Chapter 53
Livy
Livy paced the Ironcrest House receiving room while Aunt Mellie sat in one of the wingback chairs. The last thing Livy could do was sit still. When she’d received Franny’s note this morning…
Her eyes sank shut, and her hand rubbed her chest, but it was completely ineffective at quelling the panic coursing through her, at calming the way her stomach seemed to have come alive with nerves. She couldn’t imagine what Derek was feeling right now.
“Lady Elliot, Miss Forester,” came a soft voice. A brittle one.
Livy spun to face the dowager, and something cracked inside her. Strain pulled tight across the dowager’s features, and the invincible woman standing before her had never looked so small. So frail. Her Grace was a fortress, but right now she looked like one brought to its knees. Fallen.
Aunt Mellie was already at Her Grace’s side. “How is he?”
“Alive.”
Livy’s gut sank. One word had never held such foreboding, especially one that should have been a cause for celebration. Because it was so clearly followed by an unspoken for now. Livy swallowed hard.
She stepped up to the dowager and wrapped her arms around the woman.
This wasn’t a time for decorum. This was a time for comfort.
Her Grace stiffened, and Livy was immediately transported back to when she’d hugged Derek for the first time.
But was it any surprise? The dowager, the Duke, and Derek…
there couldn’t be much physical affection between the three of them.
Love, yes, but she had a feeling they might all be as starved for comfort as she was.
She at least had Aunt Mellie and a loving father, even if he didn’t know how to show affection.
These poor souls. She squeezed the dowager tighter, and the woman relaxed slightly, returning the squeeze.
The dowager pulled back and lifted her chin, the woman who couldn’t be taken down slowly reappearing.
“He has a broken arm, and the spoke of a wheel went through his thigh. Otherwise, he was quite fortunate…in that regard. However, he suffered a serious head injury. He is unconscious. And there is no way of knowing…”
If he’d ever wake.
An uneasy, ice-cold shiver prickled over Livy’s skin. There had been a boy in her village who’d taken a fall from a stair banister. He’d never woken. Wasted away in a week’s time. But the Duke was a large, strong man. That had to be an advantage, right?
Aunt Mellie tucked the dowager to her side and started leading her toward the seating, but Her Grace reached out and gripped Livy’s wrist. “He’s in Raffy’s chamber. He made me promise not to…” Sorrow shimmered back at Livy. “He doesn’t want to see you,” she said quietly.
Livy’s chest hollowed out, leaving her with a sharp, piercing pain.
The woman’s dark eyes bore into Livy’s. “My butler will escort you there. He’s not going to be pleased when he finds I’ve broken my word.”
Livy nodded hard. She understood what the dowager implied.
She set her shoulders as she followed the butler out of the receiving room.
She wasn’t certain what awaited her in the Duke’s chamber, but she knew she needed to steel herself for it.
Derek was wounded in the worst way. Livy had a feeling it would be the first time she experienced the full force of the Marquess of Dunmore’s wrath.
The butler paused before a large oak door.
He eyed Livy warily, as if he didn’t feel comfortable letting her into the room alone.
She raised her chin and arched a brow. She could handle whatever she was about to face in that room.
She had to. Because she knew the man in there was too broken to go through this alone.
The butler opened the door for her, and she took one last steadying breath before striding into the room.
It took every ounce of strength not to falter when Derek’s face whipped to face hers.
His black waves were wild about his face, eyes sunken, marred with dark circles.
They were empty, like she was staring at a man who’d lost his soul.
Haunted.
His hands were wrapped around one of the Duke’s, his knuckles white, like perhaps he could transfer some of his life into his friend if he held on tight enough.
Oh, Derek.
But she couldn’t show weakness.
“I explicitly said I didn’t want to see you.” His voice was cold, and it crystalized over her skin like ice.
She tilted her chin up further and kept walking. He growled, low and menacing. Nothing like the purr he usually gave her.
“Leave,” he snapped. “I know what you’re doing, Miss Forester. And I don’t want it.”
She paused before him, an arm’s length of space between them. “And what is that, Derek?”
“Lord. Dunmore.” His lips barely moved as he snarled the words. A beast with hackles raised. Injured, cornered.
