Chapter 21
The flames were coming.
Closer, closer.
Hotter, too.
Terror clamped down on her.
She felt them on her face, searing her skin. Burning her alive.
Verity attempted to run, but her legs became tangled in her skirts.
She tried to scream as she tumbled forward into the maw of the fiery blaze, but no sound emerged.
It was burning her up. Turning her to ash.
There was no way to escape. She was surrounded by the roaring fire on all sides.
Walls were crashing down, beams falling.
But then he was there.
Dark hair and eyes to match.
King.
Arms around her, strong and safe, lifting her out of the fire. Saving her. He held her close, keeping the fire at bay, and strode away from the flames. They were freed of the fire, and the air was cool and fresh. All at once, the smoke disappeared.
Somehow, she was by a gurgling stream at Riverdale Abbey. The flames were gone. There was a young gentleman with light hair and a charming grin, and he held a golden locket in his hand, extending it toward her.
Where was King? What had happened? Confusion assailed her, but then the young man spoke, and his voice was familiar and beloved, and her fears calmed. It was a memory, and she knew it, past blending with reality. But none of that mattered because he was here and he was hers.
She would never let him go.
“I know it’s not appropriate to give you a gift until you’re my wife, but I wanted you to have this locket,” he said.
She had never been so happy. The sun was shining, the grass verdant green, the sky overhead vast and blue, punctuated with a smattering of white clouds. How she loved him.
He handed her a bouquet of freshly picked forget-me-nots, the tiny, pale-blue flowers jaunty and beautiful. Her favorite. He had remembered. But of course he had. There had been that day by the stream when she had picked one and handed it to him, telling him that he must always remember her.
And he had given her that dimpled grin she loved and had told her she was impossible to forget.
She reached for the flowers now, and when she took them from him, the young man changed. He was suddenly different. He was taller, his shoulders broader. His hair was mahogany, and his eyes were the soft brown of a freshly turned field.
It was the man who had saved her from the flames, who had brought her to the meandering stream and the forget-me-nots ruffling in the wind. It was King.
“Will you be my wife?” he asked solemnly.
Her mind felt muddled and confused. She was meant to marry another, was she not? She thought she was, but who? The light-haired man, or the dark? Which one had given her the gift, the flowers?
Verity touched the locket.
“From me,” King said.
“No,” she tried to argue.
But she couldn’t. Because the golden-haired man and the dark-haired man had become one, and the flames had returned.
She was alone once more. Back in a burning building again, the fire ravaging the walls, the floor opening before her. She pitched forward, and then she was falling, falling, falling.
Verity screamed again, and when she opened her eyes with a jolt, she was in a room she recognized. Her bedroom, to be precise. A woman was sleeping in a chair at her bedside.
She moved her lips, forming the word. “Maman.”
Nothing but a croak emerged. Mother slept on, a slight snore rattling from her lips.
Let her sleep, she thought.
But Verity could not. Her skin was hot, so hot. And everything ached. Sweat soaked her body from head to toe. Something was wrong with her. Was she ill? Why did her skin hurt? The answers rested at the edge of her memory, but she couldn’t reach them. They were nothingness, suspended in ether.
She tried to remember the cool air by the stream, the sunshine on her face, how contented she had felt. But all she could recall was the man she loved, giving her the locket at her throat. With a trembling hand, she reached for the clasp.
The bandage and pain impeded her progress, but finally, she succeeded, and the locket fell from her throat.
With her unbandaged hand, she reached for it, picking it up.
Would the forget-me-not be within? Her fingernail found the place where she had pried the engraved locket open so many times before.
Within was a lone, tiny blue flower. The only remembrance she had of that day by the stream.
The day that had changed everything.
The day the Duke of Kingham had asked her to be his wife.
It was there, and it was safe, and so was she. Had she been in a fire? Had it all been a bad dream? Why was her hand bandaged if not?
Whatever had happened, she would find out soon enough, when Mother woke.
Still clutching the locket in her uninjured hand, Verity closed her eyes and waited for slumber to claim her once again.
“Where is King?” Verity asked for what must have been the hundredth time during her week of convalescence.
Sybil smiled at her sister-in-law and patted her hand. “Everett said he will pay a call today. You are certainly impatient to see His Grace.”
