Still, he was so tired his eyeballs ached, and he was so spent the room seemed to be swaying about him. Refusing to cancel the evening’s festivities had been a grave mistake, and he was beginning to see that now.
“We have nothing more to say to each other,” he told her icily, his voice hoarse from the pain in his throat.
What was the matter with him?
He had grown accustomed to his dark moods. They had been a part of him for as long as he could remember. As were the nights without sleep. It was what made him so good at leading the League. He could throw himself into the work, and it gave him purpose. Meaning. When he could not sleep, he pored over documents, information, intercepted communications, anything he could get his hands on. But this, the feverish burn of his skin, the ache in his head, the pounding inside his skull…Jane…were complications he did not need. Did not want.
“I am sorry, Leo.”
Her gentle contrition nettled him. The chamber about them swirled like the pictures he had seen from France, splotches of color, dreamy swirls that somehow turned flecks of pigment into hushed landscapes and portraits. He had imagined this moment since she had thrown him over for Ashelford. He had fancied her abject repentance would move him.
But it did not.
“I am not sorry,” he returned truthfully. She had shown him who she truly was that day.
Nothing she could do or say all these years later would induce him to ever trust or care for her again. That particular ship had long since sailed, been attacked by a hurricane in the Atlantic, and dragged down to the depths of the sea, never to be seen again.
Strange. Perhaps he was finally freed of Jane’s ghost. Freed as she stood before him. But he was not freed of the confounded illness. The servant had replenished his whisky, and he poured it down his gullet now. Not because he could not face Jane, but because he wanted to stay the throbbing in his skull and drown out the heat threatening to consume him.
It did none of those things.
Instead, it heightened his exhaustion. He was a man who had driven himself beyond his earthly limits, and he knew it. Three days without sleep—or perhaps even four, he could no longer be certain, for after a time they all cobbled together into one loop of infinity—was too many.
“Please, Leo.” Jane placed a hand on his arm. She moved nearer. So did the scent of roses.
Instead of finding familiarity and comfort in it, he felt ill. His gut clenched. He wanted to extricate himself from her, to walk away, but his body had turned into an anchor. It was heavy.Hewas heavy. And tired. And burning.
Suddenly, in the crowd, as if conjured by his wildest imaginings, appeared one ethereally beautiful face framed by black hair. A pale face with a slight, retroussé nose, a lush pink mouth, bright eyes and thick, long lashes. Her beauty robbed him of breath, hit him in the chest like a blow. Though Jane still stood directly before him, he stared past her, meeting the gaze of the banshee he had wed.
Surely her appearance was a result of the illness that seemed to be assaulting him. For there was no way she could be here, in this chamber, her eyes filled with daunting Irish fury.
“Leo?”
He wanted to remind the Duchess of bloody Ashelford she could not call him by his Christian name. But his mouth did not function, and his tongue seemed dead. He swayed. A grip of tremors assaulted him. Cold through the heat. Such an odd sensation: though his skin was on fire, his body felt as if it had been encased in an ice block. And with his head pounding, his eyes burning, body tired and drained from all the nights he had spent in his study, drinking coffee and poring over documents…
The room swirled. Voices seemed to echo in his head. Bridget was approaching, moving closer in a swirl of angry skirts.
How?
There was Jane again, blinking, beautiful. “Leo?”
Two of her.
Damnation, he was seeing double now. It was what happened only when he reached his limit. When his body had become so drained there was nothing left remaining to give. This had happened before. He could handle it. He could take control of himself.
“Duke?”
Oh, Christ.
There was the second face. The one that haunted him in his waking dreams. The banshee he could not resist. His midnight-haired siren, with the luscious mouth and the sparkling eyes standing before him. Only this time, the eyes shimmered with anger. With malice.
What in the hell was she doing down here? How had she escaped, and what manner of mayhem did she intend to inflict?
He was sure he ought to be concerned enough to collect her and return her to her chamber, but the whisky and the fever—which he was now certain he possessed—had imbued him with an eerie sense of calm.
“Jane,” he said, gesturing, “allow me to introduce you to Her Grace, the Duchess of Carlisle. Darling, this is the Duchess of Ashelford, an old friend.”
Bridget O’Malley’s eyes widened, searching his.