“And what is that, Lord Dunmore?” She threw it back at him. Mocking. She knew it down to her core that right now he couldn’t handle soft. Compassion wasn’t the right tactic. He needed an opponent, a fight.
His nostrils flared, something volatile staring back at her in his near-black stare.
“You think you can fix me, reform me. That I need you. I don’t.
” He laughed, hollow and hair-lifting. “I finally got what I wanted from you. You are no different from any other woman vying for a place in my bed. And just like them, I have no more use for you.”
She flinched, and it only fueled her ire. Because she’d expected this and still the barbs struck sharply. Hit her deep where that lonely, worthless girl lived. The one nobody wanted. She crossed her arms and lifted her nose at him. “Fine. Get rid of me.”
He blinked at her, the taut lines of fear and fury going lax. “I beg your pardon.”
She’d shocked him. A shock that broke through the venom he was spitting at her. “You have no more use for me.” She shrugged. “Dispose of me, my lord. But you need to physically remove me from this room if that’s the case.”
He scoffed, but the panic he was trying to hide behind vitriol and cutting remarks was beginning to show.
Eyes wide and white, his gaze not able to land anywhere, frantic.
His fists were balled at his sides now. All he needed to do was carry her out of here, and he’d have what he so assuredly said he wanted.
She glared at him. Dared him to touch her and stay true to his threat.
“Fine.” He shot to his feet, his chair toppling backward with a crash.
His stare shot to the Duke, but there was no movement, the clatter of the furniture doing nothing to penetrate the man’s deathly stillness.
That seemed to reignite Derek’s fury. He turned to face Livy, his eyes ablaze with emotion poised at the brink.
Seconds from spilling over. But he was resolute.
Determined. To shove it all down. To not feel.
But he felt so much. Too much.
Something flickered over his features, a final hardening, the last layer of armor, and then he scooped her up and strode for the door.
Her arms went around him, hands digging into his hair.
Latching on. He made it two steps before he dropped to his knees.
She pulled him to her, and he swore into her neck.
His entire frame shook violently, on the verge of losing control.
“God damn you, Livy.”
His broken words sank into her like shards of glass. But even so, for the first time all night, a light fluttering of hope came to life in her chest.
“You need to go.” His words were scraped raw, the pain inside him seeping through his barriers. “I can’t do this with you. I thought I could. I thought for once life was going to let me have a piece of happiness. But happiness isn’t meant for me.”
His hands slid up to grip the sides of her head, forced her to face him, eye to eye, nose to nose, his gaze manic.
“Everyone leaves,” he hissed. His pulse was erratic, racketing against his breastbone into her own.
“Whether of their own accord or because life takes them away from me. You need to leave now before it becomes the latter. It’s already tried once. I can’t—”
She rested her forehead against his, not letting up in her grip on him. She wasn’t letting go. She wasn’t leaving.
“You were safe until you met me.” His words turned pleading, and that hurt so much worse than the cruelty from a moment ago.
“There is only one way this ends. I refuse. I refuse to let that happen. You leave now. I won’t be able to handle—” A tremor sliced through him, shaking all the way through her.
“It’s already too much. It’ll only be worse later,” he said hoarsely.
“I can’t go through what’s happening with Rafe, with you. I can’t.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Derek,” she whispered.
“You can’t know that.” His voice was so small. So scared.
She hated it. Because there was truth to his statement. No one ever knew what life would bring. But she did know one thing. Life would have to wrench her away from this man. It would never be by choice. “I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, because you're a fool,” he bit out. “You should be running in the opposite direction.” But his fingers tightened, giving him away.
“Or, perhaps I’m just extremely intelligent and see through all your…shallots.”
A watery laugh burst from him, and in the next breath it collapsed into uncontrollable sobs.
She pressed him to her, held on as tight as she was able, tried to hold him together as he shattered in her arms. Tears streamed down her face as the most agonizing sounds ripped from him.
The sound of pain, of terror. It echoed around them, each cry slicing through her.
“I can’t lose him.” His broken whisper muffled into her neck. “He’s everything to me. My brother. My family. All I have.”
Her heart seized in her chest, ached with his pain, with helplessness.
“I can’t lose him.”
She did the only thing she could. She held him as he repeated those words over and over into her skin. A litany. A prayer.
“I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him.”
And she prayed along with him.