“Mm.” He closed his eyes briefly, his face drawn with pain, though whether in physical torment or romantic reflection she could not say. “Then I am condemned to live the remainder of my life… tormented by the memory… A tragic figure.”
“You shall forget all about it,” she said crisply, “the moment some prettier creature presses you against a column at the next assembly and bestows upon you her affections.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” he said raggedly. “Though I daresay she will not… have a brother who calls me out at dawn… nor her sister who shoots me through the ribs… nor pause to insult my features whilst pressing her blood-soaked gloves to my side. You have rather set the bar, Miss Tolliver.”
Despite herself, she smiled and bit the inside of her cheek to contain it. “The kiss,” she said quietly after a moment, “was a mistake.”
“Both kisses?” he asked, though the words came more slowly now, his lashes fluttering like a man fighting against slumber or worse.
“Both kisses.”
He blinked with exaggerated deliberation, as if summoning strength from some hidden reserve. “I might concede that the first… was ill-advised… but I do not believe last night’s was unintentional.” He drew a shallow breath. “You kissed me… as though you very much meant it.”
She opened her mouth to deliver a denial, but the words, those traitorous things, would not come. She sighed instead. “You are concussed.”
“Quite possibly,” he allowed, swallowing with visible difficulty. “Yet not so far gone… as to hallucinate the expression on your face… when you believed yourself unobserved. Alas, my memory… remains all too vivid.”
“I look at you with unwavering disdain. Ask anyone.”
“I have,” he murmured, allowing his eyes to drift shut. “No one believes it…”
The sound of returning footsteps crunched over the grass, and Lottie’s voice rang out with unseemly brightness: “The doctor is awake again! He says he is terribly sorry for the swooning and believes he shall be quite steady on his feet momentarily!”
“Marvellous,” Hetty called drily. “Let us pray he does not swoon again at the mere sight of blood, or we shall be compelled to summon a second physician to tend to the first. And perhaps a vicar, while we are about it – one must prepare for every eventuality.”
She glanced down at Theo, expecting a smirk or some ill-timed jest about his own mortality, but his hand had fallen slack in hers, and his lips, though parted slightly, did not shape a single word. “Lottie!” she called, her voice cracking into urgency. “Tell Ben to make haste – at once, do you hear me?”
Hetty pressed her hand more firmly against Theo’s wound, as though sheer will might somehow keep the life inside him from slipping away. She had not, until this moment, truly believed he might die. Even when he had fallen, even when the blood first welled dark and terrible beneath her gloves, she still clung to the foolish certainty that he would rise soon with a grimace and wink and declare himself inconvenienced but by no means undone.
He must live – hemust– for if he did not, she could not, by any measure, be expected to endure world in which her most aggravating, exasperating, arrogant, incorrigible, entirely beloved friend had the temerity to perish before she had the chance to tell him precisely what she thought of him.
Which, of course, was that he was wholly unsuited to her in every practical regard – that he tried her patience at every turn, took unseemly delight in provoking her temper, and possessed a most unforgivable mouth, which he employed far too often for both smirking and kissing. And that he was also – though she would sooner be shot herself than confess it – the only man whose absence would undo her entirely, and the only one whose presence she now, most inconveniently, could not live without.
Chapter 17
Theo awoke in what, under other circumstances – namely, those in which his ribs not been thoroughly bruised by Benedict’s fists, his side perforated by Miss Charlotte and the entire matter inelegantly stitched by a physician of dubious professional constitution – might have been considered a very fine bed indeed. The sort of bed, in fact, in which a gentleman of his former habits might reasonably expect to find a discarded stocking hanging from the bedpost, and a young lady of regrettable judgement slumbering contentedly at his side. Alas, on this occasion, there was neither stocking nor slumbering beauty to be found – and, most disappointingly of all, the bed did not belong to Miss Henrietta Tolliver. Not that he had ever seen Hetty’s bed, of course – but he was imagining it now rather more than was strictly necessary.
At present, however, he could not quite determine whether he remained among the living or had been unceremoniously conveyed to the next world. The ceiling above him was painted with pale blue clouds and a great many plump cherubs, all of whom appeared to be judging him with insipid stares.
Theo let out a cracked and croaking breath. “Ah, heaven. How odd.”
A voice shrieked from beyond the door: “I said white lilies, not cream! Is this to be a wedding or a dairy market?”
Theo winced. “Hell, then,” he amended grimly, recognising Lady Tolliver’s tones with tragic clarity.
The door burst open an instant later, and Lottie swept in with alarming cheer, balancing a tray upon which several unpromising items appeared to be congealing. “Oh excellent, you are awake at last, Lord Langley. You did not die! Not yet, at any rate.”
Theo turned his head, slowly and with considerable personal sacrifice, to cast a wary eye at the tray. “Ought I to be alarmed that you felt the need to qualify it?”
Lottie looked genuinely affronted. “It was meant as encouragement.”
“Mm.”
“I brought you toast,” she added with pride, setting the tray down upon the bedside table with a clatter that sent a jolt of agony through his side. “I took a bite, naturally, to ensure it was not poisoned.”
“How very considerate.”
She stood back and clasped her hands behind her back, rocking upon her heels in the manner of one attempting to look innocent by force of posture alone. “I also endeavoured to fluff your pillows,” she continued, “but you emitted a dreadful groaning sound, so I concluded it best to desist.”
