Lady Hampton squeezes my hand and waits.
Patient. Not pushing. Just there.
Eventually the tears slow. I wipe my face with the back of my free hand and try to pull myself together, which is laughable at this point, but I try anyway.
‘He sat here for six hours,’I sign to Lady Hampton.‘While I was unconscious.’
She nods.‘He wouldn’t leave. The nurses tried.’
‘He dove in after me. Into the water.’
‘I know.’Her expression flickers with something fierce and tender at once.‘He’s his father’s son.’
I look down at our joined hands. My fingers are still pruned from the lake, the skin raw and reddish, and Lady Hampton’s hand is smooth and warm and holding mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
‘I’ve been avoiding him,’I sign.‘For days. I’ve been rearranging my entire schedule so I wouldn’t have to see him because I’m scared of what I feel, and he knew. He knew the whole time and he let me do it.’
Lady Hampton’s lips curve into that smile. That Mona Lisa smile.
‘And now?’she signs.
And now.
That’s the question, isn’t it?
Now a duke has told me he loves me, and I’m lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and a heart monitor announcing my feelings to the room, and somewhere in my coat pocket is an engagement ring from a man who never bothered to see me, and somewhere on the other side of this door is a man who apparently sat in a chair for six hours watching me breathe.
‘I don’t know,’I sign honestly.‘I don’t know how to be someone who gets chosen.’
Lady Hampton studies me for a long moment. Then she signs,‘You jumped into a frozen lake for a stranger’s child without thinking twice. You already know how to be brave, Evianne. You just haven’t figured out how to be brave for yourself yet.’
The words land somewhere deep, somewhere I wasn’t expecting, and I feel my eyes sting all over again.
Lady Hampton squeezes my hand once more, then stands.‘Rest now,’ she signs.‘Everything else can wait until morning.’
She pauses at the door, and that Mona Lisa smile deepens into something that looks almost like certainty.
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with the beeping monitor and my racing thoughts and the echo of Veil’s voice saying my name without the “Miss.”
Just Evianne.
Like I’m someone worth knowing by heart.
