She mourned the loss of her given name in much the same way she mourned the loss of his touch. “Arden,” she returned, struggling against her aching head, her increasingly painful ribs, and the dizziness, which would not seem to leave her, now it had settled in like an unwanted guest. “You need not sit at my side as if I am an invalid. I have received injuries before, on many cases. This is not the first, nor will it be the last time, I expect. Attend to your duties.”
“Youare my duty,” he gritted, his jaw clenching once more. “And I have already failed you once this evening. I will not do so again. I never should have left you there on your own. I chased the bloody miscreant into the street and promptly lost him in the crowds.”
“Arden,” she said again, reaching for his hand.
Neither of them wore gloves, for they had fled Winchelsea’s townhome without bothering to attend to social niceties. Her gloves—andLord, how she hated wearing gloves anyway—were likely discarded somewhere upon the Duke of Winchelsea’s handsome carpet. They had been in her lap, but when she had sprung to her feet, they had been unceremoniously flung who knew where.
“Do not protest.” His hand cupped her head, and she winced as his fingers gently probed her scalp. “You are bleeding. I need to get you home so a physician can tend to your wounds.”
“I am fine,” she assured him, even though her head felt as if it were a melon which had been busted open after being dropped from the roof of a tall building, and her ribs hurt as if the devil himself had danced a jig upon them.
“You are certainlynotfine, Hazel.” He cupped her face in his big hands, staring into her eyes with an intensity that cut straight through all her aches and pains to the heart of her. “And I alone take responsibility for what happened to you. I ought to have been there to protect you.”
Her sense of independence—running through her like a river for all her life—objected. “I do not need anyone to protect me. I protect myself just as I always have, and if I fail in that,Iam to blame.Ialone have made an error in judgment. Do not feel responsible for my injuries, Arden. I am perfectly well. Do not accompany me because you feel beholden. Capturing the men responsible for the bombings is of far greater importance, and I fear I already bungled that.”
“Ibungled it,” he growled.
His fingers probed a particularly sensitive area, and the moment he touched her there, she knew her scalp had been split open. Warm wetness trickled down her skin.Blood.She hissed a painful breath, then grimaced as her ribs reminded her they too had suffered a trauma. She suspected Flannery and Mulroney had acquainted her ribs and stomach with their boots.
Several times. How gracious of them.
But Arden was not responsible for her hasty decision to venture to the second floor of the hotel on her own, and she would not allow him to mistakenly imagine he was.
“I followed on my own though I was unarmed, and past experience strongly cautioned me against doing so,” she argued. “You are not to blame for my knock over the head.”
“This is more than a knock over the head,” he argued, his voice cold, yet radiating with barely suppressed fury. “By the time I reached you, you were lying prone upon the ground, and I thought…”
He shuddered, not finishing his sentence.
A shocking realization occurred to her then: Arden had been concerned for her. What had happened had left him shaken. That was the reason for the grimness in his expression and the tenseness in his jaw. Could it be possible the Duke of Arden cared for her?
Her fingers tightened over his, the connection between them seeming, somehow, vital. “You reached me, and you carried me all the way to your carriage. You did everything in your power, and now I am safe. I have once more landed upon my feet.”
He shook his head, and despite her attempt at levity, his sensual lips did not turn upward into a smile. “I reached you too late. It was my responsibility to remain at your side. Being beaten is not landing upon your feet, Hazel. When I find the man responsible for this, I will tear him limb from limb.”
Her blood chilled at his menace-laden words. “There were two of them.”
His stare never wavered from hers. “You saw them?”
She tried to nod, but her head hurt too much for the movement. Her eyes slid closed against the blinding flash of pain. “I know them.”
“Christ, Hazel. Who are they?”
“Their names are Sean Flannery and Thomas Mulroney,” she said faintly, as another burst of pain hit her when the carriage rattled over a bump in the road, jarring her. “Though I have no doubt they were traveling using aliases. You must tell Winchelsea. We need to find the list of guests at the hotel. It may not be too late to discover their travel plans. They will be leaving London soon, I would imagine, and they will have booked passage back to New York.”
“You will be doing nothing, aside from being attended to by a doctor,” he said sternly. “I will pass the information on to Winchelsea and put some of our men on their trail.”
“We should find Winchelsea immediately,” she protested, guilt skewering her at the delay she had already caused in not imparting the vital information to Arden as soon as she had regained consciousness. “I can describe them. Perhaps a sketch could be created.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” he said, his tone firm. He slid an arm gently about her shoulders and settled her against him. “You will rest.”
“I do not rest,” she countered, though her eyes were still closed, and she was suddenly feeling incredibly weary.
“You do now,” he insisted, and she felt the unmistakable, though swift, caress of his fingers upon her cheek. “How is your head, sweetheart?”
Had he just called her “sweetheart,” or was that her confused and scattered wits betraying her? Playing tricks upon her?
She opened her eyes again, attempting to gather herself, but when she did, she was every bit as lost within the emerald depths of Arden’s eyes as she had been before. She stared at him, taking in his handsome face, his regal bearing, his soldier’s air.
