“Don’t answer now.” He stands abruptly. “You’re exhausted. You nearly died. This is the worst possible time for this conversation, and I know that.”
“Then why—”
“Because I sat in that chair for six hours watching your heart monitor and swearing to myself that if you woke up, I wouldn’t waste another day being too proud to tell you the truth.” His eyes hold mine. “You’re awake. So I’m telling you.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
Nothing comes out.
“Sleep,” he says, and it’s not a request. “We’ll talk when you’re stronger.”
He’s heading toward the door.
He’s actually heading toward the door.
He just told me he’s in love with me and now he’s leaving, like he just delivered a quarterly report and not a declaration that has fundamentally altered the chemical composition of my brain.
“You can’t just say that and leave,” I manage.
He pauses at the door. Looks back at me with those devastating blue eyes.
“I just did.”
And then he’s gone.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I’m left staring at it, my heart hammering so hard the monitor sounds like a drumroll, and I press my hands against my burning face because the Duke of Veilcourt just told me he’s in love with me.
He loves me.
The Duke of Veilcourt.
Loves.
Me.
The woman who has spent five days strategically rearranging her schedule to avoid him. Who still has an engagement ring in her coat pocket. Who hasn’t called her cheating fiancé. Who jumped into a frozen lake without thinking and nearly died and is now lying in a hospital bed having a complete emotional breakdown because a man she’s known for barely two weeks just said the most terrifying, wonderful, impossible thing anyone has ever said to her.
How did this become my life?
The door opens again.
I look up, expecting Veil, expecting him to come back and take it back or explain that the hypothermia affected his brain too or tell me he was joking—
But it’s Lady Hampton who steps in, her expression gentle and knowing and slightly amused.
She looks at me. Looks at the heart monitor, which is still broadcasting my emotional state to anyone within earshot. Looks back at me.
And then she signs,‘My son doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.’
I stare at her. At this woman who held my hand on a plane while I cried over another man. Who’s shown me nothing but kindness since the moment I met her. Who keeps looking at me with that Mona Lisa smile like she knows something I don’t.
‘I don’t—’My hands are shaking so badly I can barely form the signs.‘I don’t know what to do.’
Lady Hampton sits down in the chair Veil just emptied and takes my hand. Her grip is warm and steady, and she doesn’t sign anything else. Just holds on.
And I’m crying again.
Not the quiet, contained tears from the plane. These are the messy kind, the kind where your face crumples and your shoulders heave and there’s absolutely no dignity left to preserve, and I’m crying because I don’t understand how any of this is happening. Two weeks ago I was in New York with a ring on my finger and a fiancé who called me boring, and now I’m in Wyoming in a hospital bed with a broken engagement in my coat pocket and a duke’s love confession ringing in my ears, and I don’t know how to hold all of it at the same time.
