44. CHAPTER 44
H e carried her upstairs and laid her in the enormous bed in his room.
"I hope you don't mind sleeping here tonight," he said. "I can't bear to let you out of my arms even for a minute."
He did not look at her when he said it. He had crossed to the other side of the room and was discarding his jacket. The firelight caught the silver in his hair. Underneath was the shirt he had worn to the docks, bloodied and torn where the bullet had punched through.
"I would not want to sleep anywhere else."
He turned.
His face was raw. Exhausted. Nothing held in reserve. For the first time, she saw what the last few hours had cost him.
"Come here," she said.
He crossed the room and knelt beside the bed and took her good hand in both of his. His fingers were trembling.
"I have to tell you something."
She waited.
"I went to your parents' house yesterday. I was going to ask you to come home." He stopped. Pressed her hand to his forehead. "But I saw you on the steps with Harrison, and I thought — I thought he was what you wanted. So I turned around."
"Val. "
"But when he came to the door today and told me you had been taken, I was already putting on my coat to come and tell you — " His voice broke.
"I love you. I have always loved you. These five days without you were in some ways worse than the seven years, because during the seven years I believed you were dead.
I had no choice but to bear it. But to know you were alive across London and that I had been too much of a coward to keep you… "
She was crying. She had not noticed until the tears reached her jaw.
"I would have come back," she said.
He looked up.
"I could never return to Paul. Whatever I felt for him was nothing like what I feel for you.
My love for you never disappeared, Val. My mind just locked it away.
Forgot it for a while." She lifted her good hand to his jaw.
The muscle worked under her palm. "I chose you before the warehouse.
Before I remembered. I chose you all those years ago, and I choose you again as the woman I am now.
There is no version of me that would not choose you. "
He pressed his face into her skirt.
His shoulders did not shake. He did not sob. He simply held her, both arms around her hips, his face buried against the muslin of her gown, and just once a long shudder passed through him.
She put her good hand into his hair.
She said nothing. Simply rested her hand against his head and let her palm be a weight he could lean against. She felt the heat of him through her skirts. The dampness of his breath. The single shudder, and then his stillness.
She gave him the time.
The fire crackled in the grate. The rain still poured outside. Somewhere in the house a door closed.
When he raised his head, his face was bare. The mask of the duke, the spymaster, the man who had spent twenty-three years making certain no one ever saw what was underneath — gone. It was a face he never showed the world. Only her. She felt the honor of it.
She held his gaze, acknowledging his gift .
"You should rest," he said. His voice was low and a little rough, but steady. "Let me undress you."
"Yes."
He helped her stand beside the bed and went to work on her skirt. The hooks at her waist were small, and his fingers were not patient with them, but he managed. He eased the skirt and the petticoats over her hips and let the fabric pool at her feet.
They had already loosened her corset when Paul reduced her shoulder; the laces hung slack at her back. Now he worked them the rest of the way open and let the corset fall at her feet as well. Then he lifted her off it entirely and sat her on the bed.
She was in her chemise, drawers and stockings.
He looked at her now. Not with lust or possession, but with the remnants of fear and the yearning of a man who had almost lost what he loved most.
Then he knelt at her feet again, took her ankle, and placed her foot over his thigh. He unfastened her garter. Rolled the stocking down her calf with care. Off her foot. Then the other leg. He threw them on the pile with the rest of her clothes.
He left on the chemise and drawers.
"I think you should sleep in these," he said.
"Yes."
He helped her settle comfortably against the pillows, taking great care with her bad arm. Then he turned his attention to himself.
He pulled his shirt out of his trousers. The buttons at the throat were stiff. His fingers fumbled with them. She wanted to help, but could not, so she watched instead. He worked them open, one by one, and pulled the shirt over his head.
Underneath, he was still wearing the breastplate. She had not realized. All this time… he must have been so uncomfortable.
Leather buckles at the shoulders and ribs strapped the dull gray steel against his torso. There was a dent in the center of the plate where the bullet had struck. The shirt over it was creased, torn, and stained. The plate beneath it was unmarked except for that single dent.
He undid the buckles with steady hands. The plate came away from his body, and he set it on the floor at the foot of the bed.
There was a great purple and black bruise in the center of his chest, where the bullet had hit, and a line spreading from his sternum across his ribs in the shape of the breastplate's edge.
The breastplate had stopped the bullet, but not without a cost. The impact looked tremendous, like something that should still be hurting him.
Her good hand lifted to her mouth.
He saw.
"I'm fine. It looks worse than it is."
Then, still wearing his trousers, he walked to the bed and turned down the coverlet, blew out the candle on the nightstand, and came back.
He lay down beside her, careful not to jostle the bed. For a moment he did not touch her. He was on his back with his eyes closed.
She turned her head toward him.
"Val."
He opened his eyes.
"Come here."
He came slowly. As though he were not yet certain he should. He fitted himself to her good side, slid one arm under her neck and the other across her ribs below the sling, then laid his head against her temple and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for a long time.
She turned her face toward him.
"Sleep," she said.
He shook his head slightly. "Not yet. I want to enjoy this a little longer."
"There will be more of it."
He did not answer. But after a time his breathing changed. The hand across her ribs went slack. The arm under her neck grew softer.
She lay awake a little longer, listening to him .
The weight of his arm across her body. How many times in the last seven years had she woken in a small room in Guernsey and felt her body reaching for something that was not there?
It was here now.
At last.