After taking a moment to close her eyelids over her sightless orbs, Wrexford rose, hoping against hope . . .
“Charlotte?”
No answer.
His boots crunched over broken glass. “Charlotte?”
Through the tangle of light and shadows, he spotted a flutter of movement. Charlotte was seated amidst the shadowed wreckage, head bowed, arms crossed and clenched tightly around her chest, as if holding herself together.
She didn’t look up at his approach.
He slowly leaned down and touched his fingertips to her cheek. Her skin felt cold as ice.
“I’m here, sweeting. Come back to me.”
A whisper of air—the first stirring of life. Wrexford dared to take it as a good sign. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. Beneath his palms, he felt a shiver spasm through her body.
After brushing a kiss to her brow, he lifted her up and drew her close.
Thump-thump.The erratic thud of her pulse shuddered through the layers of wool and linen as their bodies fitted together.
“Charlotte.”
At last, a reaction. The earl felt her hands slide up the slope of his shoulders and clasp at the back of his neck.
Thump-thump.They stood together, still and silent, as her heartbeat slowly steadied.
“Oh, Wrexford,” whispered Charlotte, her fingers twining in his hair. “Thank you . . . Thank you for being . . . for being you.” Her breath fluttered against his cheek. “A beacon of light in the unbearable darkness.”
“When you’re not facing them alone, things are never quite as black as they seem,” he murmured.
Charlotte looked up, her lips quivering in a ghost of a smile before she made herself look at Julianna’s lifeless body. “I cannot regret that she’s dead.” A swallow caught for an instant in her throat. “But no matter that a venomous evil was coursing through her veins, I didn’t mean to . . .” She shuddered. “Lady Julianna came at me with a scalpel. I grabbed up the rod attached to the trough battery to warn her off. But she slashed out at me and hit . . .” It took a moment for her to go on. “You were a soldier. D-Did you ever kill—”
“More than once,” he replied. “It’s a profoundly wrenching experience, even when the act is done to save innocent lives. I thank God that it never became easier. But I also felt no guilt in doing what had to be done to defend right from wrong.”
The color was returning to her cheeks. He hugged her closer, aware of how all his own sharp edges seemed to soften against her. “Come, let us sit.” Wrexford perched himself on the fallen cart and settled her on his lap. Be it an hour or an eternity, he would keep her in his arms for however long she needed for the shock to subside.
* * *
Charlotte buried her cheek in the rumpled linen of his shirt, reveling in the warmth and the earthy scent of bay rum and male musk.
Wrexford.Somehow, all the little details—his shape, his textures, the rhythm of his breath going in and out of his lungs—had become so intimately familiar. It was almost as if he had become part of her being.
The thought was comforting beyond words.
Closing her eyes, she let herself drift away . . .
She wasn’t sure how long she was lost in such reveries, but the sound of footsteps suddenly wrenched her back to the present.
“Wrex?” It was Sheffield’s voice, she realized.
“Is . . . Is she hurt?”
“Just a little shaken,” replied the earl.
“Thank God,” uttered Sheffield. He came closer and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “You gave us all quite a fright, Lady Charlotte.”
She looked up. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to.” A wry grimace tugged at her lips. “‘The best laid plans schemes of mice and men’ . . . Speaking of which, how did you know where I was?”
