Chapter 28 #2
Edmund’s gaze dropped to him, then returned to his daughter, and understanding passed across his face.
“Stay with him.”
Rosalind swallowed hard, torn between the father she had spent weeks desperately trying to find and the man bleeding in her arms.
“Papa…”
“I am here.” Edmund’s own eyes shone as he looked at her. “And I am not going anywhere.”
Rosalind managed a small nod before Gabriel and the magistrate began moving Algernon toward the cell. He went without resistance, and somehow that unsettled her more than another struggle might have done.
Only minutes ago, he had fought William and shouted about betrayal, loss, and everything that had been taken from him. Now all of that fury seemed to have drained away.
At the threshold of the cell, Algernon stopped and looked back at William.
Rosalind’s arms tightened around him.
Algernon said nothing. After a moment, Gabriel ushered him inside, and Isabella closed the door and turned the key. The metallic click echoed through the cellar.
Pembry tested the door himself before looking toward Gabriel. “He should remain secure until I return. I’ll bring the constables and send anyone I encounter for additional help.”
“Go,” Rosalind said. “Please.”
With one last glance toward Algernon, Pembry hurried for the stairs.
Rosalind thought of the rooms upstairs and the pages covered in a frightened child’s handwriting.
For years, Algernon had been brought to Bryn Hir and locked behind doors by a father who believed suffering could force him into becoming someone else.
Now he stood behind iron bars because of the suffering he had chosen to inflict upon someone else.
She could find no satisfaction in the sight of it. Only a terrible sadness for everything that had begun in this house so many years ago and everything Algernon had allowed it to turn him into.
Then William went completely slack in her arms.
“William?”
When he did not answer, fear clawed through her. She called his name again, panic breaking through her voice as she tightened her hold on him.
“William, please.”
His eyes remained closed.
Her father was beside her almost immediately, crouching to press careful fingers against William before examining the blood soaking his coat.
“He is breathing.”
“Then why will he not wake?” The question came out thin and desperate, and Rosalind hated how frightened she sounded.
“He has lost a great deal of blood.”
Rosalind stared at her father, and Edmund seemed to understand immediately where her thoughts had gone.
“That does not mean we are losing him.”
“You do not know that.”
“No,” he admitted quietly. “But neither do you.”
Gabriel crouched on William’s other side. “We need to get him upstairs.”
Rosalind tightened her hold instinctively. The idea of anyone moving him when she could not even tell how badly he had been hurt filled her with fresh panic.
“We cannot move him.”
“We cannot leave him on a cellar floor either.”
She knew that. Knowing it did nothing to make the thought of releasing him easier.
Edmund rested a hand on her shoulder. “Let us carry him. You stay beside him.”
Rosalind reluctantly eased William from her lap, keeping one hand beneath his head until Gabriel was ready to take his weight. Between Gabriel and Edmund, they lifted him as carefully as they could, but even that small movement drew a faint sound from William that made her stomach twist.
She stayed beside him all the way upstairs, climbing close enough to touch him whenever the narrow staircase allowed it, while Isabella went ahead with the candle to light their way.
The house seemed darker than Rosalind remembered. They passed the rooms she had stumbled through earlier, where pages covered in repeated words and broken sentences still lay scattered across tables and floors. She kept her eyes fixed on William and refused to look inside.
Not now.
Isabella found a bedchamber on the first floor that appeared to have been used recently, and the men carried William inside. The sheets looked clean enough, and there was a basin on the washstand.
They lowered him carefully onto the bed, but his face tightened even in unconsciousness, and Rosalind gripped the edge of the mattress until the pain in her fingers gave her something else to concentrate upon.
“We need cloth,” Edmund said as he bent over William. “As clean as you can find. And water.”
“I’ll find them,” Isabella said.
Gabriel had not moved. He stood at the foot of the bed staring at William, his gaze fixed upon the blood darkening his coat.
Then he seemed to reach a decision. “I am going for a physician.”
Rosalind turned toward him. “Pembry has gone already.”
“I am faster.”
Gabriel was already heading for the door when Rosalind followed him into the corridor.
“Gabriel.”
He stopped and looked back at her. The fury she had seen in the cellar was gone now, leaving behind something far more familiar to her own heart.
Fear.
“Ride like the wind,” she said. “Please.”
His gaze moved briefly toward the bedchamber. “I will.”
“He is badly hurt. We need the doctor before morning.”
“We will have him,” Gabriel promised.
He took her hand and squeezed it once before releasing her and hurrying down the corridor.
Rosalind remained where she was, listening as his footsteps echoed through the empty halls of Bryn Hir, and a door opened somewhere below. A few minutes later came the pounding of hooves, rapid and growing fainter as Gabriel rode hard into the Welsh night.
Only when she could no longer hear them did Rosalind return to William.
By the time Rosalind returned to the bedchamber, Isabella had found clean cloth and was heating water over the fire. Edmund remained beside William, too exhausted to stand for long but apparently unwilling to be anywhere else.
When Isabella brought the water, they opened William’s coat enough to reach the wound.
Rosalind forced herself not to look away.
She had imagined herself brave many times during the search for her father.
She had crossed half of Wales without knowing what waited for her at the end of the journey, entered Bryn Hir despite every instinct warning her away, and faced Algernon while he stood between her and the man she had come to save.
None of that had frightened her quite like this.
Bravery looked very different when the man she loved was bleeding beneath her hands.