She moved with quiet efficiency, her skirts brushing against the floor as she approached the bed and bent to check the dressing on Abigail's head. Jasper remained just inside the room, not yet trusting himself to move closer. His eyes were fixed—helpless, haunted—on the figure lying motionless beneath the covers.
Abigail looked far too pale against the crisp white linens, her skin the same cool shade as porcelain. The stark white bandage wrapped around her head accentuated the deepening bruises already beginning to rise along her brow and temple. A purplish smear darkened one cheekbone, and another blotch was just visible near the hollow of her throat where the collar of her nightgown had slipped askew. Her arm was carefully bound across her chest in a linen sling, supporting her fractured collarbone.
"She's resting as well as can be expected, Your Grace," the nurse said softly, adjusting the blankets. "No change yet, but her breathing is strong."
He nodded, unable to speak.
After a few more moments, the nurse gathered her supplies and slipped out, leaving the room too quiet behind her.
Jasper moved at last, crossing to the chair beside the bed. He sank into it, his eyes never leaving Abigail's face. Her lashes lay dark and still against her cheeks. She hadn't stirred—not once—since the moment they brought her in.
Carefully, he reached for her hand and cradled it between both of his. It felt too cold. Too still.
He bent over it and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Reverent. Desperate.
"I'm here," he whispered, his voice nearly breaking. "You're safe now."
But was she? Could anyone promise that?
His forehead dropped to their joined hands. For a long moment, he couldn't lift it. He sat like that—curled forward, breathing in shallow bursts—because if he let himself unravel, he wasn't sure he could piece himself back together.
Not again.
He had lived this before. Not exactly, no—but close enough that the memory clawed at him with brutal familiarity.
It had been a carriage then, too.
One frightened horse. One violent overturn. The wreckage had stolen his parents—ripped them away in an instant.
He remembered receiving the letter while away at Oxford, completing his final year alongside Philip. The words had blurred on the page, too brutal to be real. He hadn't believed it until he saw the mourning bands worn by the porter who handed him his coat.
And now—Abigail.
Jasper lifted his head, resting his chin atop their joined hands as he studied her face.
"Please don't leave me," he murmured. "Not now. Not like this."
There was no flicker beneath her lashes. No sign she heard him.
"Emmeline needs you," he whispered. "I need you, Abigail."
It was absurd to think that only that morning she had written to him. He'd read her letter standing in the study, the hearth still dark and cold. Her words—graceful, vulnerable, brave—had felt like sunlight breaking through a storm. He hadn't known what to write back. He hadn't needed to. He was going to tell her in person. Everything. Over dinner.
He swallowed the ache that rose in his throat.
Since Emmeline's birthday, things had begun to change. Slowly. Cautiously. They had started with time—shared as a family, Emmeline always the joyful bridge between them—but something deeper had taken root. A walk in the gardens. A quiet meal without pretense. He'd taken her to the opera. To two balls. She laughed at his jokes now, asked questions during their conversations, and sometimes even argued with him—gently, thoughtfully—like she used to. And each time, he dared to believe it was real.
Not the girl he'd courted—radiant during her debut season, the light of every ballroom. Not the woman he'd wounded, cold and numb in the months after. But someone more. Someone stronger. Someone scarred but not broken.
He had begun to hope.
And now?
Now she lay so terribly still, her body bruised and bound in bandages, and he was back in that echoing hallway at Oxford, holding Nathaniel's letter with shaking hands and a hollowed-out heart.
He closed his eyes and breathed through the panic rising in his chest.
In his mind's eye, he saw the future they might still have, if only she'd stay. The one they once dared to imagine while lying beneath the stars at Roselawn, whispering dreams as though they might cast them into the sky like wishes.
