She reached out and gently held the Dowager’s free hand. And the Dowager kept reading… word by word, breath by precious breath.
Greyson stared down at the papers spread across his desk. He had just dipped his pen again when his study door burst open, and Hazel stumbled inside as though she had been sprinting through the corridors.
Greyson shot to his feet.
“Hazel?” His voice sharpened with concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She stopped halfway to his desk, looked at him, then at the still-open door, and blurted. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t knock.” She flapped one hand at the door helplessly. “I should have knocked. I did not. But this cannot wait.”
His stomach tightened. He moved around the writing table at once. “Has something happened?”
“No. Yes! I mean, nothing awful, quite the opposite!” Hazel rushed to him, her movements so full of energy she nearly tripped over her own skirts. She grabbed his hand and tugged.
Greyson froze. Her hand was warm, firm and urgent around his. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, Your Grace, come quickly,” she said breathlessly. “It’s… it’s a miracle. You must see for yourself.”
Greyson’s heart thudded once, painfully hard.
“A miracle?” he repeated. “Hazel, slow down. What has happened?”
She shook her head rapidly, curls bouncing. “I cannot explain it properly even if I tried. I thought I could, but I cannot, I truly cannot, there aren’t words. Please, just come.”
She tugged again, more insistently, with excitement bright enough to illuminate the entire room.
Greyson allowed her to pull him forward, though confusion and worry warred beneath his ribs. “Hazel… Hazel, breathe. Tell me what this is about.”
“It’s wonderful,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “You won’t believe it until you see it with your own eyes.”
Greyson’s pulse stumbled. Because Hazel was smiling with such overwhelming joy that he did not know whether to be terrified or grateful just to witness it.
“Hurry,” she urged, already pulling him toward the door, mindless of decorum, propriety, or the fact that she still held his hand as though she had every right to it.
Greyson let himself be led through the study and down the hall. Hazel didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. Her joy pulled him like gravity. She did not slow even once as she hurried him downthe corridor and toward the front of the house, still holding his hand like a woman possessed by joy itself.
Greyson struggled to keep pace.
“Hazel,” he tried again, in a breath that was short from both surprise and the speed at which she moved, “where on earth are we going?”
“To the carriage,” she answered breathlessly, yanking him down the steps with absolutely no regard for dignity, his or hers.
“The carriage?” Greyson was stupefied. “Why the carriage? Hazel, what in Heaven’s name?—”
“You’ll see,” she said, beaming at him over her shoulder.
Her smile was so bright it stole whatever argument he had been reaching for. A footman gawked openly as Hazel pulled the Duke of Callbury out of his own front doors like an errant child, but Hazel didn’t spare the man a glance. She rushed straight to the waiting carriage, tugging Greyson along until he had no choice but to follow or dig his heels into the gravel like a stubborn mule.
And Greyson Thornhill did not dig in his heels when his wife looked at him like that.
“Hazel,” he said again, trying for calm authority and achieving only baffled breathlessness, “we are not dressed for going anywhere.”
Hazel turned to him with a smile. “Where we’re going, no one cares what you’re wearing.”
Greyson blinked. “That… is not remotely helpful.”
Hazel laughed, and Greyson felt it land somewhere deep inside him, warm and disarming.
He raised an eyebrow, the only defense he had left. “Am I to assume you are deliberately keeping me in the dark?”
