45. CHAPTER 45
S he woke slowly.
For a moment she didn't know what time it was, or what room.
Then she felt his weight beside her on the bed and remembered everything.
The kidnapping, his rescue, him falling on that pier, blood staining his shirt…
The despair. The blind, frantic despair that had made her wrench her own shoulder out of place in her need to go to him.
She had believed he was dead for a few horrible seconds, and it had been unbearable. Dalton had lived with the belief that she was dead for seven years.
She had not fully comprehended the magnitude of his suffering until now.
He was asleep. His rhythmic breaths deep and steady beside her.
She turned her head on the pillow, careful of her shoulder, and looked at him.
It was the first time she had woken to find him beside her since her return. Not in the room next door. Not in the study downstairs. Beside her. Close enough to feel the heat of his body through the sheet, close enough to count his breaths.
In the other life she had recovered yesterday, this had been an ordinary occurrence.
He had slept with her every night. She had woken to him every morning.
Another memory surfaced. A winter morning at Penrose, dawn light through the curtains, his arm heavy across her waist, his breath in her hair.
She had lain there for a quarter of an hour, trying not to wake him.
She had failed. He had opened one eye and said, go back to sleep, in a voice rough with it.
She had laughed. He had pulled her closer, wrapped himself around her, and neither had gone back to sleep until they had had their fill of each other.
That morning was twelve years old. It was such a small moment, yet she held it now without effort. An open door, indeed. Any memory could walk through at any moment.
Sleep had stripped his face of its composure. The crease between his brows had smoothed. The set of his jaw had loosened. He looked younger. He looked like a man, not a duke.
She looked at his bruises again. A sheet of steel. That was all that had stood between a bullet and his heart.
She lifted her good hand and rested it, very lightly, over the bruise.
He woke.
His eyes opened and did a quick sweep of the room — startled, searching. Then he found her, and he exhaled, his whole body relaxing. His hand came up and covered hers where it rested on his chest, and his eyes settled on her face.
"Good morning," she said.
"It is afternoon."
"Is it?"
"Past noon, judging by the light." His voice was rough. He turned his hand under hers and laced their fingers together against his sternum. "How is the shoulder?"
"Sore. But manageable."
He searched her face for confirmation. She smiled to ease his concern.
"Val."
"Mm."
"Waking up next to you used to be my favorite part of the day."
His face became very still.
"You remember," he said.
"Yes."
He did not move .
"In the warehouse. When I was bound and afraid. I thought of you because it was the only thing that brought me comfort. And the more I thought of you, the more the memories came. The wedding. Our first night. So many other moments…"
His thumb moved once across her knuckles.
"I remember you wore the wrong waistcoat to our wedding," she continued. "It was a dove gray, and you hated it. You told me afterward that your valet had pressed the wrong one and there had not been time to change. I teased you about it for a week."
He closed his eyes. His throat worked, but his lips curved in an almost smile.
"I also remember the first time we lost a baby." Her voice softened because the memory was a tender one, even though it was made of grief. "You held me through the night, and did not say anything. I think you were afraid that anything you said would be the wrong thing."
He opened his eyes. They were wet.
"I remembered the second and third times as well."
"Vivienne — "
"It is not the same as reading about it or being told.
I feel it now." She squeezed his hand. "I feel the pain, but also the tenderness, the closeness that bound us through those difficult times.
I remember waking up next to you almost every morning and thinking, every time, that this was the best part of being married and no one had ever told me about it.
The quiet, intimate moments. Not memorable in the grand scheme of things, but precious. "
A tear slid from the corner of his eye. It ran down his temple and disappeared into the pillow. He didn't turn his head away.
"We have to reinstate that custom," she said.
He laughed. It was a wrecked sound. But it was a laugh.
"Yes," he said. "We have to."
He brought their joined hands to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles. He held them there. She felt him breathe against her skin. When he lowered their hands again to his chest, he covered hers with his own and did not let go.
