“Your Grace, you need to—”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Sir, you’re hypothermic too, you should—”
“I. Said. I’m. Not. Leaving.”
The nurse backed off. Dr. Faulke made a practical decision.
“At least get into dry clothes. You won’t help her by collapsing.”
Someone brought scrubs and blankets. Veil changed without leaving the room, without taking his eyes off Evianne’s unconscious form on the medical bed.
Her vitals were stable.
Breathing steady.
Temperature slowly rising.
She was going to be fine.
She was fine.
She had to be fine.
Because the alternative. The thought of her not opening her eyes. Not looking at him with that mixture of exasperation and awareness she tried so hard to hide. Not writing boundaries on pieces of paper and then blushing when he stood too close.
His hands were shaking.
Not from the cold.
From the memory of watching her disappear under the ice. Of diving in and finding her sinking, her body limp, her face slack. Of the absolute, annihilating terror that he was too late.
“Your Grace?”
Dr. Faulke appeared at his elbow. “She’s stable. The hypothermia was moderate but not severe. She should wake within the hour.”
“The boy?”
“Also stable. Minor hypothermia. His mother’s with him now.” Dr. Faulke paused. “Miss Evianne saved his life. Another thirty seconds and it would have been a very different outcome.”
They moved her to a private room, and Veil sat in the chair beside her bed and watched the monitors track her heartbeat, her oxygen, her temperature.
Five days she’d avoided him.
Five days of careful distance and neutral professionalism and silent meals and averted eyes, and Veil had let her do it because his pride demanded it, because the Duke of Veilcourt did not chase women, because he’d convinced himself he didn’t care.
What a fool he’d been.
What an absolute, pride-blinded fool.
Because five minutes ago, he’d watched her slip beneath the ice with her eyes closed and her body going limp, and every defense he’d spent fifteen years building had collapsed like it was made of nothing. Five days of pretending he didn’t care, wiped out in five seconds of pure terror.
She’d jumped into a frozen lake for a stranger’s child. Hadn’t hesitated. Hadn’t calculated. Hadn’t waited for security or rescue equipment or someone more qualified.
She’d just run.
Every woman Veil had ever known had wanted something from him. His title. His money. His connections. They came with careful smiles and strategic vulnerability, and he’d learned to see through all of it, learned to keep his distance.
