With great difficulty, Johanna opened her eyes, blinking slowly as her blurred vision settled and became clear. Why were her eyelids so heavy? And why did she feel so strange, almost as if she were removed from her body, aside from the throbbing pain in her head.
A brunette woman, finely dressed in a smart periwinkle blue gown, hovered over her, her expression one of concern. “Miss McKenna?”
“Yes,” she managed to rasp past a tongue that seemed to have gone unbearably dry. Confusion washed over her. “Who are you, and where am I?”
The woman offered her a kind smile. “I am the Duchess of Arden, and you are at my home. But I would be pleased if you would call me Hazel.”
Johanna was more confused than ever. “Forgive me, but how did I come to be at your home?”
She struggled to remember what had happened, but her head hurt with a devilish ferocity. She could recall Felix’s proposal, followed by her arrest. Then, the interview with Ravenhurst. Then nothing more.
“You were at the Scotland Yard offices yesterday, being questioned by Mr. Ravenhurst,” said the woman—Hazel, she supposed, for Johanna had already forgotten what manner of duchess she had called herself.
“I recall,” she said, still searching her mind, desperate for answers. It was as if a great, gaping hole had been blown into her memory…
And then, suddenly, remembrance hit her.
All the discoveries she had made about Felix. Every word Ravenhurst had said, all the revelations. The painful truths she had learned. The slicing pain of his betrayal.
The explosion.
Yes, she remembered it now, all at once. There had been a roaring in her ears, the very world had seemed to shake, and then a driving pain had radiated through her skull. She had fallen, headlong, into oblivion.
“A bomb exploded outside the offices,” Hazel said slowly. “You were injured when the ceiling of the room you were being questioned in collapsed. Fortunately, you were not in a chamber with windows, or the damage could have been far worse.”
Dear God, ithadbeen a bomb. Likely planted by one of her brother’s men.
She hesitated as that devastating information settled into her mind. “How did I come to be at your home?”
“Winchelsea felt the risk of taking you to a hospital was too great,” Hazel told her gently. “Returning you to his home would have also put you in danger.”
Winchelsea.
Felix.
A far greater pain sliced through her then at the thought of him. At the thought of all his lies and betrayals. His manipulation of her. Despite everything, her heart still ached for him. She still loved him. Longing slid through her—the need to see him, to touch him—before she could quell it.
“He is not here now, is he?” she asked, praying the answer would be no.
“Of course he is,” confirmed Hazel. “Do you wish to see him, my dear?”
“No.” The answer left her like the blast of a shotgun: a quick, angry report.
“Forgive me, my dear.” Hazel’s countenance turned troubled. “He has been here by your side since you were brought here last night. I finally forced him to try to get some rest…I assumed you would be eager to see him as his fiancée.”
As his fiancée.
The word left her cold.
Yet another lie in a sea of so many. Perhaps that was what her nightmare had signified—the water she had been adrift in, the water rushing in and filling her boat, threatening to drown her. She felt a myriad of emotions, all of them so much the same, though she was lucid.
“I am not his fiancée,” she denied. “Nor do I have any wish to see the duke.”
Hazel’s brow furrowed. “Winchelsea was quite adamant you are. Your status as his betrothed, along with the fact you are a woman and you suffered a grievous injury, was enough to keep Scotland Yard from formally charging you for now.”
If he expected her to be thankful to him for the lies he had told on her behalf, he would discover soon enough how little gratitude she possessed when it came to him. Her body was still in pain from the aftermath of the explosion, but her heart fared far worse.
“Since His Grace is the reason I was arrested by Scotland Yard in the first place, I can only presume he felt enough guilt to lie to attempt to keep me from prison while I am an invalid,” she said, anger making her voice tremble.