For a time neither of them spoke. The rain kept coming down. A clock chimed the half-hour somewhere in the house. She could feel his heart under her palm, slow and steady and alive.
His eyes moved down to her wrists, and his face changed.
"Your wrists — "
"They will be fine," she said.
"Yes, they will be, because we are going to clean them."
She thought about arguing, then stopped.
"Only if you promise me a bath. I'm dying for a hot bath."
"Then you shall have one."
He rose. She watched him cross the room to the bell, then stop and turn back.
"I'm not ringing for a servant," he said. "I don't want anyone in this room but me. Unless you would prefer — "
"No. Just you."
He nodded and went into the dressing room.
She heard him through the open door. Running water into the tub. Opening and closing drawers in the manner of a man who didn't know quite where everything was kept and was determined to find out without help. The small domestic clatter made her smile.
He came back. He had taken off his trousers and stood only in his drawers, riding low on his hips. She tried not to ogle, but was not entirely successful.
"It is ready. Are you cold?"
"A little."
"I'm going to take you out of this chemise now. I will be careful of the shoulder."
"I know."
He sat on the edge of the bed and worked.
He undid the medical sling first. He had watched Paul bind it last night and was reversing the wrappings now with the same exactness, supporting her arm at the elbow and the upper arm so the joint did not move.
When the sling was free, he cradled her bad arm against her body with one hand and unlaced her chemise with the other.
When the chemise was loose enough, he eased it down her body, taking her drawers with it. All the while supporting her bad arm.
She was naked.
She had been naked in front of him many times, but never like this. Battered, bruised, and bandaged. There was no eroticism in his hands. Only solicitude.
He had a long strip of linen laid out on the bed, and he used it to fashion a lighter sling. Looser than the medical one, less restrictive, but enough to hold her arm against her ribs while she bathed. He had clearly thought this through.
"You are better than a lady's maid."
He huffed, and one corner of his lips curled up in a half smile.
He lifted her off the bed.
She did not protest as he carried her into the bathing room and lowered her into the tub, supporting her bad arm against her torso the whole way down, his hand spread across her ribs over the linen until the moment she was settled and the water held her.
She made a sound when the heat met her body. A low, wordless sound of relief. He smiled fully now. She loved that smile.
"That bad?"
"That good."
She let her head rest against the back of the tub. The heat eased into her bones. She had been cold for a day and a night, and the cold had got into places she had not known existed. The heat now was finding them all and undoing them one by one.
He knelt beside the tub, took her good wrist in his hands, and started washing it.
She did not look. He made a small sound she could not quite identify and brought her wrist to his mouth, pressing his lips to the unbroken skin just above the abrasions. He held them there for a moment, then lowered her hand into the warm water and let it soak.
He did the bad wrist next. Without lifting it.
He worked where her arm rested against her body, his fingers patient, his other hand never leaving the support of her elbow.
The skin underneath was worse on this hand.
He was very quiet while he cleaned it. He soaked a cloth in the bathwater and laid it across the abrasions and held it there with his palm.
"I'm sorry."
"It was not you who did it."
"I'm sorry anyway."
She closed her eyes and let him tend to her.
He washed her hair next. He did this with one hand under her neck for support, the other working the soap through her hair with an awkwardness that touched her.
He had never done it before. Now that she had her memories back, she was sure of it.
She kept her eyes closed and let him fumble, just happy to have his hands on her.
He rinsed by pouring a small jug of warm water over her head.
Some of it ran into her ear. She did not mind it one bit.
When he was finished, he wrapped her hair in a towel and lifted her out of the water with her bad arm cradled against her body, his hand at her ribs, and set her on the bench. The air in the bathing room was full of steam. He dried her with a softness she wouldn't have thought his hands capable of.
He patted her wrists without touching the broken skin.
"Lift your good arm."
She did, and he slid a clean nightgown over her head. Soft and almost weightless. She found the armhole on the good side and worked her hand through. He did not try to put her bad arm in the sleeve. He gathered the empty sleeve and tucked it gently against her body.