series of deep, slow breaths.
