“Deferred execution.”
Laughing, I sit down on Henri’s bed.
His hand finds mine.
“I love that you’re making jokes again,” I say as he presses my hand to his lips.
As every day of the last month, I scramble to suppress the impulse to snuggle up against his broad chest.Not yet.His broken ribs are healing nicely, but we must still be very careful.
After he was discharged from the hospital two weeks ago, Henri’s world has been a state-of-the-art medical bed installed in this spacious guest room that’s part of my private apartments in the palace. The room is a tapestry of royal blue and gold with crisp linens, cream carpets, and velvet drapes that filter the bright morning sun to a gentle glow. Henri’s bed has an array of buttons, levers, and monitors that make it look more like a command center than a place of rest. Of course, it is comically at odds with the plush décor. But the bed’s coolest feature is that it’s large enough for me to slip in next to Henri and nap by his side without causing him any discomfort. I’ve been doing it daily.
Unlike Audrey, who’s as good as new now, Henri’s recovery has been an arduous journey. Bandages still wrap around his torso, chest, and one shoulder. The surgeries he endured were necessary but left him weakened and battling to regain strength. However, this past week, there’s been a dramatic change. The monitors behind the bed that used to track Henri’s vitals are silent now—unplugged. The IV is gone, too, and Henri’s been taken off painkillers.
Each day, he grows stronger. He sleeps less, sits up more, and walks more. He’s been reading a lot. The past few days, he’s been working, too. His appetite is back. His eyes that were clouded with pain when we moved him here now hold a spark of his old self.
My fingers brush over the side of his face. “Someone must’ve activated the turbo mode on your recovery this week. It’s quite spectacular.”
“I’ve been receiving the best care a guy could ask for,” he says. “Now it’s just payoff time.”
“And I’m here for it!”
He strokes my hand. “You’ve been here, but also at the hospital, for the worst of it.”
“Have you forgotten I’m the reason you ended up in this state?”
“Nah, Yann is the reason. His much-touted training program proved better at making me look like a god than fight like a god.” He tut-tuts. “Honestly, I’d fire him as my unpaid personal coach if there were more personal coaches in the French countryside!” He delivers that charge with such a perfectly serious face, that I nearly buy it.
I open my mouth to argue that even a pro wrestler stands no chance, unarmed and alone, against a half dozen highly trained commandos, when a glint in his eyes tells me that he’s pulling my leg.
Come on, Gigi!You should know better than to fall for his poker face.
I slap my forehead, remembering something I was supposed to ask him. “Uncle Richard would like to hold the knighting ceremony on July 21, exactly one month from now. Are you fine with that date?”
“Sure.” His expression tightens. “I’m assuming my parents will be invited?”
“Yes, and your brother, too.”
“I don’t mind Antoine’s presence.” He falls silent for a moment, then shrugs a whatever. “I wonder if they’ll be more pleased with my being awarded the Royal Mount Evor Order of Chivalry or more pissed that they were wrong about me.”
“They’ll be over the moon, Henri.” I squeeze his hand. “And soon, they’ll grovel with regret and apologize for how they treated you. And you’ll forgive them.”
He doesn’t react to that.
Well, at least, he didn’t say “Never!”
“I’ve been meaning and forgetting to ask you something,” he says.
“Ask away!”
“The site where Elias’s unit had set up camp,” he begins, “it was too far from the estate to hear or see anything. Kurt’s men took your phone and pager, and Audrey’s too. How did Elias know we were in trouble?”
I beam. “I’m glad you asked! You see, Elias and Audrey had put a special protocol in place for the duration of our stay in the château. I never realized it, but every hour on the dot, Audrey was pinging him. Just a beep that let him know all was well.”
Comprehension shines in Henri’s eyes, but I finish my tale, regardless. “When Elias didn’t get a ping at seven that evening on that eventful Sunday because Audrey was out, he knew all was not well. Within minutes, he and his men were on their way to the estate. What slowed them down once they arrived was that they had to find us without alerting Kurt’s men to their presence.”
“They were remarkable.”
“Yes, they were.”
