They had reached the end of the wing, where the nursery stairs went up and the servants’ stairs went down. She wrenched her arm away, took the first two steps, and faltered. He caught her before she could fall.
“Damned fool woman,” he growled, pulling her next to his heart, the place he longed to hold her, careful to keep the bandage away from his shoulder. He didn’t wait for her to object. He went back the way they’d come, his long strides making short work of it.
“Just a bit faint, no need for—” Her thready voice sounded far away. He peered down without stopping, to see her eyes closed, her head resting against his chest.
“I’m putting you to bed.”
She blinked her eyes open, and something naughty flashed at his words, quickly replaced by something else, dark and confusing, something he didn’t understand. He didn’t pause to consider it.
He opened the door to her room with his shoulder and lay her tenderly in the chair. A fire flickered in the hearth, and he lit the candles on the mantle before kneeling at her feet to chafe her hands.
“I’m fine, Brynn,” she insisted, the weakness of her voice belying her dishonesty.
“I’m going to call for your maid. Then I’ll go tell Lucy and the girls that you aren’t coming.”
He had his hand on the bellpull to summon help, but her words stopped him.
“Stay with me.”
He turned to see her green eyes, dark even in the flickering candlelight, boring into him.
“Stay with me,” she repeated.
*
I need you.Please don’t leave. The words died in her heart. Inuendo hung in the room, and the impossibility as well. Lucy would come looking. Her brothers would go into an uproar if she disappeared and soon burst in on this private moment. Still, she needed his strength. She had needed it all day.
He went rigid, one hand on the bellpull, eyes dark.
“Just sit with me,” she said. “I—that is, you were right. I underestimated Jessop, and now—” She felt tears well up in her eyes and begin to leak down her cheek, no doubt dampening the blasted bandage Jessop’s mischief had inflicted on her.
He fell to his knees at her feet and reached up to wipe tears away with his thumb.
“I feel safe when you are near me,” she said.
“You are safe. Clarion Hall is a fortress surrounded by guards. Your brothers and extended family are all quite determined to keep you safe.” His hands dropped to his sides.
She breathed in his scent for courage. “They aren’t you.”
He went still again, and she didn’t expect him to answer. After a moment, he did. “It won’t do, Your Grace.”
“I’m just Maddy, or Madelyn. I was Madelyn in Wales.”
“Wales was another world, and it is far away.”
I want to go back.The demand died in her throat. It wasn’t the place that lay between them but who they were. “I’m still the same person,” she said.
“And I’m still a man with few assets and modest means, a former soldier, a former son of a mine owner.”
“Both honorable things.” She reached out and brushed his hair back, and he moved farther away. “And you are far from penniless. You can afford a wife.”
Wife. She regretted the word as soon as it left her mouth. She would have taken it back because he surged to his feet.
“A wife perhaps, but not a duchess. Never that,” he retorted, pulling the device to summon her maid. “Rest, Your Grace. Sleep well. The children will still be running wild in your brother’s nursery in the morning.”
He left, abandoning her once again.
Esther, the friend and companion that she had never considered her personal maid, bustled in, ignoring her feeble protests. In short order, she bundled Maddy in a soft cotton nightgown and assisted her into bed with an arm around her waist. “Sleep well. You’ll feel better in the morning, and the men will have captured that vile American.” She blew out the candles.
