“No! Not that one.”
Blackness crept in. His eyes rolled back.
“You must live, Gregory,” she wept, applying pressure to his wound. “You are not dying. I forbid it.”
He wanted to smile. He tried to. He wanted to say if anyone could fight Satan for his soul, and win, it was her.
My incomparable, breathtaking wife.
Grief poured through the pain.I want more time…
There was so much he wanted to do with her. To show her. “Daria,” he said her name, his voice weak, his body fading.
“Stay,” she begged.
I…can’t….
And then—
Nothing.
Chapter 27
Through Argyll’s thick, heavy sleep, a haunting melody beckoned; the entrancing voice that called out to sailors at sea.
He struggled to bring his eyes open.
“The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain…”
But everything hurt; even his lashes felt so weighted that he sank back into the feather mattress and stay buried in his slumber. He had the devil’s own headache and a gut that needed emptying. Every breath drawn burned. His head ached.
“I never had but one true-love—In cold grave she was lain.”
The siren’s song both lulled him to surrender to the rest his mind sought and lured him back to the surface.
To gaze upon her.
“I’ll do as much for my true-love…”
Why was he here?
“As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave…
Why was the woman whom his heart beat for so sadly silent?
“For a twelvemonth and a day.”
Everything came rushing back.
The mad panic.
The dowager’s mad cackle while his body landed on Daria’s on St. Cyr’s graveled drive.
Around them had been screams and shouts and cries as witnesses came upon the scene of terror.
