What a slip. Izzy was not yet his wife, was she? And with the way things had been proceeding, their wedding could not happen soon enough. Mere days. A scant handful of days until she would be his. His mind was flying faster than his feet. Unless she would require time to recuperate?Hell.He wanted her to be hisnow. Yesterday, damn it to Hades. But yes, her health, wellbeing, and safety eclipsed every other need.
Strange how the last thing he had ever wanted had becomeallhe wanted. Had become, in short order,everythingto him.
When he had heard that gunshot so close earlier, the desperate need to protect her had propelled him. And when he had seen her bloodied arm, he had been angry enough to commit murder. He still was. Thank God Wycombe was at work, reprising his role as a Scotland Yard detective to uncover who was behind the stray shot that had wounded Izzy.
More alarming had been Wycombe’s belief that the gunshot may not have been unintentional at all, but rather that Izzy had been targeted. By whom and for what reason remained a disturbing mystery, much like the identity of the shooter.
“When may I see her?” he asked, knowing full well how inappropriate it was for him to visit his betrothed in her chamber before they were married and not giving a damn.
He could scarcely keep himself from racing to her chamber and seeing for himself, propelled by the desperate need to hold Izzy in his arms and reassure himself that she was, indeed, going to be fine.
Fortunately, Izzy’s family was an eccentric lot, and no one seemed properly horrified by his request.
“I can take you to see her now if you like,” the Duchess of Wycombe offered, looking to her mother for permission. “Mama?”
“Heavens,” the Countess of Leydon replied, sounding uncharacteristically flustered at last, when she had managed to preserve her sangfroid for the duration of the ordeal thus far. “It is hardly as if a chaperoned visit could cause any more trouble than a gunshot wound, is it?”
From the moment he had returned to the house with a bleeding and shocked Izzy in his arms, her mother had taken steadfast control of the situation, calmly making certain the rest of the household remained unaware of the unfolding drama, ordering the servants to bring water and clean cloths to cleanse the wound, and directing one of the stable lads to ride into the village and fetch the doctor. Zachary had been relieved at the manner in which she had taken charge, for he had been nothing more than a tangle of knotted fear and worry. But now that the immediacy of the need to see her daughter taken care of, it appeared the upset of Izzy’s wounding was belatedly having an impact on the august dame.
“I promise to make certain Lord Anglesey is on his best behavior,” the duchess told her mother.
It would do him no favors to point out that his best behavior was still most others’ worst. Wisely, he held his tongue about that.
“I merely wish to see her for myself,” he said instead, to Lady Leydon. “When last I saw her, she was in a distressing state.”
“It is fortunate you came upon my sister when you did,” Viscount Royston offered in a grudging tone.
Since Izzy’s brother’s arrival at Barlowe Park, his interactions with the lord had been strained but polite. He did not blame the viscount. Had he a sister of his own, Zachary would not have been impressed by a man of his reputation absconding from a ball with her and keeping her at his town house. The reluctant praise now felt almost akin to an offering of pax.
He inclined his head. “I am grateful I was there to be of aid. Had I not been…”
He allowed that unwanted thought to trail off, for he refused to contemplate what could have befallen Izzy had he not been riding and seen her familiar figure walking on the footpath earlier that day. Would she have found her way back to the manor house for aid? And if she had not, would anyone have found her before she had lost too much blood or body heat to save her?
Nearly losing her today had shown him, beyond a doubt, how much she meant to him. How much he wanted her at his side, in his bed, in his arms.
In my heart.
The unbidden thought startled him.
“You were there,” the Duchess of Wycombe said gently. “That is all that matters now. We are thankful you found her.”
“We owe you a debt of gratitude, Anglesey,” Izzy’s father agreed.
Like his son the viscount, the Earl of Leydon had been wary of Zachary. He could hardly blame the man, for the same reasons he did not find fault with Royston’s cold shoulder. He was likely a papa’s worst bloody nightmare.
Or, he had been, when he had been a rakehell without a care.
Now, he was something decidedly different.
“You owe me nothing,” he told Leydon. “It is my duty to protect your daughter. I only wish I could have protected her from what happened. I would have gladly stood between her and harm.”
How he wished he had. He would sooner take the bullet himself than her suffer for a moment.
“How romantic,” sighed one of the twins—he thought it was Criseyde, but he could not be certain.
“If one cares about that sort of nonsense,” grumbled the other twin.
Although he had difficulty telling the two of them apart—a distinguishment only having been rendered far more difficult thanks to their names both beginning with a damned C—the twins certainly seemed opposites in many ways. Criseyde seemed the sunshine of the pair, with Corliss the moonlight. At least, that was what he remembered. Izzy was not present for him to ask and thus clarify his confusion.