“I love him,” Verity said simply. “We are engaged to marry.”
It was not the first time her sister-in-law had expressed the sentiment since Verity had awoken following the severe injuries she had suffered in the fire. But it was nonetheless troubling. As far as Sybil and Everett were aware, there was no such agreement between King and Verity.
The physician who had called to check on Verity’s progress had privately warned them that blows to the head could be complicated.
There was a possibility that Verity’s mind had been altered by the blow.
He had also emphasized that it was of the utmost import to keep Verity as calm as possible whilst she recovered, that too much excitement would be harmful for her mind and could inflict further damage.
They had taken great pains to avoid discussing the subject of Leo, Verity’s beloved dead betrothed.
She had not mentioned him once, though she had been quite vocal in her requests for Kingham.
It made no sense to either Sybil or Everett, but they were willing to do anything they must to ensure that Verity healed completely.
“Of course you are, dear,” Sybil said to Verity in an agreeable tone. “Shall I ring for your lady’s maid to help with your hair?”
Some of Verity’s hair had been singed in the fire, and the wound she had suffered to the head had been so deep that it had required stitching. They had only just washed her hair for the first time today with Sybil’s help, and the process had been onerous and painful for poor Verity.
“Do you think she will be able to plait it for me?” Verity asked. “King prefers it when I wear my hair in a Grecian braid.”
“I’m not certain,” Sybil answered honestly. “It may not be good for the cut on your head.”
“Then I shall wear it down,” Verity decided. “King shan’t mind if I’m scandalous. He loves me far too much.”
Misgiving curdled Sybil’s stomach, but she smiled brightly for her sister-in-law’s benefit. “Yes, dearest. Now, we should make haste. I believe His Grace is calling soon.”
“I have missed him so.” Verity beamed.
For the first time, it occurred to Sybil that she wasn’t wearing her customary black mourning. She had spent the last week in dressing gowns, but today was her first occasion to finally dress. The gown she had chosen was a pale lavender, one suited to a younger woman.
Sybil wondered if it was a residual from her debutante wardrobe but held her tongue.
There was something…different about her sister-in-law since her injury in the fire.
But none of them could quite settle their minds on what it was, and likewise, no one wanted to question Verity or upset her and hinder her recovery.
“Come then, my dear,” Sybil said brightly. “We shall go to the drawing room and await Kingham’s arrival.”
King had done many bad things in his life.
In fact, he liked doing bad things.
When one had a fortune at his disposal and all the tremendous éclat and power that being the Duke of Kingham brought with it, there was almost nothing left in the world to conquer. Even bedding women had long since become a scarcely thrilling diversion.
It made no sense, therefore, that he had done a good thing one week ago when he had pulled Lady Verity Saunders from the flaming wreckage of an orphanage.
King didn’t make heroic gestures. He didn’t put himself at risk.
He didn’t engage in any exertion that would ruin his clothes, which were always tailored to perfection.
And it further made no sense that he was presently strolling into the drawing room at Riverdale’s town house at the behest of the same lady he had carried out of the burning orphanage.
But here he was, bowing to Lady Verity, who gazed at him with such naked adoration that he had to blink, thinking he was mistaken.
He wasn’t mistaken.
The only time he’d ever seen a woman look at him thus previously, it had been after he had given her three orgasms in a row using nothing more than his mouth.
“King,” she greeted him softly. “I have missed you.”
She had?
He folded his frame into a waiting chair with far less elegance and grace than he ordinarily possessed.
“I have missed you as well, my dear lady,” he said smoothly.
She beamed. And Christ but she was lovely, her dark hair spilling around her shoulders in what looked to be natural curls.
She was wearing pale purple today, and the color complemented her creamy complexion ever so much more than her customary black silks did.
She was also Riverdale’s sister, he reminded himself sternly.
Forbidden, as such.
There were bad things, and then there were very bad things.
Lusting over one’s chum’s sister was firmly in the latter.
Fortunately, he had exemplary restraint.
“And I have missed you also, Duchess,” he gallantly told Riverdale’s wife, who had joined him and Lady Verity for their little tête-à-tête.
“You are looking well,” the duchess returned primly.