Chapter Twenty-Nine
Seth’s eyes blinked open to blinding light. Lying on an unyielding surface. Cold. He couldn’t feel his toes or his fingertips. Frigid air hit his bare chest. When had he lost his shirt? Ears ringing, the world spun around him with shouted commands.
“—round is still inside—needs to be—”
“—can’t die! Please—!”
Cassandra’s voice broke through the inaudible clamor. Shadows danced above his unfocused eyes—black, white, and red.
“Cass—” His voice slurred. Wrong. He wanted to reach for her, but he couldn’t move. He needed to tell her… something important…
“Matthew, please!”
“Damn it, Davis! Get her out of here!”
Cooper.
“Hold him down!”
Hands clamped down on his shoulders, wrists, legs.
A piece of leather shoved in his mouth.
“Bite!” Cooper shouted.
Seth’s eyes snapped open, lucidity slamming into him at the same time Cooper pressed down on his shoulders, amber-brown eyes blazing into his.
Beside him stood a surgeon with a scalpel in his hand, and grim determination on his face. “Three—”
“No!” Seth begged. “No! Don’t—”
“—two. Now!”
The scalpel pierced him and sliced.
Spasming, he screamed and writhed.
“Hold him steady!”
And then digging.
Pain exploded from his every nerve. White. Hot. His body would burst with it. His heart burned in his chest and, in a moment of clarity, he knew he was going to die.
“Come on, Reeves!”
This time, he would die.
“Reeves!”
Pain faded to numbness. All he could smell was lavender and rosemary. All that remained of him faded into divine, radiant nothingness. Darkness crashed in and out like waves on a faraway shore, taking him with the tide, and there was peace.
“No, you don’t! You keep your eyes open! You have to live! For my sister, you…”
***
“…bastard.” Matthew’s voice trailed off.
Reeves’ eyes drifted closed and his body fell limp.
The round dropped from the surgeon’s forceps into a metal pan with a clink.
Matthew Cooper became Viscount Lincolnshire in an instant. Watched the light fade from his father’s eyes. Knew how fast blood cooled when it hit the air.
“Quickly now!”
He watched a man he loved and respected fall, hit his head, and in the next breath, Matthew had two sisters to take care of.
“—linens! Everything in the house!”
Two baby sisters.
“Apply pressure, more—”
“—hot water!”
Two beautiful, perfect baby sisters he loved more than life.
Screaming in the next room.
And Reeves, shirtless on his kitchen table, a gaping wound on his side and a surgeon over him.
His pulse weakened beneath Matthew’s fingertips.
Aunt Valentine barked orders. Strangers moved around his father’s house.
Samaritans in the street had swooped in to help like fallen angels, their white shirt sleeves stained red, fluttering like clipped wings.
Trevor stood at Reeves’ side, gritting his teeth, giving tools to the surgeon intuitively.
And Reeves, pale and lifeless. Matthew held him down when it was no longer necessary.
Reeves had stopped fighting.
But Matthew couldn’t move. If he moved, Reeves would be gone.
There’s no way he can survive this.
Then all he could see was the purple of Aunt Valentine’s dress. Sweat dampened the pewter hair on her brow. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Step back, Matthew.”
“I can’t.”
“Mattie.” With great care, Aunt Valentine placed her hands over his. “You have to let him go.”
“Auntie,” he sobbed. “I can’t.”
“You can’t do anything for him now. Let the surgeon do his job, and let God do the rest.” She eased his hands away from Reeves’ prone form.
Matthew’s arms fell to his sides, and tears ran from his eyes when she released him.
“What am I supposed to do?” He sounded like a young boy, pitched and desperate.
“You get cleaned up,” Aunt Valentine instructed, but her voice caught. “And you go hold your sisters, Matthew Cooper.” Her voice dropped into a pained whisper as her eyes roamed over Reeves. “And pray.”
As Matthew stepped from the kitchen, he tripped over a potted plant. Soil spilled across the hallway, its white flower crushed under his foot. Bile rose in his throat, worsened by the sounds coming from his sisters down the hall.
He couldn’t go in there now.
Not covered in Reeves’ blood.
Matthew leaned against the wall, taking ragged breaths. He ran his hands through his hair, gripped handfuls of curls in his fists, bent forward, and soundlessly screamed.
“My lord.”
Matthew whirled to Davis, holding the only clean towel in the house. With a grave expression, the older man glanced down the hall, closing his eyes tight as another wail escaped the sitting room. Matthew didn’t know which of his sisters made the sound.
“A bath has been prepared, my lord,” Davis whispered. “Perhaps… do it quickly?”
The heavy burden of necessary strength settled over Matthew like an iron blanket that buckled his knees. He wanted to fall to the floor and cry because Reeves was his best friend, his family, his brother.
And by the night’s end, he would be dead.
Taking a shaking breath, Matthew locked his knees, straightened his spine, and tried to build himself up brick by brick while his foundation crumbled.
“Yes, Davis.”
A week’s worth of flowers smothered the sitting room, giving it the appearance of a funeral home—complete with a grieving widow. Held to either side by Caroline and Lady Jasmine, Cassandra sat in the middle of the sofa. Matthew kneeled in front of her on the floor.
“Sister.” He reached his hand out, and Cassandra threw herself into his arms, knocking him backward. He caught her and wrapped his arms around her shuddering frame.
“He can’t die!” Warm tears streamed down her face, soaking his shoulder. “We were fighting! I said awful things! He can’t die before I can tell him that I’m sorry! I love him, Matthew! And I never told him, and now—” She released another soul-crushing sob.
“Cassandra,” Caroline cried, coming to his other side. He wrapped his other arm around her and the siblings clung to each other in a huddle on the floor. “He’ll be all right! Right, Matthew? Right, Matthew?”
But Matthew didn’t have answers and didn’t know what to say, so he did what he could.
He held his sisters close to him.
And he prayed.